Video Games With Outstanding Story and Game Design
Video games are storytelling media unlike film or prose fiction. The player participates instead of observing. Outcomes are consequential. Gameplay unlocks the story. Difficulty can be an expressive end in itself. The best games are so well-integrated that the boundaries between story and gameplay are indistinguishable. According to a 2025 Gaming Trends Survey by Plarium, a compelling storyline is one of the most important factors for 60.2% of gamers when deciding whether to purchase a single-player game.
Narrative-Driven RPGs as Interactive Cinema
There are some RPGs that will aim for story delivery, perhaps in what can be considered a way that suits a television series. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and Cyberpunk 2077 – the products of CD Projekt Red, are examples of games like this. It is because of their dialogue, character, and story-centric approach.
In terms of dialogue, The Witcher 3 boasts over 450,000 words of spoken lines – more than the total in the Lord of the Rings trilogy combined. Given this number of lines, conversations are not linear and are dependent on Geralt’s relationships, choices, and tone. The quality of the side quests matches the main story in terms of writing quality.
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What distinguishes narrative RPGs from other story games:
- Branching dialogue trees with meaningful consequences.
- Moral ambiguity where clear right answers rarely exist.
- Character relationships that evolve based on accumulated choices.
- Multiple endings determined by decisions throughout the game.
- Worldbuilding through codex entries, environmental details, and overheard conversations.
These games succeed because they treat player agency seriously. Choices made in Act 1 resurface in Act 3. Characters remember insults and kindnesses. The world reacts to the player’s version of the protagonist. If you’re interested in more exciting options, it’s better to open a casino here. For example, after Icecasino login, you’ll find a large library of slot machines. Here, too, every decision is crucial, as it can influence the outcome.
Soulslike Games: Story Through Challenge and Atmosphere
FromSoftware’s Dark Souls series pioneered a radically different storytelling method. These games provide almost no exposition. Cutscenes are rare and cryptic. Dialogue consists of fragmented hints from NPCs who speak in riddles.
However, games such as Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring present very intricate storylines. The players are able to gather all these narratives through item descriptions, environment hints, enemy placement, and building narratives. An old cathedral has its own history through ruined statues, abandoned weapons, and creatures that fill that space.
Let’s look at the details in the table:
| Storytelling Approach | Primary Method | Player Role | Example Games |
| Cinematic Narrative | Dialogue, cutscenes, scripted events | Active participant in drama | Witcher 3, Mass Effect, Cyberpunk 2077 |
| Environmental/Cryptic | Item descriptions, level design, atmosphere | Detective piecing together history | Dark Souls, Elden Ring, Hollow Knight |
| Exploration-Driven | Discovery, audio logs, world details | Curious explorer | Breath of the Wild, Subnautica, Outer Wilds |
| Emergent/Systemic | Player choices, faction dynamics, consequences | Author of personal narrative | Baldur’s Gate 3, Divinity: Original Sin 2 |
The difficulty itself becomes narrative. Repeated deaths against a boss transform victory into genuine achievement. The story of overcoming Ornstein and Smough or Malenia belongs to each player individually. No cutscene can replicate that earned triumph.
Community Lore and Collective Interpretation
FromSoftware games created an entirely new genre of content: lore analysis. YouTube channels and Reddit communities dedicate thousands of hours to piecing together fragmented narratives. VaatiVidya, for example, built a career explaining Dark Souls mythology to millions of viewers. This communal detective work extends the game’s lifespan far beyond the final boss.
The ambiguity is intentional and productive. Director Hidetaka Miyazaki deliberately leaves gaps for player interpretation. Two players can finish Elden Ring with completely different understandings of who the Tarnished truly is or what the Erdtree represents. Neither interpretation is wrong. The narrative becomes personal property rather than delivered content – players own their version of the story because they constructed it themselves through observation and deduction.
Commercial Impact and Player Engagement
This unconventional storytelling approach has translated into remarkable commercial success. According to Statista, Elden Ring reached 30 million units sold globally as of April 2025 – surpassing the entire Dark Souls trilogy’s combined sales of 27 million copies that accumulated over a decade. The game sold 12 million copies in just 18 days after launch, a pace that outstripped every previous FromSoftware release by a wide margin.
Player engagement stats tell us something similarly striking about how this style of narrative resonates with audiences. Studies show 45% of Elden Ring Steam players have over 100 hours in the game – an unusually high retention rate for a single-player experience. Shadow of the Erdtree sold over 10 million copies, and the multiplayer spin-off Nightreign, 5 million units around the time of its release. These figures indicate that cryptic lore and environmental narrative design cultivate avid players who spend potentially hours deciphering lore.
The broader Soulsborne catalog demonstrates consistent growth in this market. As reported by GamesRadar, Dark Souls franchise sales climbed to 37 million units following Elden Ring’s release – a 10 million unit increase driven by players seeking out the genre’s origins. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice exceeded 10 million copies by 2023. Bloodborne, despite remaining a PlayStation exclusive, built a devoted following that continues demanding ports to other platforms years after release.
Open-World Exploration Where the Player Builds the Story
While some games reduce story and emphasize exploration, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild leaves players in Hyrule without any guidance. There is story, of course, but it is found through discovery, not through telling. The world, Calamity Ganon, and the Champions are all there, but they are discovered, not told.
This approach leaves the finding of meaning up to the player to discover on their own. An example of this would be climbing a mountain to discover that there’s a shrine at the top or following the side of a river to learn that it leads to an unseen village.
Elements that make exploration-driven narratives effective:
- Minimal waypoints forcing players to navigate organically.
- Environmental storytelling rewarding careful observation.
- Non-linear discovery allowing personal pacing.
- Mystery that deepens rather than resolves immediately.
- Player journals or notes tracking accumulated knowledge.
Outer Wilds advances this by making knowledge itself the driving force of progression. The solar system resets on a 22-minute clock. Players discover its secrets through observation and experimentation. Knowledge about the world becomes the narrative.
Commercial Validation of Discovery-Based Design
This player-driven exploration model has achieved extraordinary commercial results. According to Statista, Breath of the Wild reached over 33.5 million units sold across Switch and Wii U platforms, making it the best-selling Legend of Zelda title in the franchise’s 38-year history. The game outsold previous record-holder Ocarina of Time by a substantial margin, demonstrating that open-world discovery resonates with contemporary audiences far more effectively than linear progression structures.
The market validation was further solidified by the follow-up Tears of the Kingdom, with 20.6 million copies in under a year – 10 million units in its first three days of release alone. Together, these two exploration-heavy games make up over 40 per cent of all sales ever for the Zelda franchise. The full Legend of Zelda series has now sold over 172 million units worldwide, with the open-world entries from the Switch era accounting for the vast majority of recent growth.
Player-Choice and Emergent Storytelling
Baldur’s Gate 3 won Game of the Year 2023 largely because it respects player agency more completely than almost any RPG before it. Nearly every problem has multiple solutions. NPCs can be persuaded, deceived, killed, ignored, or befriended. The game tracks thousands of variables to create coherent consequences.
Larian Studios built similar systems in Divinity
Original Sin 2, where four-player co-op means each playthrough generates unique stories through collaborative decision-making. Players argue about moral choices in real-time. Betrayals happen between friends, not just scripted NPCs.
Fallout
New Vegas remains a benchmark for faction-based storytelling. The Mojave Wasteland contains multiple groups with conflicting interests – NCR, Caesar’s Legion, Mr. House, independent Vegas. Players choose allegiances through actions rather than dialogue menus. Completing quests for one faction closes doors with others. The ending reflects accumulated choices across dozens of hours.
These systems create emergent narratives – stories that arise from player interaction with game systems rather than authored scripts. A combat encounter gone wrong becomes a memorable disaster. An unexpected NPC survival changes late-game dynamics. The player’s story matters because it genuinely differs from everyone else’s.
Game Design as Narrative Language
The distinction between story and design collapses in well-crafted games. Mechanics communicate meaning. Level design guides emotional beats. Pacing creates tension and release.
Games use multiple design elements to convey narrative without explicit exposition:
- Movement systems. How a character controls reflects their identity. Heavy, deliberate movement suggests weight and burden. Fluid, responsive controls communicate freedom and agency.
- Resource management. Scarcity creates tension and desperation. Abundance enables experimentation and confidence. What the game makes precious tells players what matters in its world.
- Environmental gating. Locked doors, impassable terrain, and ability requirements guide players through story beats in intended sequence while maintaining illusion of freedom.
- Audio feedback. Sound design reinforces emotional states. Quiet footsteps in abandoned halls. Crescendo during boss encounters. Silence after victory. Each sound shapes narrative experience.
- Death and failure states. How a game handles player death communicates its themes. Permadeath emphasizes consequence. Generous checkpoints encourage experimentation. Respawning enemies suggest cyclical time or persistent threat.
Journey tells its entire story without words. The robed figure’s pilgrimage toward a distant mountain gains meaning through traversal – the joy of flight, the fear of darkness, the warmth of encountering another player. The stamina system, the scarf’s growth, the shifting environments all convey narrative progression through play.
Great game design and great storytelling are inseparable because games are their mechanics. A cutscene can be skipped. Dialogue can be ignored. But the way a character moves, the feedback of combat, the rhythm of exploration – these elements persist throughout play. They communicate constantly. The best games ensure that communication serves the story they want to tell.