Games are a very special medium. Their ability to suck the player into fantastic worlds through interactivity can leave the player more engaged and attached to them than any other storytelling medium. As technology gets better and games get more accepted as an art form, the quality of the stories developers are able to tell has increased drastically. To celebrate games getting better at achieving this monumental feat, I shall share with you the top 10 video game stories of all time. These 10 stories have memorable characters, smart writing, and near unparalleled implementation with the gameplay. Spoiler alert for all the games mentioned!
Asuras Wrath
The goal of Asuras Wrath was to make an anime that you could play. The game succeeds at this greatly. The action is amazingly stylized and over the top. This is shown by the first boss, who grows to the size of a planet, only for Asura to grow 3 more pairs of arms to punch the boss’s thumb so much it causes a chain reaction explosion to blow him up. If that didn’t hook you I don’t know what will. This is helped by the brilliant camera work, enough juice to feed a city, and the best implementation of QTEs in a video game.
Asura’s attempting to catch a giant ball of fire and destruction!
Luckily, the game is not all action. It’s nicely balanced with a simple but effective revenge tale. Asura is a sympathetic protagonist that goes through so many hardships, such as getting framed for his wife’s murder, having his daughter kidnapped, and accidentally killing one of the humans he grew a connection with. The villains are wonderfully evil characters in both designs and personalities. This is helped by the entire cast’s excellent voice acting. All of this leads to a climax that pays off satisfyingly, especially since it’s locked behind DLC (thanks Capcom). It had me nearly crying at the end. I got stabbed through the moon earlier, and now I’m tearing up slightly. It shows how great the game is.
VA-11 Hall-A
I am far from a visual novel fan. I personally like my games to have…well gameplay. This is why I’m shocked I like VA-11 Hall-A so much and it all comes down to the writing. Its biggest strength is the dialog. For static portraits on the screen, the dialog goes above and beyond to make said static portraits seem like real people. It’s some of the most natural-sounding dialogs I’ve heard in any game, which furthers the characterization of who you meet while doing your job as a bartender. They talk about their lives, jobs, families, and struggles to you, fleshing them out, which by extension the player character Jill out as she gives her responses to her patrons.
One of your co-workers really is a dog
The characters you serve alcohol to along the way are all cooky and interesting. From your hacker best friend, a sweet and compassionate cyber cop, to your talking Shiba coworker. Some are funny, some are mean, and all are well developed. All this dialog is used to build up a dystopian cyberpunk world so corporate it came up with Mega Christmas, and a journey for our protagonist Jill to forgive herself and become a less cold person. I cried during a point in this game when Jill’s past catches up to her and intersects with tragedy. It’s powerful, and all told through just text on a screen and barely moving portraits.
Celeste
A very sweet tale about overcoming one’s hardships. Celeste stars a young woman set to climb a mountain just to prove to herself she can and to give her life purpose. What put’s the game on the list is its ability to relate. Madeline, the protagonist, suffers from anxiety and there are many moments in the game that personify this. This includes outrunning all that she hate’s about herself in a frantic platforming challenge, moving through an empty, quiet level when Madeline is at her lowest, and a playable minigame to calm her down, which then gets subverted later on by breaking down and becoming impossible to complete when the stress gets too much.
An anxiety-inducing moment in a broken cable car
The game does an excellent job at conveying this through music too. It fits every tone the story wants to convey while also being simultaneously catchy. The cast of characters, while small, all have their charms. Both the protagonist and the antagonist go through a simultaneous arc of accepting each other, which benefits the gameplay in the process. And then there are the last moments of the game. The music is a triumphant medley of the previous level themes, the two central characters helping each other along the way, all to end in a final challenging climb to the peak. When you reach the top, it’s truly heartwarming, much like the rest of the game.
Portal 2
Portal 2 is here for one reason and one reason alone. It’s funny. Very funny. Every few minutes there’s an instantly memorable quip, funny observation, or quick joke. Despite this, the humor remains relatively dark throughout, often cleverly berating the player or laughing about how a helpless test subject is going to die to praying mantis mutants. Eric Wopol’s writing is extenuated further by the voice actors’ incredible delivery. Stephen Merchant delightfully plays the pathetic antagonist Wheatly, Ellen McLain is as great as ever playing the coldly hilarious GLaDOS, and J.K. Simmons hams it to 11 as Cave Johnson.
One of the dilapidated labs you venture through. Hi Wheatly
This variety of characters, as well as the setting, is what makes Portal 2 a better story than Portal. We learn more about the world of Portal, the story has more twists and turns, and the puzzles have just as much story content and backstory as the first game. Portal 1 has an amazing story too, and I actually prefer its tighter pacing, but its younger sibling has its beat in both variety and scope. And it’s just so funny!
Deus Ex
Talk about aging like fine wine. For as old and primitive as Deux Ex is in the realms of cutscene animation and voice acting, it heavily outweighs it by being extremely prophetic. It predicted 9/11, the government’s response to COVID-19, and the rising disparity between the higher and lower classes. Predictions alone don’t make a good story though. It does however show the writers’ interpretation of the world around them and how they chose to express it. And they expressed it very well. The world of Deus Ex is well thought out and realized. There’s great world-building around every corner, and you’ll be visiting a lot of the corners of the world.
The perilous cyberpunk streets of New York
It’s easily the best story in the Deus Ex series. There are fewer plotholes and inconsistent allegories than in Mankind Divided, not everyone is talking about just one thing like in Human Revolution. As for Invisible War… we don’t talk about that one. This game also has a good sense of humor as J.C Denton makes the occasional dryly witty comment on his surroundings. Every character has morals and motivations that are well explained, some of which you may end up agreeing with. There is no right answer in Deus Ex, both with the story and the gameplay. It expects and encourages the player to play the way they want to. No wonder it’s stood the test of time.
Metal Gear Rising: Revengence
The purest example of a story that knows what it is. While on the outset, Metal Gear Rising: Revengence seems like a watered-down version of the previous games in the Metal Gear series. It trades philosophical conversations and complicated stories for bombastic action and more one-note villains. However, the deeper one looks into Revengence, the more there is to appreciate. For example, the main antagonist Senator Armstrong seems like nothing more than an evil politician with muscles. However, his motivation is to use the corruption of the war business to end it and create a new America where people are truly free to make their own way in life. His goal is similar to the protagonist, Raiden, in that way. Furthermore, he does this while dropkicking Raiden on top of a machine you previously used its own arm to slice into pieces!
The unenlightened masses! They cannot make the judgment call!
The game balances this serious and crazy tone artfully, much like the rest of the Metal Gear series. What puts Rising over the edge however is its faster pacing. While not as deep as other games, it doesn’t stop for an arduously long time to have a cutscene or a codec conversation, preventing players from becoming bored and the story from getting convoluted. The story has tons of memorable moments despite its short length. From Raiden hearing the thoughts of the cops he’s brutally killed, Raiden cutting a Metal Gear Ray in half while the most metal of metal music, cyborg ninja Raiden wearing a sombrero, and anything and everything that comes out of Armstrong’s mouth. Even the memes have deeper meaning!
The Outer Worlds
Speaking of criticizing politics. The Outer Worlds takes jabs at hyperconsumerism in a wonderfully satiric way. It doesn’t feel preachy though, as it wraps this with sharp, funny dialog, all wonderfully voice-acted. The strength of the storylines in your companions and their related questlines. One companion, Vicar Max, is a jaded priest who you take space acid with in order to speak French. My favorite companion by far is Pavratti. She’s a sweet mechanic who just wants to do the world good and her questline is the best in the game.
Dialog is actually a core game mechanic in the game. You can level up to become a smooth talker who escapes every combat encounter with their charm, or start so stupid you unlock dumb dialog options (see above video)! The game actively encourages the player to do this with exp rewards, making them engage with the story more. The world is so interesting and the dialog is so witty that engagement should be rewarding enough itself.
Psychonauts 1 and 2
Ok so I may be cheating with this but both games have equally good stories. The Psychonauts games are wonderfully creative journeys through different minds. From a day of the dead influenced world of paintings to an acid-tripping musical valley, the worlds our protagonist Raz explores and the ideas they bring to the table are imaginative and funny. The characters you meet are crazy in both design and personality and the dialog is awesome. Eric Wolpaw returns from Portal 2 to deliver its dry whit to this game. This is combined with Tim Shaffer’s trademarks to write dialog and scenarios that are equal parts creative and downright hysterical.
A trippy world of musical eyeballs
Which story you prefer is really up to taste. Psychonauts 1’s story and dialog are much more cynical and dry, focusing more on dark humor and wacky worlds. It leads to more funny moments such as when you awaken The Milkman and he starts throwing Molotov milk bottles at his enemies. Psychonauts 2 on the other hand tackles more serious themes such as alcoholism and fleshing out its characters with a more empathetic tone. It’s a more mature, less humourous version of its older brother.
CrossCode
A criminally overlooked gem with one of the greatest video game stories. CrossCode takes place in an MMORPG and uses that to its advantage. It pokes fun at a lot of tropes of the genre such as rigid NPC dialog, background characters have conversations commentating about a recent quest, or talking about their out-of-game lives like a real MMO, and it has a plausible justification for many of its gamey elements that not many games even attempt or care to do! Most interestingly, it uses its story and setting to warn the player about data tracking. CrossCode tells the player that companies will often sell your data to third parties. It personifies the severity of this through the antagonist literally torturing the information out of Evotars, AI’s created from players’ stolen data. This heightens players’ awareness of the severity of this issue. It sure changed how much I accept cookies.
Fighting an MMO fire moth
However, a message is only as effective as the characters who tell it and CrossCode has some very effective characters! Our protagonist Lea is an amnesiac of few words. Despite this, her personality still shines through. She’s shown to be a bit cocky yet very caring, shocked often yet confident when she needs to be, and she harbors a deep connection with her friends. The moment she finds out who she truly is almost destroyed her, yet the growth she goes through after that is really powerful. Her rival Apollo is equal parts funny and pathetic, growing to respect Lea as the game ends. Sergey, Lea’s primary communicator, has his own motivations and side arc that fleshes him out. And then there’s Emilie. Emilie is full of infectious energy, is often funny, hates bugs, is a great friend to Lea, and is the best character in any game period.
The Best Video Game Story- Spec Ops: The Line
Do you feel like a hero yet? Based on Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, Spec Ops: The Line is a storytelling masterpiece. A psychological rollercoaster about the horrors of war. We see our protagonist Commander Walker turn from a professional soldier to a psychotic killer. Through him, we see how people, and therefore the military, commit atrocity after atrocity all in the name of “good”. There’s excellent subtle foreshadowing throughout the game, characters are memorably hateable and the events you go through are harrowing in all the best ways. This is especially impressive for the time period the game came out in. At the height of patriotic military shooters, Spec Ops acts as a subversion to those very games.
What makes this the best game story, however, is how it takes full advantage of games as a medium. Your animations and combat barks become more aggressive and brutal. Loading screens tips from informative tutorials to actively berating the player. Most importantly, every terrible thing Walker does is fully controlled by the player. You mowed down the defenseless Dubai citizens, you left the crazy officer to burn in a fire and you launched that white phosphorus into crowds of people. None of this is done during cutscenes. This, alongside the great use of licensed music, incredible voice acting, and purposeful dialog makes this the greatest video game story ever told.
