Best story in 2016? (Please tag any spoilers)

I was just looking through everything I've played this year and started thinking that this category is pretty shitty this year. What do you guys think should win?

Uncharted 4 is probably the most obvious. Maybe Firewatch? Virginia? Mafia 3? Inside (more style than story, imo)? What do you guys think?

My money is on Firewatch, since I can't think of anything the whole crew like more or less unanimously.

It probably won't be considered, but the Enderal mod that came out this year for Skyrim has a great story.

Besides that, I think Inside has a pretty good implied story. There's no direct narrative, so I don't know how you'd argue it over something that flat out tells you what's going on, but the environmental story-telling is amazing.

EDIT: Doom should at least make the top 10 just for taking all the silliness that somehow becomes something absurdly badass. Taking the "rip and tear" line from the bizarre, yet quotable Doom comic, making the UAC or at least part of it full on Demon worshipers for the progress of science, and turning Doomguy into some mythical boogie-man for the demons. That last part I really like. There's something crazy and awesome about Doomguy becoming sort of a demon himself (No, John. You are the demonds). It reminds me of Guts from Berserk.

The Witness.

I kid, I kid.

"Blood & Wine", the Witcher 3 expansion easily takes this spot for me personally. Though I could make an argument for "Everybody's Gone to the Rapture".

Now, I doubt anyone, except for Vinny, played through "Blood & Wine", and as for the latter.. Well, they put Dan on it. 'Nuff said. I think it's likely the GB Crew will end up picking Uncharted 4, maybe Virginia. There's something beautifully dumb about "Doom" that just miiiight end up making the list, if they're so inclined to consider it.

Fire watch and Blood & wine are some solid contenders.

I love DOOM and it has exactly as much story as it should, but it's absolutely not Story of the Year. I still expect shooter campaigns to get listed. Uncharted 4 has a strong chance of taking this.

Blood and Wine is a strong contender. But I doubt most of the crew has even looked at it, so it's not going to win anything. But the way the plot unfolds, and the wrinkles on vampire characters that would otherwise be sooooo staaaaale is excellent, as are the twists in the crime case. All the way to the epilogue, Blood and Wine is a superb story.

INSIDE does amazing storytelling and unfolds its world with surprising intelligence for the first half of the game. The back half requires more deduction, which I had no problem with, but the internet clearly got confused by. I could see that costing it for some people. In GB's deliberations, I just imagine Jeff dragging his feet through every INSIDE mention.

It's a total dark horse, but Hyper Light Drifter had some cool story stuff going on. There's precisely zero exposition, so it's pretty difficult to say what that story is exactly, but it looked pretty cool.

Oxenfree...?

I still have a bunch of 2016 games left I want to play through — some of which I won't get to in time — but out of what I've played so far, I'd have to say Zero Time Dilemma. Unfortunately, if you want to play Zero Time Dilemma, you are required to play 999 and Virtue's Last Reward beforehand. All three games collectively could take you 70-90 hours to complete. I know Vinny played through all three this year, so Zero Time Dilemma will probably get a mention at least.

Personally, I really liked Tyranny. It has great world building and cool narrative-focused mechanics on top of one of my favorite game genres

But I think the big contenders this year (as far as voting on this website's GOTY) are Firewatch and Blood & Wine, and only Vinny (and Rorie?) played the latter... so we all know how this is gonna go down.

i'd say stein's gate 0, (english version released this year).

I have a feeling Firewatch is going to take it for some reason, but the only stories of note to my mind were Uncharted 4 and DOOM. I think DOOM fits the sensibilities of the staff more. I think people who are dismissing its story are overlooking all the things they openly admit to allowing you to overlook unless you really want to immerse yourself in it, it's actually one of the most Codex-story heavy games in a long time but man is that Codex stuff rich and glorious.

With half the staff getting married or becoming fathers and somewhat settling down perhaps Uncharted 4 will have resonated more than it usually would (I'm not saying those factors are prerequisites to liking that game's story, I'm neither nor close to either, but it likely helps) but then I'm also not sure how many of the staff finished the game; I lowkey wouldn't be surprised if Dan, Drew (?) and Alex (???) were the only people on the staff that finished it.

Even though Blood and Wine didn't live up to Hearts of Stone in the story department it's still the best story of this year for me.

Zero Time Dilemma has my favorite videogame story in the year 2016.

There's so much to spoil just to provide context for what this game is even about, let alone spoiling what actually happens, it is not worth the effort. I love the bat shit insanity this game throws at you. I love the individual moments and sequences. I love the twists and turns. Finally, I love piecing together this weird thing into something that makes sense. Personally I think this worked more for me in Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward, which was also benefited from the element of surprise as I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but filling in the blanks and figuring out how to get pass those roadblocks to get to the True Ending is one of the best gaming experiences I've had in 2016, in addition to it being my favorite story of the year.

@digaumgrunge: Tyranny is on my need to play list.

For me: Blood and Wine, Mafia 3 and Uncharted 4 are the contenders.

I'm just going to throw one out there that hasn't been mentioned yet: Banner Saga 2. It's pretty effective at carrying over literally all your choices from the first game, which is pretty uncommon. For example, a fairly early decision in Banner Saga 1 can drastically change the ending of the second game. It's one of the only games I can think of that makes good on the idea that your choices will have an impact from one game to the next.

The story where 4 men set out to play all the mainline mario party games and the most resistant one ends up winning the last one.

I didn't even think about it but yea, this year has been pretty garbage when it comes to stories. Coincidentally this was also the best year in gaming since 2011. Idk what the GB guys will pick, it will probably be UC4 by default. They might throw doom in there as a joke. Idk what mine would be. Maybe mafia 3 or inside? I'm not done with mafia yet but I'm enjoying it

I will be incredibly bummed if Firewatch wins. I actively hate that game, so much potential too....

Also, Zero Time Dilemma totally let me down. I had no problem understanding the story across the games, but am I wrong in thinking the game just ends, not concluding anything?

I hope Uncharted wins, I was really enjoying Batman's story, but that last episode was horrible.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice obviously. Otherwise yeah Oxenfree probably comes second. Not a banner year for narrative experiences.

Blood and Wine.

@thenewgameplusdotcom: Agreed on the Batman front. The first few episodes were leading up to something great and then it just kind of crapped out in favor of the traditional Batman stuff. Oh well.

I don't really feel like there's a qualifier for this year's best story, at least not that I've played, anyways. But I'll say this - 2016's most improved storyline is Watch Dogs 2. Improves upon the story in the first game in every way it needed to and creates a fun cast of characters to boot.

Uncharted 4 had a great ending, I hated the story otherwise and consider it the worst of the 4 main entries. I may be an outlier but I was left shrugging after I beat the game. If the ending didn't land like it did I would probably be arguing it for biggest disappointment.

@nightriff: yeah I mean I felt that way after finishing Uncharted 1 and 2 last year. I was so lukewarm on 2 after hearing for years about how great it was that I actually decided not to even bother playing 3 or 4 this year.

I really like the audio recordings inside the mountain in The Witness. It was a really great way to confirm what most were suspecting was going on.

@nevergameover: yeah if you didn't like 2 a lot, don't touch 3 definitely. 4 has its merits in that it looks fucking amazing, has some cool moments and a great ending. It also has the story that flows the best out of the main entries, problem was I could care less about the story it told.