What do you consider to be the greatest story ever told in a video game? (Spoiler-free)

The Talos Principle, cause no one mentioned it yet.

Shadow Hearts 1&2 have one of my favorite antagonist arcs ever in Kato. Persona 3 was maybe not brilliant in individual sections, but the overall story was fantastic. The first season of Walking Dead was fairly predictable, but still powerfully done. Last of Us has already been discussed. And while there isn't much story to it, the hook of Time Fcuk has really stuck with me over the years.

Doki Doki Literature Club was definitely something.

I'll also go in for the Wing Commander series. It was generally popcorn movie sci-fi stuff, but it was well done and very entertaining.

The Last of Us, as so many have said...

Does Journey count??

Brothers a Tale of two Sons...

Chrono Cross....

I don't know if I'd call these the greatest stories in video games, but they're what I thought of first.

Final Fantasy VI has a pretty awesome story. That and Chrono Trigger take the cake for "best JRPG stories".

Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne does some pretty ballsy stuff with its story. This is a story that starts off with an apocalypse delivered via the world literally turning inside out, leaving only five or so humans alive, and it just gets darker from there.

Mass Effect 2 has a great story. Some people seem to think the main quest is not all that great but I think it works well for what they're trying to do. But I also thought the giant Terminator thing you fight at the end was a lot of fun, so what do I know. Sorry, Mass Effect 1 fans, but that game's story isn't really anything special. Sue me. It's the Bioware formula as applied to a space opera and it works, but I don't think I really care about ME1 that much anymore. ME2, story and all, is concentrated "great Bioware" - all of their strengths, and their weaknesses are mostly not there. Planet scanning still sucks, though. ME3 is fine.

I like how Deus Ex: Human Revolution ties its side quests into its main quest. It has been a long time since I played that game, but every time I've played it I felt like whatever I'm doing at the moment has some relation to Adam Jensen. He always has a reason for being there. As opposed to doing a quest that has nothing to do with the main story or my current objective or whatever. I wish this story had a better resolution, though. You don't need multiple endings, guys! If you don't have a good system for multiple endings, then just give everyone the same ending! I'm tired of "do you want ending A, B, C, or D" bullcrap!

A note on RPG's in general, however - they're too motherfucking wordy. And I'm including CDPR, Bioware, and Obsidian in that critique - actually, especially those three. They're good writers - well, Bioware had good writers at some point - but those games need someone to come in and tell the writers "yo, pare this down a bit, this is good but you could get this bit across with half the words". JRPG's can get really bad about repeating the same concept over and over and using nonsense words to refer to concepts we already have.

Outside of RPG's, I think Castlevania: Symphony of the Night's story is cool. It actually takes a stab at exploring Alucard's character and using philosophical quotes and religions to explore concepts. It doesn't do this very well - it's actually very hamfisted and hardly goes as far as it needs to in any direction - but I still enjoy it.

I really like the stories in the first three Halo games. Halo 1 is a fun, self-contained sci-fi story. Sure, it hints at a bigger world, but you don't need to go into that game with an understanding of the books, the TV shows, and the comics already done. You can play just the first game and have a satisfying story. On the other hand, Halo 2 does a great job of expanding the universe and world building. You can learn so much about the Covenant just from paying attention in that game. The game doesn't need a paragraph of text to tell you that the Brutes took the Elite's position and rank in Covenant society - it just shows it to you, and by that point you've got a good understanding of why and how the Covenant works and so on. Halo 3 is pretty good about wrapping things up, too. ODST is kind of boring. Reach is a decent story on its own. 4 and 5 have garbage stories.

Anyway, these are the first things that came to mind when discussing good video game stories. I'm sure I could think of some others that I enjoyed, but I have written a lot already.

Within the realm of blending its story and its gameplay to make something truly unique to both genres, What Remains of Edith Finch, hands down. It’s the only example I can think of where a game’s story is actually better housed as a game than it could be as a novel or novella.

Taken apart from gameplay elements, I think I’d say Tales from the Borderlands, Suikoden II, Full Throttle, and Life is Strange: Before the Storm are all up there too.

There's a ton of great stuff here. Instead of retreading the classic examples, I'll just say Asura's Wrath. I absolutely love the story and think it's far, far more than just angry guy fighting big guys. It has some incredible character development, a ton of cool twists and turns, and the whole package is wonderfully produced.

Sonic 3 & Knuckles also had a fucking killer story when I was a kid.

The Last of Us getting the love it deserves out here. It’s my favorite game of all time and also the story from every game I’ve ever played that still sticks with me, beginning to end. I played it 4 times in the first week it came out.

Also nice to see Soma and Zero Escape: Virtues Last Reward getting love. Those games are mindfucks and some of my favorite stories in games. Some other favorites are Persona 4 Golden, Danganronpa 1+2, CoD4c, Portal 2, Spec Ops: The Line, and The Walking Dead Season 1. Nier Automata is on my PS4 but my brother wants to watch me play it and with my limited time, it’s hard to do. I hope to get to it soon though.

Fav stories in no order:

The Last of Us

Red Dead Redemption

Lost Odyssey

Came here to say pretty much this.

@goosemunch: I agree, Talos Principle is very good, but the Road to Gehenna DLC is brilliantly written.

The Last of Us isn't half as intelligent or interesting or original as a lot of the games mentioned, and I'd say it's miles away from the best ever, but I've come to realize that's not where its strengths lie at all. The only reason I'm saying that is because it shows you emotional resonance and great characters go just as far as narrative and plot, sometimes, so the definition of a 'great story' is wide enough where even Flower and Journey probably make my list.

Having said all of that, the right answer is The Bible: The Videogame.

Idk what I'd consider the best story but the best video game lore, which kinda counts, would be Halo and it's not even close.

Wonderful, magical and transcendent?

@boozak: Ya the word "greatest" doesn't read to me as best but rather "more than the sum of its parts" - which Metal Gear definitely is to me. TLoU is probably the tightest most well executed story in video games despite being pretty derivative of other medium's past takes on the genre.

I've been thinking about stories in open world games a lot recently, because of RDR2, and what is and isn't part of the "story." If you consider every side activity and superfluous mission to be part of the story than every open world game is a terribly told story. But if we can just accept those as, I don't know, world building/character building moments that are left out when thinking of the narrative of the game, then open world game's stories can actually fit into a coherent structure. I think most players subconsciously sort out the narrative of an open world in this manner anyways.

Still, I had to play a mission in RDR2 that's whole purpose was to give me a new gun and it added very little to the narrative or world and all I could think about was how this is only here for me to get a gun, and that is a very video game story telling problem.

@brunothethird: Oh man, loved The Unfinished Swan. It kinda got buried by Journey. I think they came out pretty close to each other.

@aegon: Okami was too long winded but the ending made me tear up. Probably worth the journey. Too bad I bet it's like the least finished game of all time, especially ones that reviewed so well.

@liquiddragon: It definitely got overlooked. Likely a combo of it being a slow, black and white, children's book-style, digital-only game, unfortunately. Journey had a lot of media coverage and momentum before its release (deservedly so), but 'twas not to be for ol' Swanny.

I echo Okami. What makes it so magical is how well it makes you feel you're inside the scrolls of an epic Japanese fantasy tale, meeting so many memorable characters from avian spa owners to a macroscopic samurai, and facing so many unique and bizarre hurdles like shrinking and going inside an emperor to cure the illness sapping his city of life, or helping make the ultimate sake. My absolute favourite part of the game is during Kamiki festival with the fireworks against that ink-black sky. So unforgettable. The whole game was a celestial and spiritual experience from start to finish, for me. The writing isn't paced the best, but it's funny, uplifting, often scary, and always entertaining in some way. The translators did a stunning job making it consistent and still funny in English.

@brunothethird: Unfinished Swan - Yeah, I'm really glad they got their due with Edith Finch, though I still have yet to play that. :(

Okami - Yeah, it's just over packed with great moments. I wish the brush abilities had greater applications, most of them had very specific uses. And like NieR: Automata, the combat is ok but it's just not interesting for 50 hours. I can see why ppl would fall off of the game. It's too bad cause it has so much worth seeing.

Halo is at the top for me, followed by Half Life 2, Earth Defense Force 4.1: The Shadow of New Despair (entirely because it's so ridiculous), and GTA: San Andreas.

Halo is just about my favorite anything. Half Life 2 is extremely well done and I play through that once a year. EDF 4.1: The Shadow of New Despair is so dumb, and over-the-top, and the characters are extremely B-movie in regards to acting, and I love everything about it. San Andreas is my favorite GTA game and it has a huge, crazy story with great characters and it also has my favorite licensed soundtrack of any game out there.

Mass Effect 1 was also incredible and I still love that game.

Shadow of the Colossus, Braid, NieR: Automata. These stories are more effective because they are told through video games.

Best story ever told in video games dr. Mario

@banefirelord: yup...I wasn't sure which one I'd pick, but when you said the Beginner's Guide I knew you were right. That "game" caught me off guard and was a totally rewarding experience.

I am going to put my tokens in Spec Ops: The Line, for not being mentioned a lot, and being the smartest story in a shooter I have seen.

Is it the greatest story ever? Probably not, and I lack the experience in many of the other games people have mentioned here to argue where it lands, but it is one of the only (if not the only) game that contextualizes your actions and pulls the rug under you in a genre that is plagued with "you are the good guy, the bad guy has a MacGuffin, here is a gun, everything that shoots at you is bad... now go."

I'm frankly insulted that no one has the courage to give the right answer to this question, which is obviously The Quiet Man.

In all seriousness, I'd give a vote for something like Hollow Knight, or Dark Souls. Both of those games don't have much of a story in and of themselves, but there's a deep and coherent story of the world they inhabit that couldn't be explored in any medium other than games. What makes those stories exceptional is that they aren't told to you; you experience it through anecdotes, artifacts, long-abandoned cities, and the actions of others who inhabit the world. Those games tell stories of ruined civilizations better than 99.9 percent of all fiction, and they do so without actually telling you a single word of it.

This is impossible to answer but I'll just say Day of the Tentacle.

Red Dead 1 , Its one of the very few games that got me emotional, and yet you could keep playing it after what happens.

Most disappointing and yet one of the most fun I played was Far Cry 3 , It seemed the writers just hated gamers at the end.. My ending would have been happy and than I would have loved the game.

Wouldn’t it be Bible Adventures for the NES?

Final Fantasy Tactics. Only game I ever played where the story truly felt like a novel. Huge cast of characters, political/low fantasy focus, tons of twists and turns, no anime melodrama (at least until the final act); it was the video game of Game of Thrones before Game of Thrones even existed.

Also, in an extremely different, very personal way, To the Moon. Damnit that game made me cry.