Stories have become an important part of games. I like some of my favorite games so much mainly because of their great stories. I’d like to hear what your favorite stories in games are.
Best Humorous Story: Disgaea-With all the mayhem and madness of a story about exploding penguin demons, a hyperactive demon prince, a over the top action hero and naive angel, your in for a hilarious ride.
Best Mystery Story: Shadow of Destiny-While this is more of a interactive movie than a game, it tells a great mystery. While a short game, it used multiple endings–each giving an important piece of the puzzle–, ways to change the story by playing differently and an extra story at the end where you can replay the story from the beginning already knowing many critical things in order to make a uniquely told and intriguing mystery.
Best Turned Based RPG story: Shadow Hearts Covenant-It had a dark story, humor, interesting characters and a cool historical fiction tale. I liked how it had some great action and suspense cut-scenes which really gave it a blockbuster movie feel. The way the story mixed tragedy of a man who has lost his lover with the comedy of a wrestling superhero vampire to make an emotional and funny story at the same time is great.
Best Silent Protagonist Story: Chrono Trigger-While I tend to dislike silent protagonists, I didn’t mind Chrono so much since the rest of the cast was so interesting. I feel the other characters shined so much since Chrono’s silence put him in the background.
Best Overall Story: Tales of Abyss-The story is cliche, but it takes the story cliches and executes them so well and with such depth that I love the story.
Vagrant Story
I’m trying to think of how to describe the plot, but it’s been a while since I played the game, and I’m a bit pressed for time at the moment.
I’ll either come back in a while (probably after replaying the game ^^) and explain it, or you can ask Weiila, who was the one who showed me the game in the first place.
Suikoden II, III, Xenogears, and Final Fantasy Tactics are interchangable.
Other than that, for me, in no particular order:
FFVII
FFX (I actually got choked up in a couple spots)
Tales of Vesperia
The .hack//collective - maybe not the story itself, but the ingenious way in which it was told
Lost Odyssey’s would’ve been amazing if everything wasn’t so melodramatic and boring
Final Fantasy X is a big one for me, but while the story was excellently told, I attribute it a lot to the director’s cinematic vision as well as the great characters. That being said, FFX fits the category for “Sorcerer’s favorite RPG Stories”. Next, is Xenogears. The story was intricate and complex without being stupid. There was plenty mysterious “hmm…” moments that kept the ball rolling, coupled with the outright plot twists that turned you on your ear. Lastly, Chrono Trigger. Again, all the characters tug on your heart strings at one time or another, but characters are part of the story, so it works. A brilliantly woven story.
Okage: Shadow King
Dragon Quarter
Shadow Hearts
Legend of Mana
Suikoden 2
For me, what’s important these days is that the stories are actually ABOUT something. For example, Harry Potter books are great, but they aren’t really about anything else but being a wizard in a cool new world. I suppose you could argue that Harry Potter is about morality and the choices in life that you make, but I think any themes like that in a HP book are really subdued.
You can have a good story that isn’t about anything - I love Harry Potter - but I prefer a game with an underlying message or theme. For all the games I mentioned above (except, perhaps, Shadow Hearts), the moral/theme of the story speaks louder than the actual events (though it certainly helps that most of them have a colorful cast of characters).
Give me a sci-fi story with a religious bend and I am a happy customer. I love Xenogears, and since Xenosaga was released, I noticed that I love to watch my stories even more than reading them.
Well, not really – I was more into Gundam franchise than Evangelion. I must admit though, that compared to most of our resident anime maniacs, my anime exposure is extremely limited.
But since you mentioned NGE, now I am tempted to catch up on missed episodes.
DQV - Obviously one of the better DQ stories. Still sticks out of one of the better RPG stories to me.
Xenogears - Very good story. One of the reasons why I liked the game so much.
Drakengard - Worth mentioning, if not for the sheer “fucked-up-ness” of it all. It’s different than the norm, anyhow.
FFX
I keep thinking there should be something else, but I can’t remember…
Fallout and Planescape:Torment? The Master (big bad of the story) wants to save the people of the wastes even if that involves a process not many of them will survive. It’s peppered with master race hogwash, yet if you show the Master the flaw in his plan he calls everything off and destroys his hideout. Planescape:Torment takes the idea of immortality and turns it on its head, with a hero that doesn’t know himself and tries to get rid of it.
Actually, I love Lunar too; especially the second game, which I feel developed a better romantic bond between its protagonists than the first.
And BoF 3 is another favorite as well. I also enjoyed following the hero all through his life, and (despite it being silly in spots) it’s a surprisingly dark game at times (which usually doesn’t appeal to me, but it was well handled there.) I mean, how many games end with the Hero being forced to reflect on all the people he’s had to kill to get there? Heck, even the villain might not have been so bad, judging from the game’s ending(s).
