The art of storytelling in videogames has come a long, long way in recent times, to the point that even big, dumb shooters try to add a little nuance to their narratives. However, it’s the smaller games that tend to surprise us, as they can endeavour to explore new methods of relating the story to the player and give us new ways to experience them.
This year has given us a lot of strong contenders for Best Narrative, whether it was with blockbusting RPGs like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, the human drama of Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, or the more experimental and exploratory Her Story. The style of graphic adventure which Telltale helped to popularise has also continued to provide great stories, from their own work to games like Until Dawn and our winner for Best Narrative.
With her newfound ability to rewind time, Max Caulfield is no ordinary teenage girl, and yet she is. The strength and power of the story that Dontnod told within Life Is Strange wasn’t found within the science fiction trappings of time manipulation or the many allusions and references from TV and film, but within the struggles and topics that it allowed them to explore and try to deal with.
In a way, her powers of time manipulation manage to make her feel even more introspective and wracked with uncertainty and self doubt. Where other people have to make decisions in the heat of the moment, she has the ability to rewind and examine all of the outcomes. And that’s an incredible power to have when trying to mend fractured friendships, tackle bullying, drug abuse, suicide, death and murder. Each is expertly woven into a natural and fluid story that, while dramatised, feels very raw and real.
In truth, Max’s internal monologue acts as a voice for the player. It’s not Max that’s making these choices and constantly rewinding time, but you, and this helps to amplify the emotional impact of some of the major events within the story, leading up to that one final, heartbreaking decision.
Runners up in alphabetical order:
- Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture
- Game of Thrones
- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
- Until Dawn
Youles
Yet to play Life is Strange (have preordered the physical copy due in Jan), so it’s a shame I can’t know whether this is deserved or not, although it must be good as Until Dawn and EGTTR were both excellent.
colmshan1990
Life is Strange was utterly incredible, and it’s the narrative at the heart of it.
No game story has ever managed to effect me as well as it did. It was truly a fantastic (if at times, gut wrenching) experience, and one I will surely go back to time and again in the future. I loved it, it’s my game of the year by far.
MrYd
While it was a good game, I’ve got problems with it that prevent it from being deserving of the “best narrative” award.
The quality goes downhill for the last couple of episodes. There’s one of those “it could have been anyone, you suspected them all, we were pointing you at this character, but surprise! It’s the other one. Who you also expected anyway” twists. There’s a whole section that’s very well done, makes good political points, that then gets undone by the Big Timetravel Reset Button. And choices frequently seem to be a simple, lazy “good option or the morally right option”.
Still a good game and well worth playing, just there are better narratives in other games this year. I’d go for the lovely polite Radio 4 apocalypse of EGttR. The main story is a bit ambiguous (nothing wrong with that), but the individual little stories of the villagers are what makes it work. Piece them together and they make sense and some are quite sad.
TSBonyman
I haven’t played Life Is Strange but everything i’ve heard about it is positive so i will get around to it eventually.
I thought EGttR’s narrative was poorly executed , or at least if you missed any of it and you didn’t happen to be taking notes at the time then there was no way to recap as you got further into the experience.
Ferrick
I’m yet to play Life is Strange, but I have the Limited edition on pre-order. Can’t wait.
Would love to see Soma in a couple of categories! The narrative kind of had to be sought out in that game, so I understand its absence…
badger3078
Fully deserved, this game has set the benchmark for episodic, choice based games. Telltale made some good games but this was in a different league.
This and Until Dawn are the two best games I’ve played this year, by far.