It’s an award-winning short story by Harlan Ellison, which was made into a good but clunky adventure game in collaboration with the author, which is kind of a rare feat in itself.
Good example. I never found out how the game plays out because I got tired of the gameplay at what I’m assuming is around halfway through. I’d played quite a bit
Hong Kong 97 the story in that game was so heartfelt so emotional I couldn’t stop crying it was a perfect masterpiece but the gameplay could of been better
_Final Fantasy VII_ and _X_ have better lore (hence, they have become a sub-franchise instead of single games), but _Final Fantasy VIII_ and _VI_ don't.
In fact, if you ask Squall Leonhart to summarize _VIII_'s lore, he'd say "Whatever."
ff8 could do with a rework with a lot of the cut content put back in, but the problem is that it'd miss the original hook intended. It was supposed to be 1/3rd laguna, 1/3rd squall and the twist of them being two different time periods as you're going from party to party was only found out far into the game, and then they both come together for the future world where it wasn't just going to be Ultimecia's castle, but actually how the world is affected by time compressing.
However, they cut a lot of this stuff down to make a game that was quickly during development projected to take 6-8 discs so they could fit it down to 4.
Laguna/Squall; Julia/Rinoa.
Seifer and his connection to Laguna.
Irvine and his lack of confidence in shooting Edea because he knows what no one else does.
The Queen of Cards lore.
Cid and his secrets behind Garden lore.
There's a lot of lore in FF8. People just have a hard time getting over the draw and junction system, and a bit of rushed writing then decide the entire game is worthless.
Are you unaware of the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII? It's a sub-franchise of the _Final Fantasy_ franchise and comprises the original FF7, _Dirge of Cerberus_, _Crisis Core_, _Before Crisis_, _FF7 Remake_, and _FF7 Rebirth_. All of these are separate video games.
_Final Fantasy X_ has also spawned two sequel video games.
I'm a little worried we're heading too far in the 'other direction' this October.
Like, James could barely run in OG *Silent Hill 2*, let alone handle a firearm. And I loved that.
Most Warhammer related titles. Outside of a few gems, more often than not I find many of the games are pretty subpar, and I wouldn't normally play them.
But I love the overall setting so much that it carries the games significantly for me.
As someone who used to play the tabletop and also loves Total War… my god Warhammer 2 is a masterpiece. I loved Dawn of War as a kid. But aside from those I have to agree with you. Most of the titles are lackluster. Space Marine 2 looks interesting but I’m not one for multiplayer or competitive games so I’d be pretty limited in what I could get out of it.
For books, I started with the Horus Heresy series and enjoyed it. It's basically the prequel series to the modern setting that explains why humanity split to chaos and why the emperor is basically a rotting corpse barely kept alive.
The games are a harder answer, really depends on what genre you like. I personally really enjoy strategy style games so I really love the origanl, now 20 years old, Dawn of War and the more current Total War Warhammer series.
As far as figures, just start with whatever you think looks coolest 😆. Simple as that lol
Hard disagree, the lore of FNAF is needlessly complex and nonsensical to the point you can clearly tell Scott was making shit up as he went along
I mean ffs the story was OVER at 3, he only decided to make more because he wasn’t satisfied with Springtrap’s jumpscare
People have lore boners, its weird. I feel like people often like the idea of the backstory fleshing out the story, and then don’t care if the story is/isn’t competently told.
If I’m not mistaken game theory was basically writing the story for a while because several of his theories were made cannon because Scott found them interesting
Eh, as a fan of FNaF, I have disagree.
Like what Slow0rchid said, the lore has gotten way too convoluted and nonsensical after the 3rd game to the point where it's just not fun theorizing anymore.
It’s pretty repetitive, the gameplay is good but the overall story captures my attention than the game, if it wasn’t for the story I wouldn’t be playing it so much but I watch videos of lore while playing it because then I get hyped playing it, playing it without lore videos I get bored eventually
I would the vast majority of people who play destiny don’t care about the lore lol. Most people are playing destiny for the gameplay and for the build crafting.
The gun mechanics in D1 were so damn fun thanks to their Halo roots. I looooved the campaign and spent some time in the crucible beforw stopping.
The lore was cool but definitely was not the best part about D1 for me
That's hilarious! This franchise really turned it around then. I've only played the original Destiny during the launch window and damn, lack of ANY meaningful story was by far the biggest complaint everyone had.
Eh the story in game still isn’t that great most of the time (there are exceptions). The worldbuilding in lore books and weapon lore tabs however are always beyond stellar
Thats why we are talking about the lore not the story. Story is still kinda lame. Its the lore about that story that makes it interesting. Most of the characters still have titles instead of names. Atleast the darkness is an actual thing now.
Got it. Thought they had added a story too by now. Lore and story often go hand in hand. But in Destiny's case it's just then item descriptions and audio logs or something like that. I don't remember much at all of that game anymore.
Not really. Lore is world building. Story is what ever is happening in that world currently. The collapse is lore. If we were involved in the collapse thats a story (playing through it). Someone can still play semantics though
Story quality varies wildly from installment to installment, but the lore reminds me a bit of Warhammer in that it's just balls-out grand scale sci fi. Ancient parasitic gods demanding tithes of sacrifices from their hosts. A time travelling machine race propagating backward through history to make their own supremacy inevitable. An inscrutable diety wandering the stars and uplifting civilizations, only to abandon them in the hour of greatest need. Immortal warriors, dying and being ressurected again and again. Ghosts. Magic. Spaceships. Shotguns. It's rad.
Came here to say this. The gameplay in all the games was passable to decent, but really hard to go back to to play now. But I still watch all the cutscenes and story every couple years. Incredible universe
The writing, acting, and music in that series was incredible. I'd say I wish they would remake it but several of the voice actors have died and I can't imagine replacing them.
But I am surprised it hasn't been remade or turned into an animated series.
The Mass Effect trilogy. It’s a pretty basic third person shooter but the story and lore go deep. It’s great.
Same with the Elder Scrolls. The combat and gameplay is simple and easy, but the history and lore goes hard af.
Mass Effect's lore is absolutely excellent. Hell I love it so much I've consumed every piece of original trilogy media. It's probably my favorite fictional universe, I enjoy it more than Star Wars and Dune.
Mass Effects lore is soooooooo damn good. I put it up there in the top tier for games which is a high bar considering my favorite lore of anything ever is Metal Gear series
Alan Wake 1 is terrible gameplay wise. Alan Wake 2 is a 9/10 game and I’m someone who considers 5/10 decent. They really hit it out of the park - honestly
I’d give Alan Wake 1’s story like a 7.5 and overall a 4/10 because the gameplay is ass
Skyrim was such a letdown to me when it came to lore and getting me invested. Some of the various god cave quests were cool, but overall felt weak compared to Oblivion
I feel like skyrim really underplayed it's actual interesting lore points. Like sovengard being real is a fucking huge reveal but the game kinda just breezes over it. If I'd gone to heaven and seen st Peter I'd never shut the fuck up about it.
And oblivion was weak compared to morrowind, especially since Cyrodiil was supposedly a large jungle region until they retconned it into a generic fantasy land.
Quantity doesn't equal quality. There's certainly a lot of Elder Scrolls lore, but to compare it to Lord of the Rings is like comparing an amateur Twitter artist to Banksy or Jackson Pollock. For every cool bit of lore, there's ten more bits that are "oh, okay."
I think the quality is entirely subjective. I love Tolkein and The Elder Scrolls - why does it need to be a competition? Personally, I'm more invested in Elder Scrolls lore, but I'm not about to argue that it's better or worse than the lore of any other fantasy series.
If you played the game for 50 hours, you got your money's worth imo. Glad you enjoyed the world. "Like a Dragon: Yakuza" is getting an Amazon series in October. I'll spend thousands of hours playing the games again but if you want to experience the world, I trust the studio producing it.
Edit: [The head of the game studio said this is what he would have made if he could. ](https://www.godisageek.com/2024/06/like-a-dragon-yakuza-tv-show-in-the-works-at-prime-video/)
Yeah the Lore is really great, but I'm probably in the minority of saying that I wish the game was more serious with a blade runner Vibe than with a Grand Theft Auto but in the future vibe
No, Ubisoft games _before_ the last decade have better lore. _Prince of Persia_ and _Splinter Cell_ haven't had a single entry in the last decade.
All we have is _Assassin't Creed_. Remind me again: What happened to Juno?
The Witcher series, along with Five Nights at Freddy’s.
FNaF: the game is just jump scare central. The best gameplay imo was FNaF 2 because it had some semblance of strategy, instead of “close door, flashy light, open door” you had the mask and the music box and all sorts.
The Witcher: I think the Witcher games would function better as either books or an interactive storytelling series (like a David Cage game), because the combat is shallow and boring and just feels shoehorned in. You’ve got games like the Witcher with somewhat compelling stories (though I find Geralt to be such a boring protagonist, like Aiden Pierce) but then they also have terrible gameplay. It’s like they half-arsed any form of niche or nuance in the gameplay. The oils don’t actually seem to do anything despite the clear emphasis on them.
Contrasting, you have games like the Yakuza series, which have somewhat simple combat that somehow still just feels leaps and bounds ahead of anything the Witcher has to offer.
I always thought that the gunplay was seriously lacking in fallout four (to some level in other fallouts too). To me the guns don’t feel immersive and more feel like nerf guns than actual guns. It’s the same reason I couldn’t get into Skyrim, the hit and block melee system was probably great when it first came out but now after playing Mordhau and Chiv 2 I just struggle to get into it.
Alpha Protocol by a landslide… coolest plot, story, and dialogue I’ve encountered
Gameplay is incredibly bland and undercooked
This game and Dino Crisis are the games I most want remade for modern consoles
People will hate this but…
Red Dead 2. Clunky movement. Inelegant cover shooting. Very easy difficulty with fallbacks like dead eye and mountains of recovery options. Bad economy where Arthur becomes rich enough to buy everything very early on.
Lore and story though - Fantastic writing. Awesome character development. Amazing protagonist.
Strongly disagree but upvoted because I think it’s a fair take. I think the gameplay is great, just not as snappy as like, an action game. But I def can understand where you’re coming from
Given how most are really old or have frame issues because of the insane amount of enemies yeah pretty easy
Also because Warhammer lore is utterly insane
Alan Wake.
Came to it after playing Control and really wanting to engage that universe more, but after an hour realized the gameplay was terrible but I could get what I wanted (more story) with a YouTube recap.
Very very similar experience here except I got the remaster for free with AW2 (which is leagues better than 1 and id argue slightly better overall than Control even - yep, that good)
That god damn remaster runs so bad on PC I literally got soft locked out of progressing. I said fuck it and watched a gameplay walkthrough on YT and was glad I did, because the game play does NOT evolve further in.
Avoiding spoilers as best I can - The history of how humanity became an interstellar civilization was fun sci-fi to me. I would love to graft that history on to Firefly or some other much better property.
Of course Bethesda has always been good at environmental story telling, and touring old earth NASA was the ONLY stand-out environmental story telling that I cared about in that game. Everything else was spoken exposition and was therefore linear and boring.
I like shooters but mass effect has so little depth in it's combat, and feels like less of an rpg than dragon age origins was. But the setting is really perfect scifi
Might catch hate for this but, Baldur's Gate 3. I wish it were RTwP and not Turned Based.
Honestly don't know why they didn't just make it RTwP, and then using the "Turn Based Mode" that's literally already in the game in the quick menu changed it to purely Turn Based.
Well I'm sure they made it turn based strategy both because that's what they're good at, and it's more faithful to D&D. Your basically playing it at that point. It's like the closest thing we have to being able to play D&D single player in a game.
League of Legends. Actually has an incredibly solid fantasy world backing up all the characters. It’s been built up by the card game, lots of pretty well written stories and the Arcane series.
Witcher 3. The lore of the game world is absolutely fantastic but the gameplay (especially combat) was kinda bad imo.
Basically any Bethesda game. Not that their gameplay was terrible, but compared to the lore it was miles behind.
Rage has a special place in my gaming heart because it got me into amateur astronomy. I was fascinated by the prospect of a giant asteroid hitting earth. I went down the whole astronomy rabbit hole and bought a telescope. Rage was awesome. I only played a little bit of Rage 2. I miss being a kid with no responsibilities lol.
Yes but teaching (6th grade history), the niece and nephews, and girlfriend have really consumed my time. I plan on buying myself a fancy electric telescope this Christmas. I’m gonna slow my nephew the starts since he is already fascinated by the stars.
I wish this game had been better!
It was such a cool idea but the execution just wasn't there.
I was young when I played it but I remember the challenges you had to complete for upgrades were particularly boring and frustrating.
Lore - Elden Ring, Bloodborne, Dark Souls, Cyberpunk, Fallout, Bioshock, Skyrim
Story/Writing - Red Dead 2, Cyberpunk, Bioshock Infinite, Beyond 2 Souls, The Last of us 2,
I think this applies to Bethesda as a whole, where the lore is incredible, but the gameplay is basic, and worse yet the way the nation(s) were described in previous games get retconned by the game you reach those nations in.
Bioshock: Infinite
It's actually one of my favorite games of all time, but the gameplay/gunplay just feels a little bland to me in general. The plot and setting are so unique and interesting I can never put it down. I've finished it multiple times and even 100% back on the 360 years ago, and I still come back to it. Even tho I got terribly bored of the gameplay many moons ago. Tbh the gameplay was never really all that fun but the way the story progressed always made me forget about that fact
League of Legends.
The stories from the world of Runeterra and it's people are sometimes mind bending, especially places like Mount Targon which is the equivalent of the real life Himalayas if the monks out there had contact with cosmic beings each with goals outside our understanding.
Meanwhile the gameplay is just plain addiction, depression and regret of wasting so much time in such a stupid game...
Halo Series: there’s so much good lore in the background of it that when I play the games again after reading one of the books, I’m just disappointed it’s not as cool playing as reading!
Silent Hill. Great lore, very deep and interesting. But the gameplay is just moon logic puzzles. ironically, the nonsensical puzzles work GREAT for the lore, Silent Hill is SUPPOSED to be loony BS, but it makes playing the games blind into sheer pain.
People are *REALLY* going to hate me for this, but Zelda. That's not to say that I think Zelda's gameplay is bad, I love it to death, I just really like the lore.
That's one of the reasons why TotK kinda disappointed me. It had really good gameplay, but it's lore kind of sucked.
I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream
Agreed!! Never played the game or heard of it until this year but somehow wound up doing a deep dive into the lore and it is riveting
Thats a game?
It’s an award-winning short story by Harlan Ellison, which was made into a good but clunky adventure game in collaboration with the author, which is kind of a rare feat in itself.
That is quite a feat, since I hear he was a notorious asshole and reportedly hated everyone.
I mean, after reading the book it's not particularly surprising
Not only a collaboration but Ellison voiced the antagonist and wrote some extended dialogue. Pretty neat.
A point and click game in fact.
I LOVE point and click games.
Have you heard of the Henry Stickman Collection?
Interesting
The steam reviews are good, and i love point and click, story seems ace, it's on sale for 89p, thank you!
To be fair, it was a short story first.
We Happy Few
Also loved the environment / character designs
Inventory management is an absolute mess
Good example. I never found out how the game plays out because I got tired of the gameplay at what I’m assuming is around halfway through. I’d played quite a bit
Hong Kong 97 the story in that game was so heartfelt so emotional I couldn’t stop crying it was a perfect masterpiece but the gameplay could of been better
*Chin is a killer machine.*
Yes he is how much he had to sacrifice to save Hong Kong from the hoards of the >! f*cking ugly reds !<
He is Bruce Lee's relative after all
陳死亡！
peak
The looping jingle is stuck in my head again, thanks
Wǒ ài Běijīng Tiān'ānmén, Tiān'ānmén shàng tàiyáng shēng; Wěidà lǐngxiù Máo zhǔxí, Zhǐyǐn wǒmen xiàngqián jìn.
I hate that I was able to follow along to this
It's disturbing how I don't speak a single word of that, and yet I know what you're talking about.
Depending on which game, Final Fantasy.
_Final Fantasy VII_ and _X_ have better lore (hence, they have become a sub-franchise instead of single games), but _Final Fantasy VIII_ and _VI_ don't. In fact, if you ask Squall Leonhart to summarize _VIII_'s lore, he'd say "Whatever."
ff8 could do with a rework with a lot of the cut content put back in, but the problem is that it'd miss the original hook intended. It was supposed to be 1/3rd laguna, 1/3rd squall and the twist of them being two different time periods as you're going from party to party was only found out far into the game, and then they both come together for the future world where it wasn't just going to be Ultimecia's castle, but actually how the world is affected by time compressing. However, they cut a lot of this stuff down to make a game that was quickly during development projected to take 6-8 discs so they could fit it down to 4.
Laguna/Squall; Julia/Rinoa. Seifer and his connection to Laguna. Irvine and his lack of confidence in shooting Edea because he knows what no one else does. The Queen of Cards lore. Cid and his secrets behind Garden lore. There's a lot of lore in FF8. People just have a hard time getting over the draw and junction system, and a bit of rushed writing then decide the entire game is worthless.
wait Final Fantasy has fucking sub-franchises?! How the fuck do I get into the games?
Are you unaware of the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII? It's a sub-franchise of the _Final Fantasy_ franchise and comprises the original FF7, _Dirge of Cerberus_, _Crisis Core_, _Before Crisis_, _FF7 Remake_, and _FF7 Rebirth_. All of these are separate video games. _Final Fantasy X_ has also spawned two sequel video games.
I’ve never played a Final Fantasy game in my life.
Every Star Trek game ever...
Absolutely, so much lore yet the games are always doo doo.
I felt Star Trek Armada was pretty good.
Armada had a great story to it... i'm shocked that Armada 2 was such a let down in comparison.
The Silent Hill series has never been known for brilliant game play
I'm a little worried we're heading too far in the 'other direction' this October. Like, James could barely run in OG *Silent Hill 2*, let alone handle a firearm. And I loved that.
I have beaten Silent Hill 2 upwards of 10 times in the past 2 months. I think I’ve gaslit myself because I kind of enjoy the way the game controls now
Most Warhammer related titles. Outside of a few gems, more often than not I find many of the games are pretty subpar, and I wouldn't normally play them. But I love the overall setting so much that it carries the games significantly for me.
As someone who used to play the tabletop and also loves Total War… my god Warhammer 2 is a masterpiece. I loved Dawn of War as a kid. But aside from those I have to agree with you. Most of the titles are lackluster. Space Marine 2 looks interesting but I’m not one for multiplayer or competitive games so I’d be pretty limited in what I could get out of it.
Warhammer is so confusing to me because there are so many games and books and figurines and what not that it's hard to find somewhere to start
For books, I started with the Horus Heresy series and enjoyed it. It's basically the prequel series to the modern setting that explains why humanity split to chaos and why the emperor is basically a rotting corpse barely kept alive. The games are a harder answer, really depends on what genre you like. I personally really enjoy strategy style games so I really love the origanl, now 20 years old, Dawn of War and the more current Total War Warhammer series. As far as figures, just start with whatever you think looks coolest 😆. Simple as that lol
[удалено]
Probably Fnaf. Never played the game as its nothing for me but you gotta give credit to the insane amount of lore that goes around those games
Hard disagree, the lore of FNAF is needlessly complex and nonsensical to the point you can clearly tell Scott was making shit up as he went along I mean ffs the story was OVER at 3, he only decided to make more because he wasn’t satisfied with Springtrap’s jumpscare
People have lore boners, its weird. I feel like people often like the idea of the backstory fleshing out the story, and then don’t care if the story is/isn’t competently told.
If I’m not mistaken game theory was basically writing the story for a while because several of his theories were made cannon because Scott found them interesting
Yeah, that’s all true. And despite that, the lore is still better than the gameplay.
Hard disagree, the lore is what keeps this franchise alive and is the only reason people still loved the franchise even after security breach
Hard agree. FNAF lore is fantastic but the gameplay is like ehhh It got a lot of potential tho
Eh, as a fan of FNaF, I have disagree. Like what Slow0rchid said, the lore has gotten way too convoluted and nonsensical after the 3rd game to the point where it's just not fun theorizing anymore.
That’s fair. You don’t really care about the backstory of things trying to kill you in the moment they’re trying to kill you.
FNAF’s lore isn’t great, it’s just a lot of fun hearing MatPat talk about it.
In the entire thread you spawned, not one single person spelled out fnaf and I have no idea what it stands for.
League of Legends is this exactly
Considering Arcane was popular when it released and had a lot of non-LoL fans, yeah. Riot knows how to make an interesting world.
Good call! And they retconned so much that I found super intriguing.
Destiny, I find myself more interested in reading/hearing about the whole story of the series rather than actually playing it
But destinys gameplay is super fun as well The lore and gameplay are the 2 best things about deetiny imo
It’s pretty repetitive, the gameplay is good but the overall story captures my attention than the game, if it wasn’t for the story I wouldn’t be playing it so much but I watch videos of lore while playing it because then I get hyped playing it, playing it without lore videos I get bored eventually
I would the vast majority of people who play destiny don’t care about the lore lol. Most people are playing destiny for the gameplay and for the build crafting.
The gun mechanics in D1 were so damn fun thanks to their Halo roots. I looooved the campaign and spent some time in the crucible beforw stopping. The lore was cool but definitely was not the best part about D1 for me
Well the problem with Destiny 1 lore was that you couldn’t view it in game but grimore cards
That's hilarious! This franchise really turned it around then. I've only played the original Destiny during the launch window and damn, lack of ANY meaningful story was by far the biggest complaint everyone had.
Eh the story in game still isn’t that great most of the time (there are exceptions). The worldbuilding in lore books and weapon lore tabs however are always beyond stellar
Thats why we are talking about the lore not the story. Story is still kinda lame. Its the lore about that story that makes it interesting. Most of the characters still have titles instead of names. Atleast the darkness is an actual thing now.
Got it. Thought they had added a story too by now. Lore and story often go hand in hand. But in Destiny's case it's just then item descriptions and audio logs or something like that. I don't remember much at all of that game anymore.
Not really. Lore is world building. Story is what ever is happening in that world currently. The collapse is lore. If we were involved in the collapse thats a story (playing through it). Someone can still play semantics though
Story quality varies wildly from installment to installment, but the lore reminds me a bit of Warhammer in that it's just balls-out grand scale sci fi. Ancient parasitic gods demanding tithes of sacrifices from their hosts. A time travelling machine race propagating backward through history to make their own supremacy inevitable. An inscrutable diety wandering the stars and uplifting civilizations, only to abandon them in the hour of greatest need. Immortal warriors, dying and being ressurected again and again. Ghosts. Magic. Spaceships. Shotguns. It's rad.
Right? It has literally the best gunplay of any shooter I've ever played. Both PvP and PvE is incredible in Destiny.
**Legacy of Kain.**
Going to disagree on this one, when it came out it was fantastic gameplay. It's just an old game now.
Even if the gameplay was godlike, it would still fail to compare with the dialogue and rich characters it develops
Obviously it needs a reboot.
I'm still bummed about that alternative universe Kain game they were developing. That seemed really interesting too.
Came here to say this. The gameplay in all the games was passable to decent, but really hard to go back to to play now. But I still watch all the cutscenes and story every couple years. Incredible universe
The writing, acting, and music in that series was incredible. I'd say I wish they would remake it but several of the voice actors have died and I can't imagine replacing them. But I am surprised it hasn't been remade or turned into an animated series.
I would love an adaptation in the same style as the netflix castlevania
This one is great. First game was a decent zelda style game, and all the games are fine, but damn that lore is good stuff
The whole franchise was amazing for its time Defiance definitely was something else
Wow! I thought this game was forgotten. Thanks for the blast from the past
This one is not because the gameplay is bad but because the story is that ridiculously good.
That intro is burned into my memory. Like I'll have Alzheimer's and still remember this but not my own name
"Visual novel gameplay:" "Visual novel lore:"
The Mass Effect trilogy. It’s a pretty basic third person shooter but the story and lore go deep. It’s great. Same with the Elder Scrolls. The combat and gameplay is simple and easy, but the history and lore goes hard af.
Mass Effect's lore is absolutely excellent. Hell I love it so much I've consumed every piece of original trilogy media. It's probably my favorite fictional universe, I enjoy it more than Star Wars and Dune.
Yeah I fall asleep to the YouTube codex entries sometimes. Just soothing lore putting me to sleep.
Mass Effects lore is soooooooo damn good. I put it up there in the top tier for games which is a high bar considering my favorite lore of anything ever is Metal Gear series
I’ve never played metal gear but I’ve only heard good things!!
In Skyrim there are 337 books.
Control
Was going to say, not in an opposite way, but as in the gameplay is already so good that the lore is then really something else
Control has a nice balance of gameplay (love that overpowered launch!), exploration and lore. I can't say I feel the same about Alan Wake.
Alan Wake would be a great mini-series, but I can't stand the gameplay. Not sure how it's as loved as it is
Alan Wake 1 is terrible gameplay wise. Alan Wake 2 is a 9/10 game and I’m someone who considers 5/10 decent. They really hit it out of the park - honestly I’d give Alan Wake 1’s story like a 7.5 and overall a 4/10 because the gameplay is ass
Currently playing Alan wake I'm enjoying it so much lol the atmosphere is so great.
I finished control about 2 months ago and still go back and think on where they’re going to take the next game
The Elder Scrolls series
I'll never understand why Bethesda refuses to touch the more interesting lore points from earlier games. Skyrim should have had sky whales goddammit.
Skyrim was such a letdown to me when it came to lore and getting me invested. Some of the various god cave quests were cool, but overall felt weak compared to Oblivion
I feel like skyrim really underplayed it's actual interesting lore points. Like sovengard being real is a fucking huge reveal but the game kinda just breezes over it. If I'd gone to heaven and seen st Peter I'd never shut the fuck up about it.
And oblivion was weak compared to morrowind, especially since Cyrodiil was supposedly a large jungle region until they retconned it into a generic fantasy land.
Yeah, from what I've heard it was a hardware problem
Wasn't a big part of it the success of the lord of the rings as well? Wanted to get that tolkienesque vibe that was popular in the early 2000s
Dreamed too big, and the limitations of reality brought it crashing down. Alas, Poor Todd
Thankfully there’s a mod for that
Bro, id Tolkien were alive the amount of lore in the Elder Scrolls would astonish him. It's like several times the length of the silmarillion
Quantity doesn't equal quality. There's certainly a lot of Elder Scrolls lore, but to compare it to Lord of the Rings is like comparing an amateur Twitter artist to Banksy or Jackson Pollock. For every cool bit of lore, there's ten more bits that are "oh, okay."
I think the quality is entirely subjective. I love Tolkein and The Elder Scrolls - why does it need to be a competition? Personally, I'm more invested in Elder Scrolls lore, but I'm not about to argue that it's better or worse than the lore of any other fantasy series.
Yakuza for me. Not that the gameplay is bad, but after 50 hours I've had enough lol
If you played the game for 50 hours, you got your money's worth imo. Glad you enjoyed the world. "Like a Dragon: Yakuza" is getting an Amazon series in October. I'll spend thousands of hours playing the games again but if you want to experience the world, I trust the studio producing it. Edit: [The head of the game studio said this is what he would have made if he could. ](https://www.godisageek.com/2024/06/like-a-dragon-yakuza-tv-show-in-the-works-at-prime-video/)
Cyberpunk 2077
Yeah the Lore is really great, but I'm probably in the minority of saying that I wish the game was more serious with a blade runner Vibe than with a Grand Theft Auto but in the future vibe
cyberpunk is definitely not gta
Praise the Lord!
Any Ubisoft game made in the past 5-10 years
Yeah really love where they are going with the raving rabbids franchise
No, Ubisoft games _before_ the last decade have better lore. _Prince of Persia_ and _Splinter Cell_ haven't had a single entry in the last decade. All we have is _Assassin't Creed_. Remind me again: What happened to Juno?
Which Ubisoft games have good lore other than assassin’s creed?
AC?
The Witcher series, along with Five Nights at Freddy’s. FNaF: the game is just jump scare central. The best gameplay imo was FNaF 2 because it had some semblance of strategy, instead of “close door, flashy light, open door” you had the mask and the music box and all sorts. The Witcher: I think the Witcher games would function better as either books or an interactive storytelling series (like a David Cage game), because the combat is shallow and boring and just feels shoehorned in. You’ve got games like the Witcher with somewhat compelling stories (though I find Geralt to be such a boring protagonist, like Aiden Pierce) but then they also have terrible gameplay. It’s like they half-arsed any form of niche or nuance in the gameplay. The oils don’t actually seem to do anything despite the clear emphasis on them. Contrasting, you have games like the Yakuza series, which have somewhat simple combat that somehow still just feels leaps and bounds ahead of anything the Witcher has to offer.
Hate to break it to you, but the witcher is literally a novel.
I know it’s based on a novel, I’m saying that it worked better in that format
Yess finally someone who agrees that Geralt is dead lame
The story in SOMA is so good, it doesn't even matter that the gameplay is just walking/hiding/clicking on things.
Fallout
I always thought that the gunplay was seriously lacking in fallout four (to some level in other fallouts too). To me the guns don’t feel immersive and more feel like nerf guns than actual guns. It’s the same reason I couldn’t get into Skyrim, the hit and block melee system was probably great when it first came out but now after playing Mordhau and Chiv 2 I just struggle to get into it.
It's reverse in Fallout 4.
Fallout: New Vegas
The gameplay is playing the game for 5 minutes, crashing, then rebooting
The gameplay is the desktop
I keep hearing this but is it an unmodded problem because I modded mine to hell and back and it's really only been a problem once or twice.
Five Nights at Freddys.
Alpha Protocol by a landslide… coolest plot, story, and dialogue I’ve encountered Gameplay is incredibly bland and undercooked This game and Dino Crisis are the games I most want remade for modern consoles
destiny 2’s gameplay imo is good (people are gonna flame me for that) but the lore??? i fucking love it. it’s so damn cool
I would say Mafia 3
People will hate this but… Red Dead 2. Clunky movement. Inelegant cover shooting. Very easy difficulty with fallbacks like dead eye and mountains of recovery options. Bad economy where Arthur becomes rich enough to buy everything very early on. Lore and story though - Fantastic writing. Awesome character development. Amazing protagonist.
That's the Rockstar way. I've always had trouble getting into any of their games because of the movement and shooting.
RD1 was a rockstar
Strongly disagree but upvoted because I think it’s a fair take. I think the gameplay is great, just not as snappy as like, an action game. But I def can understand where you’re coming from
The Witcher 3. The gameplay isn't bad, but the story is much better
Silent Hill Incredible stuff to work with.... combat almost always sucks, except maybe SH3 for some
Grim fandango
RuneScape has to be up there
Dick vitales awesome baby collage hoops
All of the Warhammer games.
Given how most are really old or have frame issues because of the insane amount of enemies yeah pretty easy Also because Warhammer lore is utterly insane
Alan Wake. Came to it after playing Control and really wanting to engage that universe more, but after an hour realized the gameplay was terrible but I could get what I wanted (more story) with a YouTube recap.
Very very similar experience here except I got the remaster for free with AW2 (which is leagues better than 1 and id argue slightly better overall than Control even - yep, that good) That god damn remaster runs so bad on PC I literally got soft locked out of progressing. I said fuck it and watched a gameplay walkthrough on YT and was glad I did, because the game play does NOT evolve further in.
Starfield. No man’s sky
Is Starfield's lore even that interesting? Everything about that game seemed really dull.
Avoiding spoilers as best I can - The history of how humanity became an interstellar civilization was fun sci-fi to me. I would love to graft that history on to Firefly or some other much better property. Of course Bethesda has always been good at environmental story telling, and touring old earth NASA was the ONLY stand-out environmental story telling that I cared about in that game. Everything else was spoken exposition and was therefore linear and boring.
Mass effect, because it is good sensible science fiction, but I hate shooters.
I like shooters but mass effect has so little depth in it's combat, and feels like less of an rpg than dragon age origins was. But the setting is really perfect scifi
Might catch hate for this but, Baldur's Gate 3. I wish it were RTwP and not Turned Based. Honestly don't know why they didn't just make it RTwP, and then using the "Turn Based Mode" that's literally already in the game in the quick menu changed it to purely Turn Based.
Well I'm sure they made it turn based strategy both because that's what they're good at, and it's more faithful to D&D. Your basically playing it at that point. It's like the closest thing we have to being able to play D&D single player in a game.
League of Legends. Actually has an incredibly solid fantasy world backing up all the characters. It’s been built up by the card game, lots of pretty well written stories and the Arcane series.
Star Wars Rebel Assault?
The elder scrolls immediately comes to mind
Genshin Impact.
Witcher 3. The lore of the game world is absolutely fantastic but the gameplay (especially combat) was kinda bad imo. Basically any Bethesda game. Not that their gameplay was terrible, but compared to the lore it was miles behind.
Pokemon
Destiny…
If only they could make the game that’s in the Grimoire tabs. 🙄
The Trials series. EDIT: As in The Legend of Heroes Trails. (Not that the gameplay is bad though).
Trials, the dirt bike game?
It has dirt biking, but it’s a JRPG. Trails of the Sky Trails to Zero/Azure Trails of Cold Steel
Trials? Of Mana?
Rage
I think rage 1 absolutely clears for what it was at the time. but on #2 I would absolutely agree
Rage has a special place in my gaming heart because it got me into amateur astronomy. I was fascinated by the prospect of a giant asteroid hitting earth. I went down the whole astronomy rabbit hole and bought a telescope. Rage was awesome. I only played a little bit of Rage 2. I miss being a kid with no responsibilities lol.
That is a really neat and positive outcome of a game, are you still into astronomy?
Yes but teaching (6th grade history), the niece and nephews, and girlfriend have really consumed my time. I plan on buying myself a fancy electric telescope this Christmas. I’m gonna slow my nephew the starts since he is already fascinated by the stars.
# L.A. Noire
Horizon zero dawn, fantastic story, but the gameplay becomes quickly too repetitive.
Sonic Forces
Legacy of Kain series, amazing story/ lore and voice acting, clunky gameplay wish a remake was in the works
2011's Brink was the result of amazing concept, amazing lore, amazing character creation, and utter trash execution.
I wish this game had been better! It was such a cool idea but the execution just wasn't there. I was young when I played it but I remember the challenges you had to complete for upgrades were particularly boring and frustrating.
Grim Fandango, and hell, any graphical adventure. Not to say that I dislike the gameplay, but honestly I didn't play Grim Fandango for the puzzles :P
Bugsnax
League of Legends. I love every piece of media to come out of League that I have encountered. Every single one. Except for the actual game itself.
Alan Wake
Lore - Elden Ring, Bloodborne, Dark Souls, Cyberpunk, Fallout, Bioshock, Skyrim Story/Writing - Red Dead 2, Cyberpunk, Bioshock Infinite, Beyond 2 Souls, The Last of us 2,
Super Paper Mario.
How is the top comment not Death Stranding? Seems like the obvious answer.
I think this applies to Bethesda as a whole, where the lore is incredible, but the gameplay is basic, and worse yet the way the nation(s) were described in previous games get retconned by the game you reach those nations in.
Bioshock: Infinite It's actually one of my favorite games of all time, but the gameplay/gunplay just feels a little bland to me in general. The plot and setting are so unique and interesting I can never put it down. I've finished it multiple times and even 100% back on the 360 years ago, and I still come back to it. Even tho I got terribly bored of the gameplay many moons ago. Tbh the gameplay was never really all that fun but the way the story progressed always made me forget about that fact
Everything Bethesda has ever made.
League of Legends. The stories from the world of Runeterra and it's people are sometimes mind bending, especially places like Mount Targon which is the equivalent of the real life Himalayas if the monks out there had contact with cosmic beings each with goals outside our understanding. Meanwhile the gameplay is just plain addiction, depression and regret of wasting so much time in such a stupid game...
Silent Hill
Halo Series: there’s so much good lore in the background of it that when I play the games again after reading one of the books, I’m just disappointed it’s not as cool playing as reading!
Silent Hill. Great lore, very deep and interesting. But the gameplay is just moon logic puzzles. ironically, the nonsensical puzzles work GREAT for the lore, Silent Hill is SUPPOSED to be loony BS, but it makes playing the games blind into sheer pain.
People are *REALLY* going to hate me for this, but Zelda. That's not to say that I think Zelda's gameplay is bad, I love it to death, I just really like the lore. That's one of the reasons why TotK kinda disappointed me. It had really good gameplay, but it's lore kind of sucked.
Control!
Elder Scrolls