Games That Advanced the Art of Storytelling

monikersi writes "In October 2006, the editors of Gamasutra asked its readership of game industry professionals to chime in and vote for which game brought storytelling forward in the biggest way, from any genre (text adventure through action title to RPG or sim and beyond) — there are plenty of picks, and some surprising winners." From the article: "Forcing the user to build the story piecemeal through personal logs and snippets of information throughout the game created a varied experience for each user. This drove the player to fill the holes in the story with the next log and their own assumptions and imagination. I remember playing System Shock 2 years after playing it for the first time and had a markedly different reaction due to changes in my own perspective. Phenomenal."

Come on.

[Who235]

All those games are so new.

What about Zork [wikipedia.org]?

And what about all the Sierra games from the 80's? (King's Quest, Space Quest, et.al.)

I was fairly content with this.

[nathan s]

I do think Baldur's Gate and Planescape could have been higher, but I have consistently told my friends that the Half Life and Deus Ex games felt like reading a great novel or watching a good movie as much as they did playing games. Those are the only two games I find myself going back to repeatedly, apart from Civilization. Sheer, utter brilliance. I only wish there were more games like those two.

Marathon

[telbij]

I gotta give this award to Bungie for the Marathon series. It didn't feature fancy cut scenes or voiceovers, but in the Doom era of FPS, having a plot was unheard of. The story was told through a series of terminals where you would communicate with one of several AIs or other people. The plot was central to the gameplay, and was very twisted, so your enemies and friends changed frequently. The level design was also quite a bit more varied and inspired by the story, then say, Doom where the levels are basically just designed around gameplay.

Although modern FPS stories are more cinematic, Marathon did more with less.

Re:A short list...

[Ignignot]

Arcanum was awesome. You could play as an imbecile or an evil character and the game would be very very different.

Chronotrigger?

[SoapDish]

This quote from the FF7 page made me laugh:

Final Fantasy VII is the first game I can remember that had a main character die as part of the unavoidable main story path, and the first game that truly moved me to think of games as a medium for creative expression in terms of the storyline's divergence from a linear path.

Chronotrigger had both a main character unavoidably die, and a divergent story line. In fact when THE main character died, you could choose whether or not to resurrect him. There were many side quests, and about 16 different endings depending on what you did with them.

How does FF7 even get mentioned, when Chronotrigger doesn't?