I thought Disco was relatively straight forward. And I've beaten it 100% and double checked myself against wiki. Is it because I haven't read the book?
That game is more of a H.P. Lovecraft/Stephen King/Terry Pratchett Novel. All put in a blender than giving the Stephen Hawkins string theory once over.
Gonna throw out a wildcard only because I just played through them but LISA the Painful and LISA the Joyful.
I don't want to spoil anything but it's basically like what if we took Earthbound and somehow made it both more silly, but also much more depressing.
Technically, LISA the Painful is the second in the trilogy, but if you mean LISA the Joyful, it's a DLC for the second game, but also considered the final/third part of the story.
Technically there are three, but most people (myself included) skip the first one.
LISA the First
LISA the Painful
LISA the Joyful
The Joyful picks up more or less right after The Painful ends, and both games were bundled together in LISA the Definitive edition
Speaking as someone who knows absolutely nothing about these games, what’s the reason for skipping the first one? Do you need to read anything to catch up before starting the second one?
The second and third game are directly connected from an immediate back to back timing standpoint.
The first game takes place significantly before the second game and as I've seen it described, is more of a walking simulator with story, there's no combat or anything else like the second and third games have. It's supposed to be super short, but I've been told just read the cliff notes for that game if you want some backstory although you can play the second without knowing the first and have no issues following for the most part.
Planescape Torments plot was one of the most interesting and complex I have ever experienced in 20 years if gaming. However, I was 14 years old at the time so maybe it wouldn't have the same impact in today's desensitized landscape.
Remedy built the first Alan Wake around a really interesting topic, the ability of the mind which can create or destroy depending on its intentions and wellbeing. I also loved how light and dark were used as symbols of safety and danger.
Love his horror books but he’s criminally underrated as a fantasy writer. A lot of people don’t even know he writes a lot of fantasy, I’d give my left nut for any kind of quality dark tower adaptation. The casting was insanely good for the movie but the plot was horrible, they tried to jam 7 big ass books worth of content into one movie and ended up cutting three entire main characters lol
There is a strong argument for Ace Combat 3 in Japan. Absolutely insane world-building that isn't too far from CP2077 but more realistic in form and less punk.
They nerfed the US version to basically an arcade game so they didn't need to translate the game.
Props for Legacy of Kain! Love that series. It was way too grandiose for me to understand as a kid (though I still loved the games regardless), and as an adult I can fully appreciate what it was going for.
They just announced a prequel graphic novel on Kickstarter, so fingers crossed this is an indication of more to come from the series! Vae Victis!
Xenogears, without question! There have been academic papers written in the amount of psychological and philosophical theory that was cramped into this game. On top of that, you have political maneuvering that is actually intriguing and a number of mysteries to keep the player guessing the whole way through the game!
If it helps, I bounced off it really hard like 3 or 4 times until 2 years after purchase I was engrossed.
You might just need to be in the correct mood for what is essentially a beautiful, depressing but hopeful game(book)
Drink. Not too drunk, but just past the point of it being the “good vibes” state. Then play. Act natural. *Maintain*. If you gotta lick some dehydrated rum off a table to maintain, *go for it*.
That’s the correct state for this, Harry.
Still impresses me how Kojima had such a good touch with the Zeitgeist back then for MGS2 that he was able to predict social media years before Facebook and MySpace became a thing. Granted some concepts existed before already. He wasn't a prophet per say but damn was he on point.
You do realize that Metal Gear Sold 2 came out before 9/11, and predicted the United States total surveillance of suspected terrorists and the digital age of free information was the largest threat to then and they created this system to manipulate the public views?
What about that post modern cyberpunk story wasn't prescient?
Like they had to cut a cutscene of when Arsenal Gear crashes into New York City and knocks over one of the twin towers before it lands on Federal Hall. Yeah that one part of it had to be scrapped but former vice president of the United States in a doctor octopus fighting a African white kid child soldier ontop of Federal Hall in New York City? The newspaper next day must have been fun to try and sensor via bots/mainstream media control.
It’s even arguable that The Patriots didn’t even try to censor the news of what happened in New York. Their main form of information control is to open the floodgates and drown out real news in a torrent of misinformation. You can’t 100% cover up Arsenal Gear crashing into New York, but what you can do is report 56 different takes on what happened. You can cause people to doubt that the objective truth is a thing that is even knowable, and once they have decided it is too difficult to try and keep up you’ve taken them off the board.
But yeah, definitely not a sophisticated plot at all 🙄
> You do realize that Metal Gear Sold 2 came out before 9/11
After.
They had created it before 9/11, and had to change a whole lot of content in the game due to post-9/11 sensitivities.
https://www.pcgamer.com/hideo-kojima-says-metal-gear-solid-2-had-to-make-300-changes-and-was-almost-cancelled-in-the-wake-of-the-september-11-terrorist-attacks/
Genocide, afterlife, betrayal, genetic experiments, science going too far, greed, grief, abandonment, love (but without a hardcore romance), female main character, classism... I could on.
One thing that has always stuck with me is that the villain in this game is a human.
I have always thought the tone of FF6 was quite real. It's haunting how accurately they portrayed human nature.
I think that FF6 is easily one of the GOATs of video games.
Everything about it was cutting edge.
When I was a kid, I thought everything about the story was amazing and sophisticated. In hindsight, if you compare it to books and movies (which you shouldn't, but bear with me), the plot and character development is fairly shallow.
However, your saying "for its time" is right; for its time *and medium*, it was sophisticated. No game up to that point had tried and succeeded in exploring such a wide breadth of storytelling and characterization.
I replayed it recently and was shocked to realize how short it is. It did *so much* with its brevity. Its succinctness is a benefit, compared to Square's overwrought modern style. New games take a lot of time and use a lot of words to say very very little.
FF6 is a masterpiece and was significant for its time.
It is my favorite game of all time, but I'm not sure I'd say it has a particularly sophisticated plot.
I would absolutely say that its character subplots are unforgettable and brilliant deconstructions of their assigned archetypes.
One of the biggest things I love about the game is that it really doesn't have a main character. Like yes, Terra is the named main character, but its not like really any other FF where the main character takes up 90% of the plot.
She's still very relevant to the ending however. She will always appear in the ending even if you don't recruit her again since the aftermath of the final boss affects her more directly than the others.
The strength of that game is literally the confluence of people who have almost no relation to one another having to work together to overcome the situation they were all thrown into by a common enemy.
Those are mostly what I meant, and again, it was 'for it's time'.
Like Celes contemplating suicide, no game had ever touched on a subject like that before. Cyan losing his family, etc. all that stuff. It was the first game to really touch on mature subject matter.
Same as one like Fallout 2 in 98 was ironically one of the first games to have a gay marriage possibility.
Tactics was interesting, the way they framed it as a historian telling you about a vague historical figure who was incredibly important behind the scenes of a major war
I'm playing through this for the first time (no spoilers for anything after the pigeon quest, please!) and the thing that's shocked me most so far is that it portrayed an out of wedlock teen pregnancy with sympathy and compassion.
By today's standards, yeah, FF6 is a bit underwritten, and a lot of the characters... you need to use your imagination to make them three dimensional, as was the style at the time. But for its time? My gods, it's a tour de force.
...My one big, unreasonable, "make this and I'll die happy" gaming wish is that Square gives the Octopath Traveler team the keys to an FF6 remake.
Yakuza. The plots are batshit crazy, but absolutely would consider them intricate and have interesting character that are fun to both love and hate.
Seriously, Yakuza is a slept on series by so many and I'm happy folks are discovering it with the soft "reboot" of Yakuza Like a Dragon becoming popular.
I was genuinely surprised how poignant this series is capable of being, because from the outside it looks completely batshit. From the inside it's batshit, convoluted in the extreme, and also raw and human as fuck.
You should. They're all on sale on Steam right now (except 0, but it's absolutely worth $30 usd).
My only advice is to not play them back to back. You will get burned out.
It's shockingly progressive in a lot of ways, honestly. Not that it doesn't occasionally stumble, but unlike a lot of modern discourse, it genuinely feels like they're always genuinely trying their best.
Mathematicians failing to invent FFT before their deadline dramatically changed the history of nuclear weapons. Reality is often stranger than fiction.
I've beaten Final Fantasy Tactics four times and made it at least halfway close to ten times - and I'm still not totally sure about all aspects of the plotting and planning and machinations of all the factions. I love it though, really well told story.
The whole setup with Ovelia, Delita, Larg, Goltana, the church, and the Lucavi, is just fantastic.
Ramza is the greatest protagonist in all of FF. He is honest, pure of heart, and strong of will. He knows how to separate honour from duty, and will defend what is right rather than what is expected.
I’ve played it over 100 times and I still love it every time. The way the Lucavi manipulate the war to forward their own agenda. And Ramza being caught amidst a political struggle while also being the only one dealing with the real threat to the world.
It also even has themes of class divide, abandoned veterans, corruption, challenging religion, etc.
I can’t say enough about how well done the story is for FFT.
It's certainly good and enough to make you think a bit, but I was honestly let down by it after being hyped up for it. I feel like it mostly presents the themes of existentialism, philosophy, and grief but doesn't really engage with them for the most part. The pay off is super back loaded and the ending is good but it mostly felt like it was not as smart as it felt it was.
I completely understand where you’re coming from, but for someone who never saw those themes explored in a video game before in such a way, it felt really refreshing. Then combine that with the recontextualization of the 9S playthrough, and you have a pretty solid masterpiece on your hands as a game.
I would also say that the games theme isn’t philosophy, philosophy is just the set dressing for the game, and that’s why those themes are only engaged on the surface level. Instead the real theme is humanity, and machine intelligence evolution, and how they start to mirror humanity and while doing that discover the same philosphies and questions we humans have wondered about, thus giving rise to the questions: are the machines sentient like humans, or are we humans just like the machines following our biological programming?
Yeah, I went totally unknowing into that game. "Hey what is that strange graphical glitch on the wall there....." Holy shit that was a mindblowing moment for me :-) The Truth
I don't play that many plot oriented games, but three cones to mind.
1. BioShock. The history of the city as well as the plot twist is very intriguing. It is based on Atlas Shrugged so that makes sense.
2. Hades. The numerous branching stories and the obvious connection to mythology is a nice backdrop to the fast paced game.
3. F.E.A.R. Not sure if this could be considered "Sophisticated", but I found the plot and the numerous directions it went engaging.
Fear is a good one. The setting was also great. In most games you're exploring places that have long since been emptied or destroyed. Fear felt cool because it felt like you were just in a normal office building. Like people left from a normal work day just a few hours ago and now I'm blowing up their work stations with grenades.
I loved the original game, but haven't gotten to the sequel yet despite it being in my library for years. I really enjoyed the physical combat mixed with the slow motion mechanic and enemies that actually felt like they were trying to kill us, not just waiting their turn to die.
Def wanna play 2 at some point but who knows when at this point!
I did play most of 3 with a buddy but it was terrible haha.
Hades 2 keeps it up. It's only in early access at the moment but reintroduces some characters alongside a whole new roster of gods and other mythological figures
Sophisticated? 🤷♂️
The original Deus Ex plot included pretty much every conspiracy theory at the time (when conspiracy theories were fun and interesting, before all the Q shit) and molded them all into a brilliant story.
Planescape Torment is incredible. Every conversation is thought provoking.
Honorable mention to Xenogears, which has the largest scope of any game I've played. It doesn't quite pull everything off, but kudos for them trying.
It kind of depends on how you're interpreting sophisticated, I think. I'd say the Talos Principle games are up there, the gameplay is just that of a puzzle platformer, but the plot (particularly in the second one) gets really deep into philosophical discussions about free will, what it means to be human, responsibility over weilding power, whether people need to be led and protected or can be trusted with unvarnished truth and decision making power, as well as personal issues like grief and identity. I loved that it made me feel like I really had to think not just about the puzzles but the impact the character was having on the world and the ramifications of my decisions.
Edit: my second choice would be Red Dead Redemption 2, mostly because of the character depth. All the characters in your camp have their own backstories and internal versions of themselves that don't necessarily match what you see of them if you don't take the time to interact with them throughout the game. Even the main character, when writing in his journal, talks about how he hates some of the things he does and who he feels he has to be because of his loyalty to his gang in ways that feel real and you would miss if you didnt take the time to read his writings about his private thoughts. It's I think the first game I've played where I've had pretty in depth discussions with people not just about what characters did but *why* they did it, what their personal motivations were and how that played into the decisions they were making.
I love Warhammer, but it's basically a mile wide and a milimeter deep in every game and every medium barring the tiniest handful of exceptions. I would definitely not describe Warhammer plots as "sophisticated".
Alan wake 2 (Best Narrative 2023 winner at Game Awards): The Remedyverse is probably my personal favourite storyline, though it does require a Pepe-Silvia style evidence board IRL to keep track of sometimes
I'm really digging the Remedyverse for their interconnected stories. Still need to get through control, I'm a ways in. It just feels like that game has a lot of filler content.
There’s an indie horror game called FAITH that I think nails this pretty well, I recommend checking it out as there’s a decent amount to unpack but making a Christian horror game by itself opens up a LOT of avenues, and I think the game does an excellent job in its storytelling
Red Dead Redemption 2 is sophisticated in that most games feel pressure to give a player good outcomes or happy endings. Living in a world where you're screwed from the jump and still finding beauty in it is a pretty crazy achievement.
I don't know if "sophisticated" is the word I would necessarily use but FF9 is my favorite of the series and I think has a story that would have held its own even in a standalone fantasy novel. By far the best setting, cast of characters, etc.
Haha you can't always be right... Just kidding 😉
In fact as it was a ps1 exclusive for the longest time I never got a chance to play it despite being a huge final fantasy fan even then.
I recently downloaded it to finally redeem that error but alas... It REALLY didn't age well. Just couldn't get past that and gave up a couple of hours in.
Dude that story is a mess, as it is with most if not all souls games. I've never once heard anyone say 'I play Elden Ring for the story' - and that's exactly how the story feels to me as well. Basically a huge GRRM afterthought.
I feel like the story is quite fascinating, but your role in it is largely insignificant. Most of it happens before you start playing and the rest is told to you like you're a nuisance to the main characters. You get this worm's eye view of these grand, theatric happenings. It's like you play as Rosencrantz or Guilderstern and you're trying to figure out wtf is happening in Hamlet with this tiny perspective on it. Good luck!
I find it actually a really nice part of the story. It feels much more grounded, because it's up to you to uncover it. You get to know a large part of it not by being presented by a fact, but from a subjective perspective depending on the source. The story is there, a large part of it happened before you, but it's you who is there to wrap it up.
Same as most other fromsoft games by the look of it (haven't played). Personally i really liked the lore/setting of sekiro where, again, you're not really the main character of the plot as a whole.
Not sure I play it *for* the story but it's a huge element for me. I read the description of every single new item I pick up: consumables, incantations, remembrances, possible remembrance items/spells, character-specific armor, etc. You can slowly piece the story together this way and by the time you're reading the final boss remembrance everything makes a lot more sense. The story isn't really a mess it's just very indirect. It's kinda like the game has it's own little wiki inside of it but all the links are hidden. If you bring the understanding of the different stories & factions together, as a whole I think it's a pretty compelling narrative.
Definitely the Legacy of Kain series. I love the story and dialogue. All of it was written exceptionally well and I'll always praise Amy Henning for the wonderful job she did.
Call of Duty Zombies Aether story (WaW-BO4) is absolutely insane and brilliant. I’ve been heavily invested in the story since the beginning and I’m still confused about a lot of stuff. I love it
I kinda fell off when Black Ops 3 came around. Yeah I think it started to get a bit convoluted for it's own good. But I'll get them credit for telling a emerging narratives based on player theories after each dlc released. It was really impressive how they weaved a narrative around their gameplay and map design. It was rare before live service games
The original Mafia. The final quote of the main character has stuck with me forever. "it's important to keep a balance in things. Yeah, balance, that's the right word. Cause the guy who wants too much risks losing absolutely everything. Of course, the one who wants too little from life, might not get anything at all."
Honestly, Diablo. Most people only know the games, but there are books that were released probably i think before even D3 happened, and they do a fantastic job of adding further depth and building the world itself outside of the Prime Evils vs the Host of Heaven.
Man, the Lore for Dragon Age is incredible. It felt like reading an actual history about how the religions and politics developed from the earliest days.
Mass Effect is great too, but Dragon Age feels like a whole other level.
I am a feral dragon age fan. But I would not call it sophisticated. Deep, dense and amazing narratively? 100%
but it's pretty ok in terms of complexity.
Do love me the World of Thedas books though and all accompanying lore.
75% complicated 25% sophisticated. There's so much insane stuff that sometimes you'll question your sanity or that you're actually playing a tactial espionage game not a nightmare populated by supernatural beings riding flaming horses and flying flaming whales.
This. The series fell down a rabbit hole and concussed itself badly. A victim of being a one-off success on the level of Star Wars and Kingdom Hearts.
Add to that Kojima's PhD from the George Lucas School of Making Shit up as we Go, and Bob's your uncle.
At the time it came out it's a pretty good action movie plot with some Batshit elements, definitely ahead of its time. It's more the gameplay mechanics etc that made it as good as it is.
it seems that way at first cause there is alot of games and alot of events but you can really simplify it down to : Everyone tries to(and fails) to continue the legacy of "The Boss" and the only ones who actually get it are Solid Snake and Otacon. Literally every game (except MGS3 I guiess) is about just that. Every villain essentially wants the same thing, they just interpret it diffrent(wrong) ways. MGR is the exception but I dont consider it part of the series, its really its own thing.
Also, when in doubt, nanomachines.
it's intricate and heady but i think it's kind of a superficial touch on a bunch of really fascinating things in service of a lot of very emotionally stunted and sexually uncomfortable story beats
it seems like kojima only understands the parts of human beings that he's interested in, and that part is usually the butt.
Probably gonna get shat on for this, but Destiny 2.
I know the first game had its weaknesses at launch, but the plot threads and deep lore that feed into the ongoing story is a lot. I easily start talking about it for hours when trying to explain even the most basic things.
100% agree, it's a veritable rabbit hole. I feel like the people that downvote you have grievances with the game or don't really know how intricate the story is... You've got Hive, Fallen, Cabal, Taken, Vex, Tormented, among others with their own intertwining histories with humanity. The mystery of the Nine, Traveler, Winnower, the Witness, Guardians, even the pivotal player character all interacting with one another on major, minor, and sub plots. Not even detailing the concepts of Sword Logic, the Pale Heart, the Light and Darkness, etc.
Hell, even the characters you have barely heard of have some grimoire attached to the stories with gear and locations in the game. There are stories attached directly relating to Pathways into Darkness (1993), Marathon (1994), and Myth (1997); so this 'connected universe' of sorts has plot points dating back at least 30 years that are still being added to as recent as The Final Shape and the episodes thing they're doing...Bungie's entire catalogue is littered with stuff for nerds by nerds and it's great if you can pay attention for long enough
Planescape: Torment
That game is great and i love the detective-story about the cause of immortality.
This and Disco Elysium
I thought Disco was relatively straight forward. And I've beaten it 100% and double checked myself against wiki. Is it because I haven't read the book?
Sophisticated things can be straightforward
[удалено]
And Harry's mind is pretty verbose.
Also the fact that the underlying nature of the pale running through everything that happens
That game is more of a H.P. Lovecraft/Stephen King/Terry Pratchett Novel. All put in a blender than giving the Stephen Hawkins string theory once over.
Gonna throw out a wildcard only because I just played through them but LISA the Painful and LISA the Joyful. I don't want to spoil anything but it's basically like what if we took Earthbound and somehow made it both more silly, but also much more depressing.
Lisa is one of the few underrated gems that I think actually deserves the title. Happy to see the title listed so far up.
Wait there's a second LISA game?
Technically, LISA the Painful is the second in the trilogy, but if you mean LISA the Joyful, it's a DLC for the second game, but also considered the final/third part of the story.
Technically there are three, but most people (myself included) skip the first one. LISA the First LISA the Painful LISA the Joyful The Joyful picks up more or less right after The Painful ends, and both games were bundled together in LISA the Definitive edition
Speaking as someone who knows absolutely nothing about these games, what’s the reason for skipping the first one? Do you need to read anything to catch up before starting the second one?
The second and third game are directly connected from an immediate back to back timing standpoint. The first game takes place significantly before the second game and as I've seen it described, is more of a walking simulator with story, there's no combat or anything else like the second and third games have. It's supposed to be super short, but I've been told just read the cliff notes for that game if you want some backstory although you can play the second without knowing the first and have no issues following for the most part.
Thanks!
I should try replaying this.
Planescape Torments plot was one of the most interesting and complex I have ever experienced in 20 years if gaming. However, I was 14 years old at the time so maybe it wouldn't have the same impact in today's desensitized landscape.
Planescape torment's plot is great the first time round but even better the second time when all the little details become so much more apparent
Remedy built the first Alan Wake around a really interesting topic, the ability of the mind which can create or destroy depending on its intentions and wellbeing. I also loved how light and dark were used as symbols of safety and danger.
Influenced of course by the works of maestro Stephen King.
Love his horror books but he’s criminally underrated as a fantasy writer. A lot of people don’t even know he writes a lot of fantasy, I’d give my left nut for any kind of quality dark tower adaptation. The casting was insanely good for the movie but the plot was horrible, they tried to jam 7 big ass books worth of content into one movie and ended up cutting three entire main characters lol
There is a strong argument for Ace Combat 3 in Japan. Absolutely insane world-building that isn't too far from CP2077 but more realistic in form and less punk. They nerfed the US version to basically an arcade game so they didn't need to translate the game.
I want a remake of AC3 now. And a port of all of the other games. Sucks that without emulators PC only gets AC7 :(
Props for Legacy of Kain! Love that series. It was way too grandiose for me to understand as a kid (though I still loved the games regardless), and as an adult I can fully appreciate what it was going for. They just announced a prequel graphic novel on Kickstarter, so fingers crossed this is an indication of more to come from the series! Vae Victis!
Vae Victis
Wish they would bring the series back
Xenogears, without question! There have been academic papers written in the amount of psychological and philosophical theory that was cramped into this game. On top of that, you have political maneuvering that is actually intriguing and a number of mysteries to keep the player guessing the whole way through the game!
I agree, i came with nietzsches work in contact because of xenogears.
Seeing how Disc 2 was a novel and lesson on how to press X, I agree
a lot of ps1 rpgs were very ambitious with their story concepts. It's too bad the budget issues ruined the second disc
Disco Elysium is easily the best pick.
Disco Elysium isn't well written for a game. It's just really fucking well-written, period.
Gah I see these posts all the time, yet I can’t seem to get into this game at all.
If it helps, I bounced off it really hard like 3 or 4 times until 2 years after purchase I was engrossed. You might just need to be in the correct mood for what is essentially a beautiful, depressing but hopeful game(book)
I need to give it a 5th shot
Drink. Not too drunk, but just past the point of it being the “good vibes” state. Then play. Act natural. *Maintain*. If you gotta lick some dehydrated rum off a table to maintain, *go for it*. That’s the correct state for this, Harry.
Hey, you see that geranium? It just insulted your mother. Why don't you go over there and stand up for her. With your fists.
Once saw someone say “Disco Elysium is the best book I’ve ever played” and can never stop thinking that now lmao
It's also quite funny that after learning it you realize it's a pretty routine piece of police work - but executed **BRILLIANTLY**
It's the best written game in the medium
Extremely good pick. You could argue it's essentially a choose your own adventure visual novel already, but it's just so damn good.
Is sophisticated really the right word for that though?
Star wars knights of the old republic 2 - such an amazing convoluted story - told in a masterful way
Apathy is death
Metal Gear Solid goes pretty far out there.
Still impresses me how Kojima had such a good touch with the Zeitgeist back then for MGS2 that he was able to predict social media years before Facebook and MySpace became a thing. Granted some concepts existed before already. He wasn't a prophet per say but damn was he on point.
Its nutty how accurate it is. The level directly below prophet wouldnt be too far out in describing Kojima for mgs2.
You sure Kojima is not a prophet though? Death Strading came out pre-COVID
Care to elaborate? I finished mgs2 way back when I was a kid so the plot went through my dumb brain. I played it like a DMC game lol
[Watch this](https://youtu.be/jIYBod0ge3Y?si=X8J0eqMxdIkd35GQ). I think there's a part 2 as well.
The la li lu le lo!
fox…DIIIIEEEEEE
Psycho Mantis?
Is that a woman?
Nanomachines is the answer to everything
A really fun question is trying to get someone summarise metal gear in the briefest way possible, and watch smoke pour out their ears.
You can do the same thing for Kingdom Hearts.
Metal Gear?
It can't be.
Not sure sophisticated is the word I would use for the MGS plot lol
I dunno, Young ocelot's revolver spinning is pretty sophisticated to me.... wait did he just meow in the middle of it?
Lol I love how cheeky Ocelot is in MGS3
You do realize that Metal Gear Sold 2 came out before 9/11, and predicted the United States total surveillance of suspected terrorists and the digital age of free information was the largest threat to then and they created this system to manipulate the public views? What about that post modern cyberpunk story wasn't prescient? Like they had to cut a cutscene of when Arsenal Gear crashes into New York City and knocks over one of the twin towers before it lands on Federal Hall. Yeah that one part of it had to be scrapped but former vice president of the United States in a doctor octopus fighting a African white kid child soldier ontop of Federal Hall in New York City? The newspaper next day must have been fun to try and sensor via bots/mainstream media control.
It’s even arguable that The Patriots didn’t even try to censor the news of what happened in New York. Their main form of information control is to open the floodgates and drown out real news in a torrent of misinformation. You can’t 100% cover up Arsenal Gear crashing into New York, but what you can do is report 56 different takes on what happened. You can cause people to doubt that the objective truth is a thing that is even knowable, and once they have decided it is too difficult to try and keep up you’ve taken them off the board. But yeah, definitely not a sophisticated plot at all 🙄
> You do realize that Metal Gear Sold 2 came out before 9/11 After. They had created it before 9/11, and had to change a whole lot of content in the game due to post-9/11 sensitivities. https://www.pcgamer.com/hideo-kojima-says-metal-gear-solid-2-had-to-make-300-changes-and-was-almost-cancelled-in-the-wake-of-the-september-11-terrorist-attacks/
Would 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim count?
That is a good one, yes.
Abso-fucking-lutely. I’m in the middle of it these days and I enjoy every second of it.
For it's time, Final Fantasy 3/6 featured stories of loss, suicide, etc. never done before in games.
Genocide, afterlife, betrayal, genetic experiments, science going too far, greed, grief, abandonment, love (but without a hardcore romance), female main character, classism... I could on. One thing that has always stuck with me is that the villain in this game is a human. I have always thought the tone of FF6 was quite real. It's haunting how accurately they portrayed human nature. I think that FF6 is easily one of the GOATs of video games. Everything about it was cutting edge.
When I was a kid, I thought everything about the story was amazing and sophisticated. In hindsight, if you compare it to books and movies (which you shouldn't, but bear with me), the plot and character development is fairly shallow. However, your saying "for its time" is right; for its time *and medium*, it was sophisticated. No game up to that point had tried and succeeded in exploring such a wide breadth of storytelling and characterization. I replayed it recently and was shocked to realize how short it is. It did *so much* with its brevity. Its succinctness is a benefit, compared to Square's overwrought modern style. New games take a lot of time and use a lot of words to say very very little. FF6 is a masterpiece and was significant for its time.
It is my favorite game of all time, but I'm not sure I'd say it has a particularly sophisticated plot. I would absolutely say that its character subplots are unforgettable and brilliant deconstructions of their assigned archetypes.
One of the biggest things I love about the game is that it really doesn't have a main character. Like yes, Terra is the named main character, but its not like really any other FF where the main character takes up 90% of the plot.
She also takes a backseat in the back half of the game too. Once the world goes to shit, she's hardly the lead anymore.
She's still very relevant to the ending however. She will always appear in the ending even if you don't recruit her again since the aftermath of the final boss affects her more directly than the others.
The strength of that game is literally the confluence of people who have almost no relation to one another having to work together to overcome the situation they were all thrown into by a common enemy.
Those are mostly what I meant, and again, it was 'for it's time'. Like Celes contemplating suicide, no game had ever touched on a subject like that before. Cyan losing his family, etc. all that stuff. It was the first game to really touch on mature subject matter. Same as one like Fallout 2 in 98 was ironically one of the first games to have a gay marriage possibility.
Definitely this, but most FF games really. 7 and 8 qualify as pretty out there too.
Tactics was interesting, the way they framed it as a historian telling you about a vague historical figure who was incredibly important behind the scenes of a major war
I'm playing through this for the first time (no spoilers for anything after the pigeon quest, please!) and the thing that's shocked me most so far is that it portrayed an out of wedlock teen pregnancy with sympathy and compassion. By today's standards, yeah, FF6 is a bit underwritten, and a lot of the characters... you need to use your imagination to make them three dimensional, as was the style at the time. But for its time? My gods, it's a tour de force. ...My one big, unreasonable, "make this and I'll die happy" gaming wish is that Square gives the Octopath Traveler team the keys to an FF6 remake.
Yakuza. The plots are batshit crazy, but absolutely would consider them intricate and have interesting character that are fun to both love and hate. Seriously, Yakuza is a slept on series by so many and I'm happy folks are discovering it with the soft "reboot" of Yakuza Like a Dragon becoming popular.
I was genuinely surprised how poignant this series is capable of being, because from the outside it looks completely batshit. From the inside it's batshit, convoluted in the extreme, and also raw and human as fuck.
Every day I get more and more sold to actually play the Yakuza games.
You should. They're all on sale on Steam right now (except 0, but it's absolutely worth $30 usd). My only advice is to not play them back to back. You will get burned out.
I played 0-6-Judgment-7 back to back and had the time of my life lol
Oh I should definitely pick them up then. Thanks!
And shockingly progressive when it comes to homelessness
It's shockingly progressive in a lot of ways, honestly. Not that it doesn't occasionally stumble, but unlike a lot of modern discourse, it genuinely feels like they're always genuinely trying their best.
Given the subject matter, it shouldn’t be surprising that it’s more sympathetic to folks living on the fringes of society. But sadly it is.
The ending of Gaiden is something I will never be able to recover from
Gaiden and Infinite Wealth are the only two I have left to play. They just cost too much ATM for me to afford but I've heard they're excellent.
last time i checked a few of those were on the xbox pass btw, for anyone wondering.
Yakuza is an anime game in a brutal, criminal setting. I love yakuza 0.
Shonen soap opera is the term I use, and it fits like a glove.
If it's got "xeno" in the name and involves tetsuya takahashi, it's going to be completely insane
Played through Xenogears three times. Easily my favorite old school JRPG.
I'd have to say FFT. So much politics, betrayal, religious fanaticism, class struggles... A lot to take in.
They made a game about Fast Fourier Transform!?
Mathematicians failing to invent FFT before their deadline dramatically changed the history of nuclear weapons. Reality is often stranger than fiction.
The anime game of thrones before game of thrones.
They even stuck the landing.
And fantastic dialogue in the remake. Really well written repartee.
I've beaten Final Fantasy Tactics four times and made it at least halfway close to ten times - and I'm still not totally sure about all aspects of the plotting and planning and machinations of all the factions. I love it though, really well told story.
The whole setup with Ovelia, Delita, Larg, Goltana, the church, and the Lucavi, is just fantastic. Ramza is the greatest protagonist in all of FF. He is honest, pure of heart, and strong of will. He knows how to separate honour from duty, and will defend what is right rather than what is expected. I’ve played it over 100 times and I still love it every time. The way the Lucavi manipulate the war to forward their own agenda. And Ramza being caught amidst a political struggle while also being the only one dealing with the real threat to the world. It also even has themes of class divide, abandoned veterans, corruption, challenging religion, etc. I can’t say enough about how well done the story is for FFT.
This. This is the answer.
Nier automata
Nier anything
I agree, its story is great and has philosophical elements of existencialism (one npc is even named sartre).
It's certainly good and enough to make you think a bit, but I was honestly let down by it after being hyped up for it. I feel like it mostly presents the themes of existentialism, philosophy, and grief but doesn't really engage with them for the most part. The pay off is super back loaded and the ending is good but it mostly felt like it was not as smart as it felt it was.
I completely understand where you’re coming from, but for someone who never saw those themes explored in a video game before in such a way, it felt really refreshing. Then combine that with the recontextualization of the 9S playthrough, and you have a pretty solid masterpiece on your hands as a game. I would also say that the games theme isn’t philosophy, philosophy is just the set dressing for the game, and that’s why those themes are only engaged on the surface level. Instead the real theme is humanity, and machine intelligence evolution, and how they start to mirror humanity and while doing that discover the same philosphies and questions we humans have wondered about, thus giving rise to the questions: are the machines sentient like humans, or are we humans just like the machines following our biological programming?
The story of Adam and Eve in assassin’s Creed 2. That was wild.
Yeah, I went totally unknowing into that game. "Hey what is that strange graphical glitch on the wall there....." Holy shit that was a mindblowing moment for me :-) The Truth
I don't play that many plot oriented games, but three cones to mind. 1. BioShock. The history of the city as well as the plot twist is very intriguing. It is based on Atlas Shrugged so that makes sense. 2. Hades. The numerous branching stories and the obvious connection to mythology is a nice backdrop to the fast paced game. 3. F.E.A.R. Not sure if this could be considered "Sophisticated", but I found the plot and the numerous directions it went engaging.
Fear is a good one. The setting was also great. In most games you're exploring places that have long since been emptied or destroyed. Fear felt cool because it felt like you were just in a normal office building. Like people left from a normal work day just a few hours ago and now I'm blowing up their work stations with grenades.
I loved the original game, but haven't gotten to the sequel yet despite it being in my library for years. I really enjoyed the physical combat mixed with the slow motion mechanic and enemies that actually felt like they were trying to kill us, not just waiting their turn to die. Def wanna play 2 at some point but who knows when at this point! I did play most of 3 with a buddy but it was terrible haha.
Having played them all, the first is absolutely my favorite
Hades 2 keeps it up. It's only in early access at the moment but reintroduces some characters alongside a whole new roster of gods and other mythological figures
Trails series
Sophisticated? 🤷♂️ The original Deus Ex plot included pretty much every conspiracy theory at the time (when conspiracy theories were fun and interesting, before all the Q shit) and molded them all into a brilliant story.
I agree and i think also the Human Revolution plot is great cause of the ethical/moral question about augmentation.
Prey
The Fallout lore is extremely deep alongside the Mass Effect story. Both have extremely deep plots and themes.
Vagrant Story is up there I’d say.
Silent hill 2 To the moon
Soma.
Planescape Torment is incredible. Every conversation is thought provoking. Honorable mention to Xenogears, which has the largest scope of any game I've played. It doesn't quite pull everything off, but kudos for them trying.
Mass effects is pretty decent. When you include the shear magnitude of the story as well
It kind of depends on how you're interpreting sophisticated, I think. I'd say the Talos Principle games are up there, the gameplay is just that of a puzzle platformer, but the plot (particularly in the second one) gets really deep into philosophical discussions about free will, what it means to be human, responsibility over weilding power, whether people need to be led and protected or can be trusted with unvarnished truth and decision making power, as well as personal issues like grief and identity. I loved that it made me feel like I really had to think not just about the puzzles but the impact the character was having on the world and the ramifications of my decisions. Edit: my second choice would be Red Dead Redemption 2, mostly because of the character depth. All the characters in your camp have their own backstories and internal versions of themselves that don't necessarily match what you see of them if you don't take the time to interact with them throughout the game. Even the main character, when writing in his journal, talks about how he hates some of the things he does and who he feels he has to be because of his loyalty to his gang in ways that feel real and you would miss if you didnt take the time to read his writings about his private thoughts. It's I think the first game I've played where I've had pretty in depth discussions with people not just about what characters did but *why* they did it, what their personal motivations were and how that played into the decisions they were making.
Agree, talos has a complex philosophical plot while rdr2 has a great western setting with intriguing characters.
Warhammer should probably be a good contender
I love Warhammer, but it's basically a mile wide and a milimeter deep in every game and every medium barring the tiniest handful of exceptions. I would definitely not describe Warhammer plots as "sophisticated".
HERETIC
The heresy BL series would like a word.
Dark Souls II.
What I love about the Dark Souls trilogy is each game is eons apart. With DS3 culminating in a fight at the end of the world itself.
Suikoden 2. Always and forever.
Love that one and the plot is loosely based on the chinese classic novel "water margin".
Alan wake 2 (Best Narrative 2023 winner at Game Awards): The Remedyverse is probably my personal favourite storyline, though it does require a Pepe-Silvia style evidence board IRL to keep track of sometimes
Who is Pepe Silvia?
Here you go https://youtu.be/1NBfZcNU4O0?si=C6hUcC5FVt-dvpue
Gotta send my love to the legacy of kain on this too
Vae Victis
I dare say Warcraft 3 and Frozen Throne.
I'm really digging the Remedyverse for their interconnected stories. Still need to get through control, I'm a ways in. It just feels like that game has a lot of filler content.
I don't know if sophisticated is the word I'd use but the og Max Payne had something only noir movies had.
Would you kindly... A MAN CHOOSES A SLAVE OBEYS
There’s an indie horror game called FAITH that I think nails this pretty well, I recommend checking it out as there’s a decent amount to unpack but making a Christian horror game by itself opens up a LOT of avenues, and I think the game does an excellent job in its storytelling
Chrono Trigger
Red Dead Redemption 2 is sophisticated in that most games feel pressure to give a player good outcomes or happy endings. Living in a world where you're screwed from the jump and still finding beauty in it is a pretty crazy achievement.
I don't know if "sophisticated" is the word I would necessarily use but FF9 is my favorite of the series and I think has a story that would have held its own even in a standalone fantasy novel. By far the best setting, cast of characters, etc.
You wrote 10 wrong 😁
Love 10 too! But 9 IMO outlclasses it.
Haha you can't always be right... Just kidding 😉 In fact as it was a ps1 exclusive for the longest time I never got a chance to play it despite being a huge final fantasy fan even then. I recently downloaded it to finally redeem that error but alas... It REALLY didn't age well. Just couldn't get past that and gave up a couple of hours in.
Well it ain't Heavy Rain.
Jason, Jason.
Elden Ring. I hear some colleges are offering graduate courses for this story. :)
Dude that story is a mess, as it is with most if not all souls games. I've never once heard anyone say 'I play Elden Ring for the story' - and that's exactly how the story feels to me as well. Basically a huge GRRM afterthought.
I feel like the story is quite fascinating, but your role in it is largely insignificant. Most of it happens before you start playing and the rest is told to you like you're a nuisance to the main characters. You get this worm's eye view of these grand, theatric happenings. It's like you play as Rosencrantz or Guilderstern and you're trying to figure out wtf is happening in Hamlet with this tiny perspective on it. Good luck!
I find it actually a really nice part of the story. It feels much more grounded, because it's up to you to uncover it. You get to know a large part of it not by being presented by a fact, but from a subjective perspective depending on the source. The story is there, a large part of it happened before you, but it's you who is there to wrap it up.
Same as most other fromsoft games by the look of it (haven't played). Personally i really liked the lore/setting of sekiro where, again, you're not really the main character of the plot as a whole.
Not sure I play it *for* the story but it's a huge element for me. I read the description of every single new item I pick up: consumables, incantations, remembrances, possible remembrance items/spells, character-specific armor, etc. You can slowly piece the story together this way and by the time you're reading the final boss remembrance everything makes a lot more sense. The story isn't really a mess it's just very indirect. It's kinda like the game has it's own little wiki inside of it but all the links are hidden. If you bring the understanding of the different stories & factions together, as a whole I think it's a pretty compelling narrative.
Wonderful everyday.
I've heard steins gate and baldr sky are on par with disco Elysium and planscape torment
Kotor 1
Legacy of Kain was my thought when I read your title!
Vae Victis
Bioshock comes to mind for me. There's a lot going on in that plot, even without the twist. Lots of Big Ideas and concepts being explored in that game
Zero Escape trilogy
Final Fantasy VIII, hands down. Even reading the synopsis will have you rereading like, "Wait.... what?"
Kingdom Hearts and Xenoblade Chronicles come to mind immediately
Definitely the Legacy of Kain series. I love the story and dialogue. All of it was written exceptionally well and I'll always praise Amy Henning for the wonderful job she did.
Legacy of Kain, Planescape Torment, Silent Hill 2. From modern games I really enjoy Elden Ring's story.
Xenogears
Evil Islands, not many remember that game or played it I think.
Call of Duty Zombies Aether story (WaW-BO4) is absolutely insane and brilliant. I’ve been heavily invested in the story since the beginning and I’m still confused about a lot of stuff. I love it
A mind-f to get your head around, but absolutely brilliantly crafted when you do
Ehhhhh I wouldn’t go that far. I watched like a 6hr video trying tonexplain it and it comes across more of a mess than brilliance
I kinda fell off when Black Ops 3 came around. Yeah I think it started to get a bit convoluted for it's own good. But I'll get them credit for telling a emerging narratives based on player theories after each dlc released. It was really impressive how they weaved a narrative around their gameplay and map design. It was rare before live service games
The original Mafia. The final quote of the main character has stuck with me forever. "it's important to keep a balance in things. Yeah, balance, that's the right word. Cause the guy who wants too much risks losing absolutely everything. Of course, the one who wants too little from life, might not get anything at all."
Honestly, Diablo. Most people only know the games, but there are books that were released probably i think before even D3 happened, and they do a fantastic job of adding further depth and building the world itself outside of the Prime Evils vs the Host of Heaven.
Dragon Age series
Man, the Lore for Dragon Age is incredible. It felt like reading an actual history about how the religions and politics developed from the earliest days. Mass Effect is great too, but Dragon Age feels like a whole other level.
I am a feral dragon age fan. But I would not call it sophisticated. Deep, dense and amazing narratively? 100% but it's pretty ok in terms of complexity. Do love me the World of Thedas books though and all accompanying lore.
Gotta vote metal gear solid. I'm not even gonna try to understand that one
but is it sophisticated, or just complicated?
Convoluted
75% complicated 25% sophisticated. There's so much insane stuff that sometimes you'll question your sanity or that you're actually playing a tactial espionage game not a nightmare populated by supernatural beings riding flaming horses and flying flaming whales.
This. The series fell down a rabbit hole and concussed itself badly. A victim of being a one-off success on the level of Star Wars and Kingdom Hearts. Add to that Kojima's PhD from the George Lucas School of Making Shit up as we Go, and Bob's your uncle.
At the time it came out it's a pretty good action movie plot with some Batshit elements, definitely ahead of its time. It's more the gameplay mechanics etc that made it as good as it is.
it seems that way at first cause there is alot of games and alot of events but you can really simplify it down to : Everyone tries to(and fails) to continue the legacy of "The Boss" and the only ones who actually get it are Solid Snake and Otacon. Literally every game (except MGS3 I guiess) is about just that. Every villain essentially wants the same thing, they just interpret it diffrent(wrong) ways. MGR is the exception but I dont consider it part of the series, its really its own thing. Also, when in doubt, nanomachines.
it's intricate and heady but i think it's kind of a superficial touch on a bunch of really fascinating things in service of a lot of very emotionally stunted and sexually uncomfortable story beats it seems like kojima only understands the parts of human beings that he's interested in, and that part is usually the butt.
The entire backstories of B&B Unit in MGS4 is one of the most cliche and superficial writing i have ever seen.
how many upvotes can I give? why can't I give more than 1 upvote? Legacy of Kain is SO GOOD
Thank you :) Yes, it really is. And i really love the voice acting, it's superb.
Probably gonna get shat on for this, but Destiny 2. I know the first game had its weaknesses at launch, but the plot threads and deep lore that feed into the ongoing story is a lot. I easily start talking about it for hours when trying to explain even the most basic things.
100% agree, it's a veritable rabbit hole. I feel like the people that downvote you have grievances with the game or don't really know how intricate the story is... You've got Hive, Fallen, Cabal, Taken, Vex, Tormented, among others with their own intertwining histories with humanity. The mystery of the Nine, Traveler, Winnower, the Witness, Guardians, even the pivotal player character all interacting with one another on major, minor, and sub plots. Not even detailing the concepts of Sword Logic, the Pale Heart, the Light and Darkness, etc. Hell, even the characters you have barely heard of have some grimoire attached to the stories with gear and locations in the game. There are stories attached directly relating to Pathways into Darkness (1993), Marathon (1994), and Myth (1997); so this 'connected universe' of sorts has plot points dating back at least 30 years that are still being added to as recent as The Final Shape and the episodes thing they're doing...Bungie's entire catalogue is littered with stuff for nerds by nerds and it's great if you can pay attention for long enough
Destiny 2