Top storylines in gaming?

[onorub]

Just something that i thought about and wanted to see others' opinions. For fun, i'm making a version including and excluding visual novels.

Top 5 (including VNs):
5) Wonderful Everyday
4) Planescape Torment
3) Higurashi When They Cry (both parts)
2) The House in Fata Morgana
1) Umineko When They Cry (both parts)

Top 5 (excluding VNs):
5) Shin Megami Tensei 3
4) Fallout New Vegas (+ DLCs)
3) Persona 2 (both parts)
2) The Last of Us
1) Planescape Torment

Edited December 6, 2019 by onorub

[mitchhamilton]

Nier: Automata. amazing writing on top of having a character with a nice ass! the message is actually well thought out and deep for our characters as they find ways to live in a world where their gods have abandoned them and somehow they must find meaning in their lives as pre-programmed machines.

[Yuuko]

Kingdom Hearts 

[Dankstat]

Aside from mainstream titles that everyone already knows about, the Yakuza series has a wonderfully campy and overly dramatic story that only gets crazier as you play. The cutscenes are wonderfully directed and the voice acting is top notch.

[Dreamysyu]

To the Moon is one of the most emotional stories that I've ever seen in any media. Many of the Lucas Arts adventure games have really good stories, but Grim Fandango is my favorite and most likely the most unique story that I've ever seen in a videogame. I used to adore The Longest Journey series in the past, but I kind of cooled down to it recently and still haven't played the last game. All Myst games have various major problems with their stories, but the worldbuilding in Riven is absolutely amazing.

[Plk_Lesiak]

I think I can give like ten different answers to this depending on what criteria I choose as most important. Best written? Most impactful? Most immersive? I have a huge sentiment and respect for most Bioware games, particularly KoTOR (+ large parts of The Old Republic MMO) and Dragon Age. Those would definitely make much of my top-10. However, my true number one would be something a bit out of the box – Freespace 2.

Why? Incredible climate. Best space battles in gaming. Epic storyline with amazing twists. And most of all, telling the story through gameplay in a deeply immersive fashion. I might be fond of the adventures in RPGs, but to be honest, when I remember the first time I saw GTVA Colossus warping into space pocket I was dogfighting in and firing its beam canons... Nothing topped that to date. That this series wasn't continued, and that the story-driven space sims died in general, is a travesty.

Edit: And if you don't know what I'm talking about, I won't say anything more. Buy the game. Download the graphic ovehaul mod, and the mod recreating the first game for the full story. Enjoy something that wasn't topped in its own category since 1999.

Edit 2: Now I read up that some reviewers criticized the game for making you just a pilot – "a cog in the machine" – and not the "real" hero of the story. That's so backwards it genuinely made me angry. But I guess it's the usual narrative of saving the universe that makes being "just" an elite pilot experiencing first-hand crucial events of a massive galactic conflict not very appealing...

[Clephas]

I've already spoken of VNs countless times now, so I'll stay with games.  These aren't in any particular order.

1) Suikoden II

2) Growlanser IV

3) Eternal Darkness

4) SMT: Digital Devil Saga

5)  Final Fantasy Tactics (regardless of how I feel about most of the series, FFT had a great story)

6) Final Fantasy VI

7) Growlanser III

8- Tales of Berseria

9) Legend of Dragoon

10) Knights of the Old Republic

11)  Xenogears

12) Xenosaga series

13) Nier (the original)

[MaggieROBOT]

Seconding all the good stuff I'm seeing here:

SMT3, Persona 2, FFT and Legend of Dragoon 

[Clephas]

I forgot:

Chrono Trigger

Shadow Hearts 1 and 2 (combined)

Edit: One problem with my perception here is that my idea of what a good game story was formed when jrpgs were at their peak (1997-2004)... and, to be blunt, story has sort of fallen by the wayside in the last fifteen years both in the West and in the East.  That's why games like Nier Automata and Tales of Berseria stand out so much nowadays.  The rise of the MMO and reverse-transference from MMO's to normal games resulted in a dramatic reduction in story/plot quality in the years that followed.  As a result, I see wince-worthy game plots being given high marks more and more often lately... well, either that or nostalgia grabs being overwhelmingly loved even though they don't meet the baseline of the rpg golden age. 

As an example, if Lunar were to come out today as a completely new game, it would probably get ridiculously high marks for story, but by the standards of the time when it came out, it was somewhere around the middle between the average and best games of the time.  Think of it as a thirty percent markdown in expectations, lol.

Edit2: Forgot to mention the other reason why story has sort of fallen by the wayside.  It actually connects to the reason why story presentation has become so poor in recent years.  As technology has progressed, a lot of the techniques used to present a story using the limited capabilities of a system in previous years have vanished.  The first and most obvious aspect that fell by the wayside as music direction (as opposed to music composition).  You can see the difference most dramatically if you play something like Star Ocean 4 after playing Chrono Trigger, which was not just known for its story but also for its exceptional soundtrack for the time.  Each scene and area was situated with a particular track to enhance the atmosphere and emotions they wanted to drag out of the player, and the skill with which this was done was... magnificent.  Pretty much the only games that have managed to do something similar (that I have played) in the last ten years have been the Nier series.