Who are the best storytellers in gaming currently?

rubik's dude

rubik's dude

Member
There's a huge focus on storytelling nowadays. Lots of companies claim to create story-driven games, but which do you think are the best currently?

My #1 pick right now is Sega with the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series. Consistently high quality and entertaining stories with a strong cast of lovable characters. Not a single bad entry imo.
 
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DrMano said:
I'll never not recommend these enough
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Edit: Top 3 replies all about NieR.. Makes my heart warm
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Both Nier and Bioshock use video game as medium to tell stories which is why they so effective. I dont usually enjoy FPS but I liked Bioshock and one of the few games that story wouldn't work without being first person.
 
HRK69 said:
Larian Studios is up there
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I disagree.

BG3 was great in its interactivity and freedom of choice for the player, and deserved the accolades it received in that front.
But the plot of the game was quite pedestrian, there is almost no overarching theme to speak of, and the overall story was quite forgettable. It felt like a campaign made up by a table top game master over a couple of weekends. Which is essentially what it was, a simulation of a table top campaign.

Hopefully their next game improves on that front.
 
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Danjin44 said:
Both Nier and Bioshock use video game as medium to tell stories which is why they so effective. I dont usually enjoy FPS but I liked Bioshock and one of the few games that story wouldn't work without being first person.
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100%
I realized this during my 4th or 5th playthrough of Bioshock that it's one of the few games that really cannot be translated into any other medium without MASSIVELY gimping it.

As for NieR,,, the game knows very well that its a video game telling a story, and it uses that for maximum advantage. I'm sure we both know what I mean ha
 
Larian studios have fantastic team of writers for their stories in Baldur's Gate 3 and they've surpassed the writing quality of CD Projekt Red. Baldur's Gate 3 has better writing than The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk.
 
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Hmmm that's a tough one. Larian are pretty good. I liked Obsidian with the Pillars games and Pentiment but sounds like they dropped the ball with Avowed (though I have not played). The Brotherhood tell pretty great stories too for a small indie show. Enjoying Citizen Sleeper 2 as well, and the first so those guys too I guess.
 
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dreamstation said:
Hmmm that's a tough one. Larian are pretty good. I liked Obsidian with the Pillars games but sounds like they dropped the ball with Avowed (though I have not played). The Brotherhood tell pretty great stories too for a small indie show. Enjoying Citizen Sleeper 2 as well, and the first so those guys too I guess.
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I second this. I seek out Obsidian's games; their recent game, Pentiment, is pretty good, at least story-wise.
 
Last Hearth said:
I disagree.

BG3 was great in its interactivity and freedom of choice for the player, and deserved the accolades it received in that front.
But the plot of the game was quite pedestrian, there is almost no overarching theme to speak off, and the overall story was quite forgettable. It felt like a campaign made up by a table top game master over a couple of weekends. Which is essentially what it was, a simulation of a table top campaign.

Hopefully their next game improves on that front.
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Just because it's player driven rather than spoon fed doesn't mean it's not there. If anything, BG3 makes you live its theme rather than just observe it

And just because it doesn't fit into a neatly "overarching theme" doesn't mean it's shallow. It's just non-linear, and that's what makes it one of the most innovative RPGs out there

And an overarching theme isn't strictly necessary for a story to be good.
 
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I enjoyed writing and quests in Wasteland 3 recently quite a bit. So will go with Inexile.

Pentiment was also good. Story was ok but moment to moment writing was good enough for me to read everything game had to offer.
 
Already mentioned in the thread but Yoko Taro and Ken Levine are 2 of my favorites not only because they write memorable stories, but because they take advantage of gaming as a medium to tell them in unique ways. They embrace games for what they are instead of seemingly wanting to write movies/tv shows.

I also like Drew Karpyshyn. His work on Kotor and Mass Effect was great. I still think ME is one of the most compelling gaming universes out there. Although he hasn't worked on any notable games in over 10 years.

I like Kojima too. I have some gripes with his writing, specially the dialogue, but on the grander scale I still enjoy it for it's uniqueness and creativity. Just look at that latest Death Stranding 2 trailer, there just isn't anything quite like it in gaming.

Honorable mention to Mary C. DeMarle.
I liked her work on Deus Ex Human Revolution and Guardians of the Galaxy.
Though she is credited as narrative director for DA the Veilguard, so she can clearly miss too.
 
Definitely not Kojima.

Amy Hennig is probably up near the top. Josh Sawyer too. Yoko Taro. Sam Lake.
 
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HRK69 said:
Just because it's player driven rather than spoon fed doesn't mean it's not there. If anything, BG3 makes you live its theme rather than just observe it

And just because it doesn't fit into a neatly "overarching theme" doesn't mean it's shallow. It's just non-linear, and that's what makes it one of the most innovative RPGs out there

And an overarching theme isn't strictly necessary for a story to be good.
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Your reply is incoherent, first you say it make you live it's theme, the you admit to t doesn't have one and argues good stories don't need to have a theme.

Which is it?
A game doesn't need a theme to be a good game. But a story needs to have a theme to be a good story, it needs to be about something and not just a sequence of events.
 
Josh Sawyer, Tim Schafer. Both writing with nuance, humour and thematic depth rarely seen in game writing. But there is ton of other good writers out there. Disco Elysium is high up its own ass, but it doesn't make its writing any less impressive. That guy who made Citizen Sleeper games is very good. etc.
 
Fbh said:
I also like Drew Karpyshyn. His work on Kotor and Mass Effect was great. I still think ME is one of the most compelling gaming universes out there. Although he hasn't worked on any notable games in over 10 years.
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Mass Effect is a billion dollar IP owned by a company that has no idea how to use it.
 
nkarafo said:
The devs who made Soma.
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SOMA is still the most horrifying story I have ever seen, and the worldbuilding behind it is incredible.

Always surprised by all the Kojima mentions, I love his games but the writing is the most phoned-in shit you can imagine, the themes have the subtlety of a brick through a windshield.

His writing process is a) find something that looks cool and b) spend a million hours trying to explain it, making it worse.

If he was the Zelda writer the main character would be called John Hero Swordsman and there would be a 4 hour cutscene explaining the Triforce is a nanomolecular injector built with the DNA of the original US founders.
 
For me, there are two favoriters:

Yasumi Matsuno. The mind behind Ogre Battle, Tactics Ogre, Vagrant Story, Final Fantasy Tactics, and parts of Final Fantasy XII + more.

Chris Avellone. Having part in Planescape: Torment, Star Wars: KOTOR 2, Alpha Protocol, Fallout: New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity + more.
 
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Tetsuya Takahashi and Soraya Saga (Xenogears, Xenosaga, Xenoblade)
Yoko Taro (Drakengard, NieR)

Special mentions to games like Signalis and Crosscode.
 
HRK69 said:
Larian Studios is up there
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Larian's stories are generally "save the fate of the entire universe", which gets predictable. Plus they are often sarcastic regarding the story, as if they want to acknowledge it's a game and not really important.
 
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