What games have the best writing of the medium?

What games have the best writing of the medium?
I picked this on the sale and the story really intrigued me but I can't say the same about the gameplay. Also the lack of full voice acting doesn't really attract me.

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The writing is the gameplay, and who on earth wants full voice acting.

There are way too many characters with way too much dialogue and too many dialogue options to do voice acting. Name one game where you think the voice acting could pull off both [Truth] I promise and [Lie] I promise as voiced conversation options.

NWN2 Mask of the Betrayer was pretty close in writing quality.

For writing as distinct from prose, I reckon the Dark Souls translation was very good. The way it allowed and encouraged a kind of lore-exploration was interesting, even if the subsequent Vaati-tier theorising has been done a bit too much.

I have a soft spot for Hand of Fate's conversational villain, which also plays to the strengths of vidya (i.e. interactivity).

>What games have the best writing of the medium?
Not that one. "Well written" usually includes a third act that isn't retarded. I go Silent Hill 2, Spec Ops or SOMA.

>dude I killed my wife and forgot lol

I really Really REALLY REALLY! enjoyed the wirting in HER story and Depresstopm Qvest! the y werw expresiv emotional and really spoke to me on an enmotional lebel oh and Life is Strange is Great too

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

>full voice acting
>good writing

Choose only one. If you want deep intricate dialog then you don't get voice acting. Do you know how many fucking words are in planescape? To pay voice actors for all of that would be more than an entire games budget unless you used literal nobodies with shit voices that would make it bad anyways. Not to mention the game would be like 20GB just from sound files.

Anything can be summarized in a mocking fashion like that to sound bad.

>dude I killed the Planes and forgot lol

I agree with you fellow anonymous user, great and inclusive taste you've got there!

Good voice acting barely adds anything to a game

Bad voice acting ruins the experience

Certainly, I feel that it's important everyone do thier part to try to make uour comunity inclusice and welcomming to marginalized groups!

Her Story was good though

It's not ever worth trying to communicate with these people, mate

Killing ones wife is highly problematic oppressive and misogynistic and should never be allowed in games!

Planescape has great writing and that's about it
the gameplay is shit tier

The combat is shit tier*

I don't think SJWs ended up liking Her Story. They went in expecting it to be a story about how the police treat women worse by not believing them, and it ended up being that she totally did it and is also insane depending on your interpretation.

It's almost like it wasn't about politics. At least, not in any direct way.

Seconding Mask of Betrayer, wish we'd got more good Forgotten Realms and other D&D 3.5 adventures then we did. Preferably turn based in the ToEE engine. But the NWN and NWN2 engines were passable to i guess.


Oh and the new Torment sucked and none of the other revival games were really that good when it came to friting:(

the main problem I had with her story was the obtuse tools and the limited ability to sort and store your searches.

that's a cute doggo youve got there

planescape is god the father of overrated shit. the basic plot is interesting but it's lost under stupid character development, poorly developed themes, and mountains of overly wordy prose.

there's plenty of long ass fully voiced visual novels. you can't even say "hurr visual novels aren't games" because planescape is hardly a game either.

You're missing Automata in that image

What game stories aren't pretentious shit then?

Man, edgy teenager like you should be banned from the internet. That reading gives you in particular a headache doesn't mean it's pretencious, you simpleton retard.

Wanna know how I know you're underage?

probably ones that aren't bait for people who think they're smarter than they actually are.
>dude wisdom
>dude all capital letters

I'm 28. if I wanted to read I'd pick up a real book, not a game with magic card flavor text tier writing.

is the enhanced torment any good? the enhanced bgs and iwds are shit and trent oster is a cunt but the enhanced torment had chris avalonne on the team so perhaps its good but on the other hand are the nwn2 oc campaign also writen by mca and its shit also poe and wastland2 mca shit writing

Give your opinions if you've played it! I would never buy it since Trent Oster is a cunt but pirate it if MCA added anything of substance to it.

Great voice acting adds a lot, but I agree it's usually not worth the risk.

youtube.com/watch?v=CRZMxCkBv_4

>What games have the best writing of the medium?
Not even remotely close to an exhaustive list, but few that come into mind and that might not be as commonly known or remembered for their writing, even if they deserve it.
>Pathologic
>The Void
>Bastion
>Cryostasis
>Silent Hill 2
>Spec Ops
>The Longest Journey
>Grim Fandango
>Homeworld

I would probably also argue that Morrowind, at least at times, is very good for a genre fiction.

>Cryostasis

What's so good about its writing? Genuinely curious.

Unironically The Last of Us. I hate Cuckmann but his writing for characters is good as far as the medium goes.

I could listen to Raziel and Kain talk with Mobius and Tony jay, forever.

Cryostasis is a pretty fucking terrible game all things considered, but at it's core it's a psychological story about very real and very well fleshed out characters. A bit like Silent Hill 2, it uses it's magical and fantastic elements as a mere vessel for actually coveying a very meanigful message about how small dickmoves can gradually mount up to a giant motherfucking shitstorm, and how easily many tragedies could be prevented if people were a little more mindful of how they interact with each other. The ending, in particular, is one of the best and strongest ones I've seen in a game, despite being rather clumsily presented and having perhaps one too many threads to wrap up.

It really is the characters, above all. When you put together what happened on the ship, who were the main actors of the fuck-up, and how little could be done to prevent it, it's really quite powerful.

Guess I'll have to play it to find out. Does it work on Win7 64bit without an issue or are there some hoops I should jump through beforehand to make the experience smoother?

This game has the same problem as Tides of Numenera. it has no actual story. Just a lot of ideas for side stories put into this world. This is more like a short-story collection. Forced into an overarching narrative.

The whole game runs like ass, but I did get it more-or-less playable on a Win7 64 bit machine. As for things to make it more passable gameplay-wise, especially those related to performance: I don't think there is much to do. Or at least I don't know much, but you can definitely do some google searching. I do remember there were some issues with video codecs and drives that I had to endure, installing and uninstalling MPC few times too, but I don't remember much of it.
Most of the time, the game ran around 45 on a machine several times it's recommended specs, but the framerate was unstable as hell. Combine that with what I think is incredibly awkward gameplay, it was no joy to play. I won't lie, I actually used cheats to get through the final parts of the game, as it all got just a little too annoying, frustrating and bothersome to deal with.

Undertale, i'm not talking about the overarching story though, just the dialogue/flavor

>there are people retarded enough to ACTUALLY believe she had a secret twin sister when she's literally in a mental hospital in the present

>"I don't like thing"
>"It must be bad"

You're that underaged retard who was whining about TF2 and calling everyone a beaner, aren't you?

Dune 2000 had some sweet cutscenes with decent acting.

Age of Wonders 1

TF2 is bad though

no it's bad because it's nothing but cringey rennaissance fair larper tier word vomit that doesn't actually say anything.

youtube.com/watch?v=X1tyybVuSBU

what the fuck

My issue with Her Story is that the ending is very abrupt and anticlimactic. I understand that the game's structure makes it difficult to do big climaxes, but they could have found a way to at least end on a memorable note.

My personal issue with that game is that I accidentally figured out the big reveal in like 10 minutes or less, and from there on it was just not much fun and 90% of all the videos became useless.

Homeworld's writing may be decent , but it excels through simple use of camera and producing a strong narrative that blends seamlessly with it's gameplay and music to produce an atmospheric and dramatic game. Honestly very rare for an RTS. Many modern developers can learn from this game.

I honestly wish torment was a book. Im very interested in it but I just cant stomach the dogshit gameplay mechanics even though the visuals and sound design intrigue me. If only it played more akin to kotor or mass effect or something

Every aspect of the narrative is great - from the particular choice of animation, past incredible use of music, past the actual effort put into the voice-acting, which is one of the best I've seen in a game.
That said, I think the writing is above decent. It's minimalistic, like most of the other elements of the narrative, but it's very clever, elegant and full of great details and ways to communicate greater depth of the setting and it's inhabitants than is immediately obvious. The famous "Subject did not survive the interrogation line" is still something I use as an example of how to actually transform generic story into a powerful narrative by clever use of writing. One line that not only "brightens" up what is otherwise a dull exposition dump, but that adds so much more depth to your civilization, so much more severity to their situation, and even gives the player something to fucking contest with.
It's a damn good piece of writing, and it works, all across the game. It's definitely not JUST the writing (the cinematics, the sound design, the art direction, the music are all also great), but I think the writing is above decent there.

I was thinking of homeworld when I was playing Bastion, by the way. I think that writing-wise, they share a lot of similar qualities.

>I honestly wish torment was a book
lol why
PS:T can't even compare to actual literature

its whole thing is that it's a game. if it wasn't a game it wouldn't be special

Also, the god damn fucking MANUAL was genious. Some of the best world-building I've actually seen in a suplementary material. I loved that shit so much.
It's such a shame they never managed to really capitalize on the settings and the style they set up. Cataclysm kinda fell apart, HW2 was an absolute shitfest in terms of actual storytelling, and Shipbreakers ruinned virtually everything that was good about the Manual and the first game, not managing to actually expand on any of the good stuff. It was PAINFULLY obvious that Shibreakers should have always stayed an independent entity, and should not have been forced to be a HW game set on Kharak.

>lol why
>PS:T can't even compare to actual literature

you dont know anything about the subject so why even try to talk about it? all youre achieving is both looking like a retarded elitist AND a retarded peasant parading as an elitist at the same time

planescape has better writing than almost every piece of genre fiction that isnt considered to be one of the masterworks like lotr or something that actually aims to be literary fiction instead of genre fiction akin to botns

>planescape has better writing than almost every piece of genre fiction that isnt considered to be one of the masterworks like lotr or something that actually aims to be literary fiction instead of genre fiction akin to botns
So you mean...exactly what I just said.

In other words, youre genuinely retarded. Are you really so fucking stupid that the tiny pond of books considered "literature" by autists like you isnt and shouldnt be the only type of novel that exists? Fucking shakespeare isnt "literature" but I dont hear retards like you whining about him due to the popularity of his works

>the tiny pond of books considered "literature"
You could not finish all of it if you tried.

Of course I think it should be the only type of novel which exists. Why not? I'm not gonna literally stop people from writing bad fiction, but I would prefer they write good fiction.

PS:T, which is set apart only by its being interactive, would lose a hell of a lot of relevance by being converted into a book.
>Fucking shakespeare isnt "literature"
Shakespeare's works are generally regarded among the best in the western canon.

>Shakespeare's works are generally regarded among the best in the western canon.

youre a fucking retard. Shakespeares works are literally simple entertainment, actual plays and not books. Your entire "point" is moot if suddenly the Republic and Shakespeare can both exist without polluting your precious "literature" as a whole

>You could not finish all of it if you tried.

You can easily read a 1000 page book per day if you tried. You can read the entire western canon and a shitton of whatever else you feel like in half a year

I never understood why this game is considered to be GOAT. It's an okay story-driven CRPG with literal shit for gameplay.

>You can easily read a 1000 page book per day if you tried. You can read the entire western canon and a shitton of whatever else you feel like in half a year
Wow, you are much, much dumber than it innitially seem. You are also very wrong about Shakespear, and absolutely fail to acknowledge how the very concepts of high and low literature changed over time.

you say that as if most oldschool RPG's don't have dogshit gameplay
Sup Forums still eats it up

I killed the Planes and forgot sounds like a much more interesting premise than I killed my wife and forgot.

The new Torment is decent, but doesn't live up to the expectations. It's definitely worth playing but definitely don't go in expecting an actual Torment 2.

>you are much, much dumber than it innitially seem
>You are also very wrong about Shakespear

Shit, you're right. I never understand why there are people who think D&D rules translate well to video games. They must be some kind of super-autismo faggots to think that.

Yep, I did say all of those things. Well, you are smart enough to at least repeat things other people tell you. That is... a start, I guess.

Most impressive feat of Homeworld's storytelling is it accomplishes most of it without any notable characters. I guess the AI and Captain qualify, but that's it. It's more told through the people of Hiigara themselves.

go learn english you retarded fuck

I'm surprised people don't bring up 999's writing more often. It falls into common Japanese-isms like being a bit too redundant and needing to go into crazy town near the end, but otherwise it's an excellent trapped room/murder mystery story.

I actually found Myth games to be fascinating from the same reason when it comes to narrative and writing because all you really hear is the narrator as shit gets worse and worse, and best you can hope for is to delay the end. For all the shit people give Myth 3 it never faltered in that department.

youtube.com/watch?v=qHWY8EuaOyM
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youtube.com/watch?v=a-OtsyKJCxE

Problem with Japanese writing is most here are obviously playing it in English which means original script went through translations and localization. We don't generally have the first hand experience. Who knows, maybe FF12 is shit in Japanese and localization saved it?

In 999's case the HD version has voice acting that shows you that it's extremely close, just with a few smart changes here and there to keep the dialogue from getting too cliche and stilted. The overall narrative structure of 999 is its biggest strength, and it's a damn fine CYOA.

>Shakespeares works are literally simple entertainment
This is a dumb myth which is nonetheless very popular. Shakespeare's plays were entertainment, but they were not "simple" entertainment. It was designed to appeal to all strokes of society, from the plebs to the patricians. You would be right to say Shakespeare was not the most respected playwright -- in his own lifetime he was eclipsed by Marlowe and Chapman.

Furthermore, there's no reason for entertainment to be seen as a non-artistic pursuit. Don Quixote, Decameron, and Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio were all written with entertainment as at least one of their main concerns.

Plus, as the other user said, concepts of art change. I'm not saying PS:T isn't great literature because of some stigma against fantasy -- as you say, BotNS etc. are all good -- I'm saying it isn't great on its own merits.

Do I need to remind you that the people in Plato's works consider philosophy to be an entertaining pass-time?
>You can easily read a 1000 page book per day if you tried. You can read the entire western canon and a shitton of whatever else you feel like in half a year
So there's one hundred and eighty works of literature in the entire western canon? lol

>Myth

What is that why have I never heard about it? Those sound atmospheric as fuck.

>Planescape has great writing and that's about it
>the gameplay is shit tier

walking around and talking to people is Planescape's gameplay

Good taste user.

And giving them responses

It's hard to ever praise a game's writing because there's always one faggot who goes
>ACKSTUALLY that game's writing is shit because I say so, read a book
>I won't actually tell you what book because that would shatter my intellectual facade

You're missing a game you faglord.

It should be the Holy Square of pretentious games.

lol butthurt

>>I won't actually tell you what book because that would shatter my intellectual facade

But I will tell you!

Go Read:
The Great Gatsby

dumb
read the bible
it is not a good book
it is the good book

I actually have, it's okay but not great. It's not the shining beacon that video games could never live up to. It's that book most people read in high school (I personally read it casually) and forget about immediately.

If the bible is the good book then The Great Gatsby is The Great Book!

>magic card flavor text tier writing
Couldn't have said it better myself, brainlets who consider diatribe dispensers like Planescape Torment to be "good writing" just have to be braindead.

The problem is even the best writing in games is pretty amateurish when compared to the written word. I mean there are tons of books that are written much worse but I can think of games that are written far, far better. Mainly because videogames have to make compromises that books don't. To quote Harlan Ellison

>I have long been the specter at the banquet about television. I mean, I've worked in television, I've worked in film, and now I'm working in computer graphics, or whatever the medium is called. I look on it with some concern, I think the printed word is the perfect medium. I think a book is the perfect cassette. You can start it wherever you want, you can stop it wherever you want. You can run it backward anyway you want. It has absolute perfect pitch and tone and color and characters look exactly as you wish them to look and they sound exactly as you wish to hear them. It's the perfect cassette.

books written far better, I meant

Lord of the Flies. Thank me later.

the book that got me into literature when i was twelve was finnegans wake so i reccomend that

Terrible taste

>The writing is the gameplay

I chuckle whenever someone brings up Planescape Torment as an example of good writing. If you put those dialogues and descriptions in a novel or something, it would be considered shit. It's only because vidya has such low standards, and because gamers apparently have never read a real book, that this game is considered anything other than pretentious trash.

>yo you wanna make this guy's city immortal or do you wanna tell him this whole idea's stupid
>"I wanna tell him it's stupid"
That's the gameplay.

And here he is.
The supreme intellectual of the thread.
You haven't read two dozen books in your whole life, sperg, and we all know it.

Don't be mad cause you know I'm right. The writing is pretentious and overly verbose. Not surprising that it's so well liked by weird neckbeards who think they're smarter than they really are.

Nignoog, you never read a book. "Pretentious" is a criticism only valued by cretins. Anything could be pretentious if you wish it to be. Also, I'll take "overly verbose" writing over shitty 90% action-based prose modern novelists have been churning out since the late 90s.

>Planescape has great writing

Planescape has what people who don't read think constitutes good writing.

>lolol let me drop in just to say books are better

whoa.... really..... gets the brain.... juices flowing....... so...... smart......