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Literary AAA games

Deleted member 8861

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What AAA games out there still stand as examples of thoughtful, deep writing in games?

The kind of characterization and storytelling you can put under close scrutiny and come away having learned something or gained some insight.

AAA games have to be broadly marketable and provide a large amount of content due to their pricing, which usually puts them at odds with telling a very deep story.

Which games make the cut?

(I realize "literary" is a loaded term, especially in the sense that a lot of noteworthy writing in games would be considered "genre fiction" and dismissed, but I hope the body of this post makes what I'm looking for clearer.)
 
super-famicom

super-famicom

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Oct 26, 2017
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Funyarinpa said:
What AAA games out there still stand as examples of thoughtful, deep writing in games?

The kind of characterization and storytelling you can put under close scrutiny and come away having learned something or gained some insight.

AAA games have to be broadly marketable and provide a large amount of content due to their pricing, which usually puts them at odds with telling a very deep story.

Which games make the cut?

(I realize "literary" is a loaded term, especially in the sense that a lot of noteworthy writing in games would be considered "genre fiction" and dismissed, but I hope the body of this post makes what I'm looking for clearer.)
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Bloodborne.

Sure, a lot of the story comes from lore gleaned from reading item descriptions, mysterious conversations with NPCs, and very good use of environmental storytelling, but there isn't another AAA game that has deep lore like Bloodborne.
 
Asbsand

Asbsand

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A lot. Latest one I played was Jedi: Fallen Order. A good character-driven "doesn't need to be more than it is" ordeal about overcoming guilt and learning to trust after being burned.

As for more obviously literary games:

The Last of Us
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
Mass Effect 1
Bloodborne
LA Noire
NieR Automata
NieR
Metal Gear Solid trilogy (excludes 4 and 5 for lack of quality in that regard)
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (ish)

The examples don't always perfect their craft but you can't say they were primarily built to be dumb action or entertainment first. They all have lofty ambitions about what they do with world context and character and have something they say that is applicable and reflective of the world we live in. I didn't post anything I can't explain if you ask me.
 
elenarie

elenarie

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Deus Ex Mankind Divided explored discrimination in a fascinating and thought-provoking way.

Quantum Break tried to collapse our minds inside out with its tangled narrative and flow of time.

Witcher 3 broke hearts by putting a dark twist on love, companionship, poverty and fatherhood.

Dragon Age Inquisition proved that hope and friendship can be found even in the darkest of times.

Wolfenstein 2 showed us the horrors of hatred and humanity's drive to destroy itself.

And many more.
 
Asbsand

Asbsand

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super-famicom said:
mysterious conversations with NPCs, and very good use of environmental storytelling, but there isn't another A
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I think you undersell it by calling it mysterious NPC conversations. I know you're just sitting through the list of stuff but to others I do wanna say it isn't just "Here's a mishmash story BUT THE LORE IS INCREDIBLE!" It is everything in the game but its combat and a handful of game/story segregations that are literary. The NPCs also bounce off the same implied events you see in the lore. In fact the lore comes from it all. Items are real things you find that contain context and information about where it came from, and NPCs are just as informative and informed of the world that surrounds them.

But the true literacy is more of a poetic fare. At its core it is a lovecratian, gothic horror mystery that boils down to: "the darkness of man". What are the things that make us dark inside? That is superficially exemplified with beasts but underlying it it is a tale of the madness of science, selfish wants, schisms and so on.

The theme of science is almost the centerpiece by the end, and the madness of it is what is held to scrutiny by the writing. Why do we pursue truth about our own metabolism? How far do humans go before they undo themselves to prove a belief? The whole reason the world in BB transitioned from humanity into beasthood is because someone dug too deep into forbidden knowledge, and started operating on themselves with unknown tissue. The plot has a MacGuffin which is the ancient, cursed blood, and it just about ruined everything once people with power-hungry ambitions started theorizing its use.

There are great themes in that about what the limits of humanhood is and how we are grounded in the reality we face.
 
ThreepQuest64

ThreepQuest64

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Red Dead Redemption 2. There are just so many topics present in so many different ways in regards of characters, nature, society, government, culture, death, life, America. And due to its sheer scale these topics aren't only handled with one or two sentences but sometimes entire missions with minute long dialogs (let alone the directing and camerawork in cutscenes.) The same goes for many games though.

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice (greatly character-driven)
The Last of Us (also mainly character-driven)
A Plague of a Tale (more emphasis on plot than TLoU but still mainly character-driven; arguably not a AAA game but it sure has a AAA look)
Any Remedy game, from Max Payne to Control.
The Witcher series for sure.
Dragon Age series (while Origins is hugely plot-driven, part two focuses more on a character-narrative)
Legacy of Kain series.
Deus Ex series.
 
Lork

Lork

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W8ggTal.jpg
 
Strings

Strings

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Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions is the only thing I can think of.

Not sure if Tactics Ogre can be considered AAA, but it definitely has the chops too.
 
Mr.Deadshot

Mr.Deadshot

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Oct 27, 2017
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God of War, Quantum Break, Death Stranding and Horizon Zero Dawn are my favs this gen. Great settings, characters and stories all around.
 
RAWcolour

RAWcolour

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Dec 3, 2018
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If you try to draw parallels to literary genres, I believe Persona 4 is way better than most young adult novels and I wish I had played it as a teenager.
 
purseowner

purseowner

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Fantastic idea for a thread.

The Bioshock series, with some mostly ludonarrative caveats.
 
Cyberclops

Cyberclops

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Quantum Break has a really good time travel narrative (even if the overall story is a little underwhelming for me). Its biggest detriment is that some of the holes in the timeline are only filled in through emails and collectibles, of which there are a lot. I've been contemplating just reading the novelisation of the story for a while now.
 
alexiswrite

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Oct 27, 2017
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None come to mind if we're talking about the actual analogues to literary books. Especially not something like red dead redemption 2 or The last of us 2, these are super pulpy pieces of genre fiction. If you're talking about literary games Kentucky route zero, or disco Elysium maybe. Definitely nothing AAA comes to mind.
 
Xeontech

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This is going to sound insane, but Destiny.

Once you start to follow the lore, it becomes a rabbit hole of magnificent proportions.
 
dskzero

dskzero

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Xeontech said:
This is going to sound insane, but Destiny.

Once you start to follow the lore, it becomes a rabbit hole of magnificent proportions.
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This is world building though, not narrative.

Quantum Break, The Last of Us, the first Bioshock are all good examples. Gone Home (really), The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, Narcosis (SOMA is probably up there too, but it's a bit too navel gazing IMO), What Remains of Edith Finch and The Stanley Parable are good examples outside the more pulp fiction kinda genre.

I'm sure there are more though.
 
Kurtikeya

Kurtikeya

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FaulPern said:
I would look at Watch Out For Fireballs! and Cane and Rinse book club style podcasts to see for accessible "games crit" on a variety of different games.

Writing is important but a lot of other parts of game design and development are too.
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Cane and Rinse is amazing and I'm glad to see it get a shoutout.

Dark Souls.


Mass Effect.


The Last of Us.

www.critical-distance.com

The Last of Us

Critical Distance is proud to present this Critical Compilation of Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us, brought together by Dan Parker. Dan is a videogame critic, socialist organizer, and budding li…
www.critical-distance.com www.critical-distance.com

Assassin's Creed series. Too lazy to find substantial pieces but you can dovetail into architecture and history, among others.

Nier Automata, but it raises more queries and themes than it dares to actually substantiate.

Shadow of the Colossus

www.eurogamer.net

The question of fidelity and Shadow of the Colossus

Editor's note: Once a month we're lucky enough to be graced by the presence of Gareth Damian Martin, editor of Heteroto…
www.eurogamer.net www.eurogamer.net

Silent Hill 2.


Bloodborne.

killscreen.com

Hidetaka Miyazaki's transcendent quest for beauty in Bloodborne

The obsessions of an artist.
killscreen.com

BioShock.


Metal Gear Solid.


Had problems with it, but Death Stranding.


Not sure if AAA, but Control.

 
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JB2448

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BorkBork said:
If not using an industry's definition of an AAA game but my own, I would say Mother 3.

Mother 3: A Literary Video Game
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Jaq'or said:
Came in here to post this. It's almost more of a narrative experience than a traditional game.
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This is the one. Absolutely true in that the more you think of it, the deeper it becomes.

"The more you think about it, the greater Mother 3 will become."

Cactuar said:
Xenogears.

Xenogears_box.jpg


Stand tall and shake the heavens.
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Also a great choice. The Xeno series tackles things like dissociative identity disorder with an intimacy missing from many other forms of media when trying to portray rarities in mental health.
 
Mentalist

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Legacy of Kain series (sans Blood Omen 2, because it struggles to fit the story).

Squeenix should re-release it as an audiobook if they don't know what to do with the license.
 

Deleted member 679

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Learned something about what, exactly? Myself? Then I guess Persona 4 is the one game I can name, but it's not exactly a AAA production. So none?

But then again, I didn't really learn anything about myself when reading Fevre Dream, but it's a great book. I did learn some things about the US, I guess, but it's mostly things that I imagine are incredibly obvious to any american child.

I think The Last of Us has fantastic writing, but I'm not sure if I'd necessarily call it deep, for example. It's the kind of thing I'm more impressed by the quality of the writing than what it's trying to say, the overall message.

I suppose a film comparison would be something like La La Land, which is just damn good filmmaking, not necessarily a deep character study that will change your life. But it's not any lesser because of it.

There's only so many life changing experiences a person can have through fiction. At some point you have a pretty good idea of who you are, and any character defining message a story can convey is something you've seen a million times already.
 
misho8723

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Witcher games - but since you are asking about AAA games, then from all the Witcher games only Witcher 3 is a AAA game
BioShock games - mostly the first and second one
Spec Ops the Line - but that's a more AA game than AAA I guess
 
Deer

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AAA? Dunno.

The only games that come to mind with the word 'literary' are Mother 3 and Disco Elysium.

Maybe Planescape? Too long since I played that to really have a clear picture of it.
 
iksenpets

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Even most story-heavy games feel like they lift the vast majority of their storytelling tropes from cinema instead of literature. (Though how meaningful that distinction is, I dunno) Like, the Naughty Dog games are like that. Even The Last of Us, where The Road is a clear inspiration, feels like that inspiration is filtered through the film adaptation more than the book. Mass Effect, Metal Gear, all pretty clearly aspiring more to be seen as like a movie than like literature.

Witcher 3 and RDR2 feel like at the very least they conceive of themselves as novelesque more than cinematic. The From games are literary in that Tolkienesque way of of lore and made up histories and all that, but would probably get all the same objections to their "literariness" that Tolkien gets in a lot of literary circles.
 
Asbsand

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elenarie said:
Dragon Age Inquisition proved that hope and friendship can be found even in the darkest of times.
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That's a factor but even moreso Inquisition is a historical examination of faith shown in a fantastical context.

DA:I got way too much scrutiny over its lacking narrative structure and mediocre "zones" when the central narrative has a consistent focus on what religion means, and what it is that makes people believe in messiah figures. There's some truly deep conversations throughout the game where each companion acts as a foil to the world-state and the state of faith in people. It starts with a premise that shakes and redefines the myths the folks of the world believed in, and it then goes on to ruminate about those things.

Truly a credit to David Gaider, the former Lead Writer of that franchise who had this in mind when he wrote for it. He did forget other things like making the Hero's Journey more satisfying by giving the villain more exposure and intimidation-factor, he even admitted he wished to change that if he could, but the core focus in the game is truly literary and inspired by real religous history.
David Gaider said:
"We didn't want to force players into the mindset that their characters must be faithful or become faithful in the course of the story – not everyone's going to think that's fun, and it would also fly in the face of the ambiguity we've built up in Dragon Age's systems of faith. So, for those people, we wanted to provide the ability to question what was going on and maintain a healthy level of cynicism and that this would be okay. On the other hand, we also didn't want to shoot down the idea of faith as a positive thing. It would be a very easy thing to present faithful people as being gullible dupes, or suggest that faith itself serves no real purpose."


"We thought it would be interesting to allow the player the possibility of exploring and embracing faith in the game," he says, "and not be punished for doing so." That sounds about as holy as any endeavor gets.
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Side notes: The game also tackles LGBT, gay acceptance and transgender acceptance, and not just as a "Oh this character is gay" and "oh this character is trans, accept it!" but it deals with some of the issues associated with coming out, either in a romantic or platonic context depending on what you pursue. That's also very interesting amidst all the strict religious views of people in that world, although they don't mix those two themes too much.

But of course. Gamers and RPGCodexers just wanted DA: "Lord of the Rings" Origins and were pissed the game wasn't cool enough.
 
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Ultimate Bear Cub

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It's amazing what the difference one letter can make in a word. I read the title almost too quickly.

I'm going with The House in Fata Morgana.

The script is very long and involved with multiple stories tied together. It also got me thinking about a lot of themes due to the tragic consequences of human behaviour. I don't think I've "played" a game that was so much like a novel before.

Edit: I guess this isn't a AAA game by the OP. Never mind.
 
jph139

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I don't think any have, still. The pressures of creating a fun-to-play game and the pressures of getting a return on investment makes it tough to create a game that's thematically coherent, never mind "of literary value" in the sense the characters, plot, and narrative are worth talking about.

I do think the original Bioshock, and its twist, is really inspired, if maybe kind of gimmicky.

The Dragon Age series is willing to create a cast that's challenging and often unlikable, which I really appreciate.

I'm trying to think of a AAA game with a good script but really can't. They're all kind of derivative and predictable.
 
OP
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alexiswrite said:
None come to mind if we're talking about the actual analogues to literary books. Especially not something like red dead redemption 2 or The last of us 2, these are super pulpy pieces of genre fiction. If you're talking about literary games Kentucky route zero, or disco Elysium maybe. Definitely nothing AAA comes to mind.
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Those are more in-line with the kind of thing I'm looking for, yes.

I'm looking for something more precise than 'good writing for what the game's trying to do', I guess-- but it's really hard to express. The closest thing I have is 'games that would be literary fiction rather than genre fiction', but that doesn't work perfectly either (especially because, well, the distinction isn't without its problems, ideologically speaking).

Thanks for all the responses so far!
 

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I'm not sure 'literary' is the right word. There's definitely some strong writing to be found in the AAA market, but literary is something quite different - more of a 'games as art' type of argument, but I'm not sure the AAA market is ever likely to get behind it.
 
Kurtikeya

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Are there some books or movies that come to mind that may clarify what you're looking for, OP?
 
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