#Story Rich Games

[nerdsleaze]

Stray Gods: Orpheus

NEW DLC for Stray Gods hitting PC on June 27th, 2024. Coming soon for consoles.

About Stray Gods: Orpheus DLC

Experience 6 brand new original songs, where each decision changes the song and the story. Composed by Austin Wintory, with lyrics by Simon Hall (Tripod), Montaigne (Jess Cerro) and new addition Tom Cardy (Red Flags, Artificial Intelligence), SG: Orpheus has hours of interactive music for you to explore again and again.

When the curtain has fallen and the show is over, who do you go home as? Choose to reject, embrace, or rewrite the stories the world expects of you. Is the mortal world ready for the return of Ancient Greece’s most infamous bard?

Source: nerdsleaze.com

Stray Gods: Orpheus Stars

Anthony Rapp (RENT, Star Trek: Discovery), Erika Ishii (Dimension 20, Worlds Beyond Number) and written by David Gaider, Stray Gods: Orpheus is a comedic feature length experience that history buffs, hopeless romantics, and rock stars alike can enjoy.

[fogaminghub]

🎉 Master "Polite Society, Valentine Style" in RDR2! 🎮

Join Arthur and Uncle on an epic journey to Valentine with our detailed guide! Learn how to tackle the mission's challenges like a pro and earn that coveted Gold Medal! 🏅

[thomasedmund]

A Deep Dive "Inside"

Hope you’re not hydrophobic (well thalassophobia), claustrophobic, or huddleophobic The meaning of Playdead’s Inside. byu/Phormicidae inGames I originally played this game over the 2020 lockdown, basically straight after working through Playdead’s previous indie hit Limbo (another very dark game with deep story/ludo-narrative) but still find myself sometimes thinking about it still. I’ve…

[beobraed]

i'm obsessed with this one!

[bongosinferno]

A devastating and confusing thing about the Fallout setting, when you explore the pre-war aspects, is what the creators think about pre-war America. In the first games we only get hints of the pre-war world, but they seem to be some sort of wild fascist nation invading Canada. In Fallout 1, the first thing we're introduced to of the pre-war society is seeing a soldier shoot civilians and laughing.

Now, for the first 2 games and New Vegas we don't really know much. What we know is that there's a fascist military group known as the enclave who were a sort of US deep state even before the war, and that the government teamed up with corporate interests to preform vaguely MKULTRA-ish experiments with the Vaults. Basically, the government was an extreme version of the 50s American jingoism and McCarthyism.

This is well and dandy, I guess issues come up more when we get to the later games, especially 4, where it seems like none of this extreme plotting and societal civil unrest which would exist is seen. The society as presented in 4 also seems quite progressive, gay people are featured in the opening, and none of the baggage of say, civil rights not existing are included. Now on a baseline, I don't want settings to be more conservative, homophobic and sexist etc., but it becomes a very confusing setting when it's displayed both as this jingoist extreme thing with fascist tendencies aswell as a progressive place where everyone is seemingly equal. If you're focusing on the 50s as your setting, and American nationalism in the 50s, then you can't have McCarthyism spoofs and anti-communism as a societal paranoia norm while also general equality is the norm without misunderstanding why McCarthyism and nationalist jingoism is bad. A massive harm done in anti-communist paranoia is how it degrades and vilifies any progressive movements (women's rights, civil rights, homosexuality) as being morally un-American and therefore connected to communism. To ignore this just makes any critique of MacCarthyism and jingoism weird!

Basically, pre-war America in Fallout 4 becomes this both sides thing where America is both pure and equal and white fences in every instance that we see as the player (the intro), while also supposedly being this dystopic MacCarthyist hellscape that's broadcasting gladly about their war crimes in Canada, and wants to root out communism. I guess the only fix for this issue without getting into the fine print like they had to do is just not to focus too much on the pre-war world.

[egophiliac]

I've been following since the pony days, and even though I know nothing about TWST, I still like reading the funny comics you do about the anime Disney boys c:

I do miss Tim tho :(

thank you! :D :D :D I have NO idea how my posts must come off if you have zero knowledge of Twst (aside from giving an extremely biased view of what it actually is about) (guiltily stops drawing Lilia for thirty seconds). but I appreciate that people still find joy in them anyway!

and Tim still shows up every once in a while! perhaps even...somewhat recently? :)

[artsekey]

A Spectacular, Spooky Spectacle!

I feel like I always preface these little game recommendations with, 'I'm not a gaming blog, but...', so I'll spare you this time.

(This post is not in any way sponsored-- I just like highlighting games that really knock it out of the park!)

Beacon Pines is a well-paced choose-your-own-adventure game with a compelling narrative that delivers at every turn. You step into the shoes of 12 year old Luka only a few months after his mother goes missing. Armed with nothing but the help of his good friend Rolo, the sly wit of his newest neighbor Beck, and the power of Charms, it's up to him to unearth the truth behind their quaint town... and save it from catastrophic ruin.

Without spoiling anything, Beacon Pines is gameplay light. Instead, it takes it's cues from the visual novel genre... with a twist. The story unfolds as a narrator guides you through the various chapters, and through your journey you'll encounter branches where one word makes all the difference. That's where you come in! Using the collection of terms you pick up by exploring the world, you can radically alter the course of fate. You'll rarely get everything right on your first try, but don't worry-- even failure is rewarded with new clues, new threads of the mystery, and new hooks that will draw you further into the story.

Sitting at a runtime of 5-7 hours, Beacon Pines is short but satisfying. The art is bright, fun, and well-rendered. The characters are all well written, and the music perfectly encapsulates whatever mood the story demands-- whether it's the comfort of a slow morning or a warning of danger in the dark.

However, the thing that really sets Beacon Pines apart from other visual novels is the writing! The mystery is a fun romp that keeps you guessing, the "multiple paths" mechanic is executed so well that you never really feel like you've made a bad choice, and best of all, the characters and their interactions feel sincere. I found myself smiling, laughing, sometimes stunned silent, sometimes teary-eyed... Though the game is short, the world is just deep enough for the story and it's characters to swim.

Beacon Pines is really just... sweet and genuine. I think that's the best way to describe it. If you need something to whittle away a few hours and get away from it all and like story-driven games, give Beacon Pines a go! It was recently on sale for $4.00, but it usually retails for $20.00.

For reference, other games I love that I'd put in a similar category (note, not the same-- I'm mostly looking at high-quality narrative games here! I'm providing this so you can decide if my taste aligns with yours!):

Firewatch

Oxenfree

Disco Elysium

TellTale Games (Tales of Monkey Island, Tales from the Borderlands, etc)

Inside

Night in the Woods

Slay the Princess

[alicentflorent]

I didn’t sit here for years tryna stay calm and silent while listening to your bad takes on gale (who grew up oppressed, in poverty and then witnessed his entire district getting wiped out then rightly went to fight in the rebellion because it was his inlg chance of tearing down the system the wanted him and his family dead) being a “terrorist war criminal who is single handedly responsible for killing innocent people including prim and who is the REAL villain of the hunger games” just for y’all to turn and start stanning and defending actual facist dictator and child trafficker Coriolanus Snow because you saw a young hot version of him.

[where-the-wind-travels]

pb in 2022: "this chapter contains discussions of sexual assault which we are aware might be triggering to some, so we added an option to skip over the dialogue and only mention the relevant details. feel free to skip over this scene if you feel most comfortable doing so, you matter."

pb in 2024: "omg a love interest that thinks you saying no to them is a turn on (and there's no option at all to be concerned or squicked out, only to tease them for it) 🥰 isn't that so hot??? <3"

[arcadebroke]

Dungeons of Hinterberg

[yellowocaballero]

Been a fan of your fics for YEARS. I was just telling my friend how despite how much I read fics I never actually love them, with some of your fics (especially TMA) as the exception. Felt the need to reread some of them and saw you reblogged some ISAT fanart. So. Any thoughts on ISAT you'd like to share?

Hope you have a wonderful day!! So happy I found your fics again!!

I avoided answering this for a while because I was trying to think of a way to cohesively and coherently vocalize my thoughts on In Stars and Time. I have given up because I don't want to hold everybody here all day and I have accepted that my thoughts are just pterodactyl screeching.

I love it so much. I have so much to say on it. It drove me bonkers for like a week straight. I have AUs. It's absolute Megbait. They're just a little Snufkin and they're having the worst experience of anybody's life. Ludonarratives my fucking beloved.

I am going to talk about the prologue.

The prologue is such a fascinating experience. You crack open the game and immediately begin checking off all of the little genre boxes: mage, warrior, researcher, you're the rogue...some little kid who's there for some reason...alright, you know the score. You're in yet another indie Earthbound RPG, these are your generic characters, let's get the ball rolling.

Except then you realize that these characters are people. You feel instantly how you've entered the game at its last dungeon, at the end of the adventure. They have their own in-jokes, histories, backgrounds, adventures. They get along well and they're obviously close, but not in a twee or unrealistic way. They have so much chemistry and spirit and life. I fell in love with them so quickly.

But Sif doesn't. Sif kind of hates them, because they will not stop saying the same damn thing. They walk the same paths, do the same things, make the same jokes, expect Sif to say the same lines. They keep referencing a Sif we do not see, with jokes we never see him make and heroic personality he never shows - they reference a Sif who is dead - and Sif can't handle that, so he kills them too.

They become only an exercise in tedious frustration. Sif button mashes through their dialogue, Sif mindlessly clicks the same dialogue options, Sif skips through the tutorial, Sif blows through the puzzles. Sif turns their world into a video game. Sif is playing a generic RPG. Sif forgets their names. They are no longer people with in-jokes, histories, backgrounds, adventures. They're the mage, the warrior, the researcher, and...some random kid.

I did not understand the Kid's presence at first. I had no idea what they contributed to the game. They didn't do anything. As a party member in a video game, they're a bit useless. Why is the Kid there?

Because Sif's life isn't a video game. Because the kid isn't 'the kid'. They're Bonnie. Bonnie, who the party loves. Why is Bonnie there? Because they love them. There is no room for Bonnie in the boring RPG that Sif is playing. And then you realize that Sif is wrong, and that they've lost something extremely important, and that they'll never escape without it.

Watching the prologue before watching ISAT gave ISAT the most unique air of dread and horror, because you crack open ISAT and you see the person Sif used to be. You realize that Sif used to be a person. Sif used to be the person who made jokes, who gave real smiles, who interacted with the world as if they are a part of it. And you know you are sitting down to watch Sif lose everything that made them a person, to lose everything that made them a member of this world, and turn them into a character in a video game who doesn't understand the point of Bonnie at all.

At the climax of the game, when the others realize that something is deeply wrong and that Sif physically cannot tell them, they realize that there is nothing they can do. So Bonnie declares snacktime. And for the first time they have snacktime.

What is snacktime? Classic JRPGs don't have snacktime. There's literally no point to a snacktime - not in a video game, and not in Sif's terrible life. It's not fixing this, because nothing can fix this. But Bonnie gives Sif a cookie and Sif eats it.

It's meaningless. It's a cutscene. It didn't save Sif and it didn't change a thing. It will make no difference in the end.

But it did make the difference. It made all of the difference in the world. Bonnie is a character who you really don't understand the point of before you realize that Bonnie was the entire point.

ISAT is about comfort media. Why do we play the same video games over and over again? Why do we avoid watching the finale of our favorite shows? What is truly comforting: a story with no conflict, or a story where you always know what is about to happen? Do you want to live in a scary, uncontrollable world, or do you want to play Stardew Valley? Do you want a person or a character?

When I beat Earthbound for the first time (and if you don't know, the prologue/ISAT battle system is just Mother) and watched the ending cutscene where the characters part ways and say goodbye...I felt a little bit sad. I wanted them to be together forever. But that's something only characters could ever be.

[mrporg]

Signalis is a truly weird and scary game. It is however beautiful and it has wonderful lore.

Imagine a world where humanity has conquered the solar system and is divided into 2 opposing factions at war with one another. One is mostly unknown, the other is what would happen if the DDR (East Germany) had become a full communist dictatorship powerhouse on steroids. Sprinkle on top of that a caste of biomechanical individuals who are tasked with both keeping order and doing menial work in a very codified society.

A nightmare to be sure, but a beautiful one.

The story itself starts with you playing as Elster, who is one of those biomechanical persons called replikas. You are looking for your human partner, in a mining facility where things seemingly went very very wrong after they dug too greedily and too deep. After a while it takes a really weird turn and I'm not too sure what to make of it.

Spoiler alert, it's a tragic love story with no happy ending, sorry to disappoint.

However, I don't want to talk about the story for once, but about the replikas, who are nothing short of fascinating. Each model line is derived from an original human and has inherited some of their traits and personality. Within a line, they are usually assigned to the same kind of tasks. Because of personality disorders issues which seem to partly come from imperfect duplication technology, a very big part of managing replikas consists in placing them in known safe (for their issues) situations and "anchoring" them through various means (music, caring for plants, alone time, …) to stabilize their emotions.

For instance, Kolibri units work best as a group when they can feel part of a whole. They talk about "singing in unison". On the other hand, Adler units are loners who only need to have a strong emotional attachment to the Falke unit in charge of the place.

Conversely, replikas also inherit trauma from their initial source. For instance, Elster units are described as stoic and reserved, best left alone. But it is also noted that talking to them about the war will destabilize them as their neural patterns originate from a late soldier.

Earlier I said that something went very wrong in this facility, and indeed, most replikas have "degraded". As a result, they have become very violent and will usually attack you on sight.

Credit: /u/Likopinina

Elster units have a height of 1.78m (5'10"), so you are not small. However, when you are facing Mynah (2.6m / 8'6"), Falke (2.5m / 8'2") or Storch (2.4m / 7'10") units, who all are very intent on terminating you with extreme prejudice…

Well, like I said, it's a scary game. But one I will be thinking about for a long time I'm sure.

Oh by the way, all the replika models are named after birds in German, how cool is that? :D

One last note: for some reason the fandom for this game is super horny, so remember that if you want to dig in. You've been warned ;)

[luminouslumity]

Time to use this meme again!

[greenerteacups]

Hi GT,

Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but I absolutely love the recs you've given (you've introduced me to tomione, and I love it!) and I was wondering if it's possible to give you some recs in return? There are some books and fics that definitely have dramione / got vibes, and I was wondering if I could share them with you!

So glad you've enjoyed them! Feel free to rec me anything you want. I've read most of the classic recs in terms of fic and adjacent content (Cruel Prince et al), but I'll try anything that's well-written. My tastes run towards weird and/or audaciously creative stuff, and I can forgive a lot of weaknesses in plot on the grounds of (1) ambition or (2) character work. My turnoffs are instalove, protagonists who can't fail, and most Y/A (I'm not a hater, I swear, I just need characters who can say "fuck" when their leg gets chopped off.)

I'm also a fan of weird and fucked-up dynamics.(Wuthering Heights was my favorite book for a while, and as a teenager I wrote an AU in which the book ends on a long sex scene where Heathcliff fucks Cathy's ghost and then immediately gets murdered by Catherine 2.) Obviously, I am very normal.

[moiraimyths]

Before we call anon rude because let’s see it from their perspective, imagine getting an entire feast to eat. That can be pretty hard to start with so much that’s going on, but if they start with one thing they know they’ll like (aka one character they like) that can be the start for them leaping to other characters to finish the story and the bigger story. I struggle the same way to start book series if I don’t have at least one character that drives me to read it, it’s all about what can be the hook to push them through. Sounds like the anon is neurodivergent (just a guess) so they might genuinely not see it as rude and see it as a solution to even play the game to start with.

Btw absolutely adore the game, the complex and rich characters making them all so unique is amazing. The art is so pleasing to the eyes I love it!! I’m waiting for it all to get out at once so I don’t get too impatient. Shae however interests me the most, which routes will have the most lore for them? Will there be routes that give more lore in general based on decisions you make or do they all share the same amount? (I mean general lore not just Shae lore)

Apologies; we are not trying to accuse any asker of being rude! We are simply explaining our perspective as the developers / are trying to broadly encourage folks to dip their toes into other areas of the story outside of the main route(s) they're interested in, especially considering some routes will be made available sooner than others, and these other routes will likely contain additional scenes/lore of everyone's fave(s) regardless! We want to give each main cast member an equal amount of love (and lore) regardless of their overall popularity, so our goal is not to tut-tut anyone for having strong preferences for one character over the others, but rather to explain that you may be surprised by how much *more* you learn about your preferred characters in the other routes. That's all!

For Shae... Well, they were a foot soldier for one of the worst periods of the War. Lore wise, any other story that touches on the War will likely have content relevant to them and their experiences. ^^

[courseyoulovemeyoudontknowme]

Wreck-It Ralph (2012, Rich Moore)

11/06/2024