Recent Games with Good Writing

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Telaril
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Recent Games with Good Writing

Postby Telaril » 07 Oct 2009, 14:03

Hey all, I could use some help.

I mostly play Japanese games, puzzlers, wacky platformers and WoW, so I have a pretty narrow view of gaming. I'm looking to find some games that have good writing, especially ones initially in English produced in the last 3-5 years.

It can be anything, from an MMO that you feel has particularly entertaining dialogue to a shooter with extensive discoverable backstory and good cutscenes.

Things I already have some experience with are Fallout 3, Bioshock, Halflife 2, Mass Effect and the new Monkey Island. I haven't finished any of those games but I've played at least a bit and I'm aware of how excellent the writing in them is. Are they really the best there is? What else should I be looking at that either approaches them in quality or exceeds them?

Thanks in advance for your suggestions on this one.
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Dave-O_Boy
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Re: Recent Games with Good Writing

Postby Dave-O_Boy » 07 Oct 2009, 14:09

How recent?

Dreamfall: The Longest Journey.
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Gordon Fearman
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Re: Recent Games with Good Writing

Postby Gordon Fearman » 07 Oct 2009, 14:22

Team Fortress 2.
"When I feel my friends have been conspiring against me, I break into their bedrooms and I write in their diaries."

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Arius
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Re: Recent Games with Good Writing

Postby Arius » 07 Oct 2009, 14:33

If you want an enormous game with a lot of backstory, play through The Elder Scrolls games. Silent Hill 2 is good too. Oh!

http://www.fullyramblomatic.com/donate.htm

The special editions of the Chzo Mythos series are free now. They're made by Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation.

Make sure that you play them in this order to get the story straight:
5 Days
7 Days
Trilby's Notes
6 Days

---

I've been playing Far Cry 2 recently. The writing and such are all pretty standard for most games. But I had an experience today that actually upset me.

When you die, your second best buddy will come and save you so long as he is ready. They will pick you up, shoot at enemies, and drag you out of there. You first best buddy will aid you during missions by giving you another way to complete them. Paul had saved me a lot, and I had saved him a couple times. He quickly became my first best buddy.

In one mission he had me get him a canister of poison and bring it to his plane. He hooked it up and told me to continue the mission as planned. I made my way to a plantation and shot out a water pump. As I ran back, he dusted the crops with the poison and flew away. Then he called me on the cell phone. He told me that his plane was going down.

I rushed to his location and saw the burning craft. It was mostly intact. But there were two empty jeeps nearby. I heard gunfire and rushed over the ridge. At the bottom, he was surrounded by enemies. We both started shooting. After the gunfire stopped, there were no enemies left standing. But Paul was kneeling down. He had been hit, badly. Soon he fell to his back. I leapt down to a rock below and rushed to his side as he collapsed.

He begged me for a syringe. I complied and injected him with one. He begged me for more and reached his arms towards me. I gave him a second. He coughed and begged for more. I looked into his eyes for a moment and administered the final shot. I held his head in my hand as he began to go limp. He stopped breathing and I ran my other hand to his face and closed his eyes. I then stood up and climbed back out of the ridge. There was one enemy left alive. He was wounded badly and was firing at me with his sidearm. I unloaded my mp-5 into him.

The plane crash was scripted. But his death wasn't. It is possible to save your buddies, but I failed because I didn't get there fast enough. He died because I didn't watch his back well enough before and had to revive him twice. The game actually made me care about the guy without actually having a lot of backstory for the guy. The animations of a man in distress. The fact that I was the one administering the shots. The always present possibility that I could have pulled out my sidearm and ended it. The game managed to actually make me angry enough to waste all of my ammo on a dead enemy.

Basically, sometimes you don't need a bunch of disjointed text to read in order to have the same experience.
H̼̮̖͓̻ͮ̀ͬ̓e̟̦͉̾̔̀ͣ͆̄ ͚̤̈̉ͦ̎ͭ̚c̰̠͚̜̹ͪ̐̎̃ͅo̗͌͛ͥ͑m̍ͬͥ̚e͍̱̲̤͚̹͔͛s͚̱̤͚̲̭̗̃̎ͭ̚.̘̫̖̮̠͒̔.̝̹̟̳͚̂̆̋͌̐̚.̬͓̰̃̑
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Gordon Fearman
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Re: Recent Games with Good Writing

Postby Gordon Fearman » 07 Oct 2009, 14:35

Mine died on the train mission. Probably because he was constantly saving me.

But then I got an awesome sniper rifle and a grenade launcher. Now everything's just Denver.

Moral of the story being, play Assassin's Creed but try to play it on the PC because it cuts down the repetition.
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Re: Recent Games with Good Writing

Postby Metcarfre » 07 Oct 2009, 15:35

Arius, that's pretty funny considering it's the exact point I gave up on the game.
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What?
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Re: Recent Games with Good Writing

Postby What? » 11 Oct 2009, 14:46

Two Words: Odin Sphere. Hands down the best writing I've seen in a game, and surprisingly good voice acting as well. Should be fairly cheap to pick up at this time too.
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Re: Recent Games with Good Writing

Postby Zethyr » 11 Oct 2009, 15:56

Wow, I had a similar moment in FarCry 2. Frank died, and I'm not kidding I almost cried. He was so awesome! I'm not kidding when I say I found a guy wounded and I sliced him up with my machete.

The rest of the story was weird (I think the whole "The a-hole gun-runner is actually a good guy" part at the end was random, same with the "all your buddies are trying to kill you" part [At least Frank wasn't trying to kill me!] so I wasn't too fond of the story) but I thought that part was powerful.

Edit: Sorry, I didn't know about the spoiler tags. :P
Last edited by Zethyr on 12 Oct 2009, 14:09, edited 1 time in total.
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Gordon Fearman
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Re: Recent Games with Good Writing

Postby Gordon Fearman » 11 Oct 2009, 16:39

Yo Zethyr, we now have a spoiler tag. Use it.
"When I feel my friends have been conspiring against me, I break into their bedrooms and I write in their diaries."

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Re: Recent Games with Good Writing

Postby Vaughn » 11 Oct 2009, 16:56

do we? SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE oh we do!
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Re: Recent Games with Good Writing

Postby davefp » 11 Oct 2009, 19:21

Grim Fandango has fantastic writing. I highly recommend it. It's fairly old now but it still shines.
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TomBrend
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Re: Recent Games with Good Writing

Postby TomBrend » 11 Oct 2009, 19:39

Now, Arius seems to thing there is more than one Elder Scroll game. This is not true. They started and ended with Morrowind. One game and done, just like the Matrix.
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Nevrmore
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Re: Recent Games with Good Writing

Postby Nevrmore » 11 Oct 2009, 19:48

Psychonauts.

Psychonauts.


Psychonauts.
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Sieg Reyu
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Re: Recent Games with Good Writing

Postby Sieg Reyu » 11 Oct 2009, 20:54

I have just come to the realization that I'm not really working for my gamer label. I play a bit of Left 4 Dead, WoW here and there, and portable games. I do play a lot of DS games. Though not too many recent ones. Besides Scribblenauts, my newest game is Pokemon Platinum, followed by Crono Trigger DS which I bought recently, used.

All of Ratchet and Clank is good. More comical writing, but still good writing.

The Jak and Daxter series will bottle your mind. Into a very very very small bottle.

Trace Memory for the DS is great, along with Hotel Dusk and the Pheonix Wright games.

And it appears that a majority of my DS games are missing and I have no idea where they are. Either my sister borrowed them without asking, or my brother is stealing them and selling them.
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notomtolose
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Re: Recent Games with Good Writing

Postby notomtolose » 12 Oct 2009, 08:40

Lunar: Silver Star Story
Overzealous localization filled this game with pop culture references and all manner of modern english. Funny and touching.
Final Fantasy IX has the best dialogue in the series, in my humble opinion. I'm guessing you've played it, though. XII has a lot to offer if you're into the FFT vibe.

Zelda: Majora's Mask does more with setting and tone than actual dialogue, but what's there is excellent in my opinion. Best played with experience of Ocarina, it's my #1 of all time.
Perfect Dark - I think the story to this game is generally underrated. It won't blow your mind, but the British dialogue is definitely a step above average. Coming to XBLA very soon!

Psychonauts, I second! The best incidental dialogue I've had the pleasure of experiencing. Available as an Original over XBL.
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is probably a mite overrated but still way up there among the best. Bioware are renowned for their writing. I loved Jade Empire, too, flaws and all.
Beyond Good and Evil is another star of the past generation. Not backward compatible, it's best played on an original Xbox, or on PC or possibly PS2. I recall that the GameCube version had considerable bug problems.
Eternal Darkness - Speak of the devil... this GameCube horror classic is on many people's piles of shame, on account of how well it's liked by those who bothered to play it.
Metroid Prime's best or worst feature, depending who you ask, is the scan visor. For a game with no dialogue at all, the writing is top-notch.

I've never played too much on PC, but Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is not to be missed for it's amazing vision of the future. I still hear the leaders' voices in my head. It's hard to compare directly, but it's probably the best-written game of all time. Sadly, it seems tough to find and doesn't run in Vista. Sid Meier's Civilization IV also sports great quotables, but they're always a lot shorter and not unique to the game on account of them being quotes.

Oblivion has a LOT of writing in it, and much of it is good. If you weren't into Fallout 3's style, it might not be worth your time, but I liked it the first go-round.
Dead Space is a sci-fi horror game. The writing and acting don't suck. Nothing more or less than it appears, except that it's good.
Valkyria Chronicles is kinda cheesy and Japanese, but notwithstanding those two strikes the writing is good, and there's certainly a lot of it.
Penny Arcade Episodes are great if you like PA at all, if not don't bother.
Braid is divisive - some say it's too pretentious, but I found it deeply expressive. The demo is free, so give it a try!
Assassin's Creed has better writing than people give it credit for, I think. It's maybe not quite as smart as it thinks it is, but it's still pretty smart. Made in Montreal - and you can tell.
Halo: ODST is the flavour of the month, obviously. There's not a tonne here but if you like listening to Fillion et al from Firefly I expect you'll enjoy what's there.
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notomtolose
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Re: Recent Games with Good Writing

Postby notomtolose » 12 Oct 2009, 08:48

metcarfre wrote:Arius, that's pretty funny considering it's the exact point I gave up on the game.


That's too bad! There's not enough writing (and what's there is delivered at 3x speed for some sad reason) to put it on my own list, but in terms of making your own story through gameplay, I can't think of anything that's even close.
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Re: Recent Games with Good Writing

Postby ThrashJazzAssassin » 12 Oct 2009, 09:13

I notice we've pretty much given up on the "within the last 3 to 5 years" idea. In which case, since you enjoyed Fallout 3 you should add 1 and 2 to your collection. The main stories may be fairly straightforward, but there's a wealth of entertainment in the franchise's humour and the multiple options available in any situation.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is one of the best examples ever of how to streamline a narrative so that it complements rather than interrupts gameplay and creates an immersive experience. Since it doesn't have great amounts of backstory, or long cutscenes, it may not be quite what you're looking for, but it's pretty much the pinnacle of in-game storytelling, and the characters and in-game dialogue are exceptional.

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