Video games have proven themselves over the years to be great at telling stories. Sure, many games will concern themselves with battling world-ending evils, but there’s just as much capacity here for smaller and more intimate tales as well. More importantly, as you take control of characters, and as games are so often capable to weaving your choices and decisions into the narrative flow, you can become thoroughly immersed in these digital worlds.
When it comes to telling tales, CRPGs all face an uphill struggle. They very often have long, interesting stories full of magic and lore and paladins and all that, but they’re generally delivered through huge amounts of text, which can seem like an insurmountable obstacle to an unsuspecting player. Enter Baldur’s Gate 3, a game that does basically everything it can to fix this problem. Every line of dialogue is not only voiced, but motion captured as well, really helping to make characters believable in the world. The camera doesn’t just float above people during conversation, either, instead actually showing characters faces and mannerisms during conversation. Then there’s the cutscenes which are often epic, occasionally filled with dragons, and always just gorgeous.
Of course that would mean nothing if the story it was telling wasn’t up to much, but Baldur’s Gate 3 is a pretty thrilling story. It begins with a mindflayer putting a tiny worm into your eye and quickly becomes about a cult taking over the world. What happens at the end? Well, only you can decide that as whatever it is will depend wholly upon your actions. I once failed to rescue a very important person and then had to slaughter an entire village that she had been protecting from a curse, costing me multiple important characters including one essential for a companion quest. Point being, the narrative here isn’t static waiting for you to uncover it, it’s waiting for you to come along and resolve it, deciding what happens with the rolls of your digital dice, and accommodating so many variables as it does so.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is a uniquely impressive game featuring a narrative that you mould the way you want it to go – provided your rolls are good enough.
– Gareth C
Alan Wake 2 – Runner Up
A decent narrative in games has you thinking about it long after the game is done. Sparking emotion is important to the core experience and Sam Lake and his really hit the nail on the head with Alan Wake 2.
It’s deep, wild, full of concepts that the community will be talking about for a long time, and moments that will make your head spin from the pure gravitas of what’s being brought to the table. With a story that’s been over a decade in the making and has its tendrils spreading back through to other parts of Remedy’s narrative universe, Alan Wake 2 is a masterpiece.
– Nick P
Venba – Runner Up
Venba is not a story about saving the world or taking on a huge enemy, but its subject matter on a personal level is just as big, if not bigger. Venba is about family, relationships and the roots of where we come from.
Venba’s story is about a couple who leave India to settle in Canada to provide a better life for their child. What it shows is the struggles many first generation immigrants go through, as well as the identity struggles second generation immigrants experience too. It is a narrative that’s never really told in video games and in a time when immigration is attacked in politics and press, Venba shows the human side of that journey reminding people immigrants are people, not numbers. This is a story of family struggle, loss, hardship but also of connection and love, and it’s well worth experiencing.
– Aran S
Honourable Mentions (in alphabetical order)
Which stories told in video games stood out for you this past year? Let us know in the comments below and we’ll see you for more awards over the coming days.
SLRC98
Pretty behind with my story driven games this year but I thought Spider-Man 2 told a good story. Had that blockbuster feel that I’ve been missing from games the past couple of years.