(light airy music)

Today on Game Life, it's our top five games

with stories in them.

I do like stories.

Don't you?

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That's right you are watching the all new

Game Life podcast in our brand new studio.

So here's the thing.

It is two months, almost two months out

from the release of Bioseshock Infinite.

And man, I am still thinking about it.

And I really wanted to discuss it with you today,

Peter Rubin, but for some reason,

(sighs)

you haven't finished Bioseshock Infinite yet.

I'm taking my sweet, languorous time with it is why.

Oh?

But. But.

While I haven't finished Bioseshock Infinite

and thus we cannot speak about Bioseshock Infinite

for fear of spoiling me to the experience,

it did put us in mind of the roll of story

in video games.

So we present to you,

our top five favorite stories in video games.

(zapping)

Now before I get into this,

I actually wanna make a quick distinction

and that is between story and writing.

Obviously, writing has gotten so incredible in recent years.

So much of that is studioses and developers

placing a premium on writing,

bringing in big name writers,

but story to me is a different beast.

It's a combination of world building,

Sure.

and dialog, and characterization and just--

You can have a great story without saying a word, right?

It's not necessarily about writing lines of dialogue.

It's funny you say that because my number five

is actually a tie between Machinarium and Limbo.

Now, these are two very small games.

Limbo was a downloadable that started on Xbox Live Arcade,

and Machinarium was a PC and an ioses title.

Both were immersive moving experiences

that didn't need a word of dialogue

to get their point across.

Funny that's your number five

because my number five is something

with nothing but dialogue.

My number five is Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem

for the Nintendo Game Cube.

I think that it needs to be mentioned here

because I think it's a very underrated game

in what it did with it's story.

You played as like 12 different characters.

It was a sort of an ode to Lovecraft,

this sort of Cthulhu style horror story

that, I mean, I don't think anybody

had really ever experienced anything like this

on consoles at that moment.

That's a fair point, and for number four,

in a similar, kind of contextual vein,

I wanna talk about a game that kind of redefined

what story could do.

And so my number for is Telltale Games, Walking Dead saga

from last year.

That's just your number four?

I think if it were an original IP,

I might rank it much higher,

but this was a licensed property.

This is something that was already

at the forefront of pop culture,

so it was already enough in the zeitgeist

that this was almost an incremental change

rather than an exponential one.

But what it managed to do in the emotional impact

of a video game, I think was unparalleled.

You know what, we'll talk a little bit more

about The Walking Dead later then won't we?

I have a feeling we will.

I think so.

My number four is actually the game Portal.

A lot of the story of Portal was kind of like

in the background of Portal the entire time.

You know, you really had to like stretch your brain

to kind of figure out what was going on

because there was only one character in Portal, GLaDOS,

who ever actually spoke.

But it's all there for you to find.

Well maybe let's not talk about Portal too much

because we're going to be talking about it in a little bit.

Okay, sounds good.

Instead maybe let's just move on to my number three.

Okay. Which is Grim Fandango

from Tim Schafer.

Now, on sheer inventiveness and world building alone

this made it on my list.

I mean this is a cross between film noir imagery

and Aztec mythology.

You are essentially a private eye investigator

who is wandering through purgatory looking for your man

before everyone gets to the final underworld stage

of their demise.

Yes.

So obviously the Lucas Arts adventure games

and the Sierra adventure games,

that whole family of point and click games has great stories

and that's why I'm gonna put at number three,

Telltale's The Walking Dead.

Even though it is a licensed property,

I had not seen one episode of the television show

before I started playing The Walking Dead.

And so for me, it was just,

The Walking Dead game was just The Walking Dead game.

The way that it just pulled you into that story

and put you into the roll of that main character,

it did something that I don't think any other game prior

to it had pulled off,

that great trick of making you care about the characters

in that game.

And the fact that there were all these videos

on YouTube.

Oh, yeah!

People, the camera on them,

as they played through and saw the consequences

of their choices born out as they played.

What's she putting her hand in her pants for?

(gunshot blasts)

Oh my god, are you serious?

I would have loved to have seen all of this

for people who were playing some older games.

So that, you know, Grim Fandango

if they were playing that for the first time,

what their reactions would have been.

I would like to see that same thing for my number two

which is Bioseshock from Irrational Games.

The first Bioseshock,

from the moment that you happened on that island

and descended in the bathysphere,

you had no idea what was in store for you.

All you knew is you were somewhere

that a video game had never taken you before,

and how the game just mounted

layer on layer.

The fact that there was such

overt political overtones in it.

I mean just everything about it was absolutely apocal

and pivotal for me.

Right, yeah, who know they were gonna make a video game

essentially about its creators' disagreements with Ayn Rand

of all people.

So my

number two

that is again a game that is a product of its time.

It's Final Fantasy VI

for the Super Nintendo.

Gotta represent the Final Fantasy games in here,

especially, Final Fantasy VI at this point.

This was in 1994 when this game came out, okay?

And here was an actual story about characters

that they didn't feel like cartoony caricatures

that some many role playing games were dealing with

at this point.

They actually really felt like it was telling the story

of this group of human beings.

They took the Super Nintendo and just squeezed

so much juice out of it to make it look so beautiful.

And again in 1994 for that to happen,

that for me was mind blowing.

That instant for me was just like,

I cannot believe that video games can do this.

Absolutely, so my number one is The Orange Box

from Valve, and I'll tell you why.

That's not even a video game.

Is it not a video game.

It is Team Fortress 2, the original Portal,

and Half-Life 2 and it's other episodes.

Okay. Let me tell you why.

What Portal one did, it had one voice actor.

Yeah.

And then it had the mystery that you uncovered

as you went through the facility.

Yep.

What Half-Life 2 did, Yes.

was give you a first person shooter

that was a transformation of a human being.

Just every minute of that game was

an absolute altering experience for me.

Dedicated to the arc of that character

who you were playing.

Yes. Yeah.

And there's nothing that's a story like that

even Team Fortress 2.

There's a fantastic backstory to this

Oh yeah.

that you pick up on if you play this as a fan of the game.

Right, yeah, yeah.

It's all buried, and it rewards scrutiny.

And that's why for me, Orange Box is my number one.

Okay, well, we may have already mentioned my number one

because my number one is, in fact, Bioseshock.

[Peter] Ding ding.

I would totally put this at the top of games

with stories that just absolutely captivated me.

Bioseshock's story, the big twist that it all leads up to,

it's not something that you could guess,

but it's something that changes,

not only your view of the game,

but it actually makes you think

about like the nature of video games themselves.

When you find out that you were a slave,

when you find out that there was a person

in your ear telling you what to do when you did it.

You know as the player of this game, you're like,

Geez, video games tell me to things all the time,

and I just do them.

You know why is it that I just do the thing

the video game tells me to

because there's a voice in my ear?

There's so much to love about Bioseshock

and the way that it tells a story,

and it's like I don't wanna put Bioseshock Infinite

on this list because it's so new.

[Peter] We have sit with it.

[Chris] But I have to say, lightning struck twice

with that game.

Yep, a few months ago, we had a feature in Wired magazine

about kind of the making

of Bioseshock Infinite. We did.

And everything that Ken Levine was putting on this game

and how much of him

and just his entire consumptive palate informed this game

and how all these disparate influences came together

to create this tapestry

that was like nothing gamers had ever seen before.

Yeah.

And he certainly accomplished that.

On one hand,

I'm ashamed that I'm not finished with the game.

On the other hand,

I'm like, why'd you suckers rush through this?

Right.

I'm just having a grand ol' time

just painstakingly combing over this thing.

And those are our top fives.

Well, close to, I mean we had a few games in common.

There was lot of overlap.

It was sort of a collective top seven,

but hey, I'm sure that you guys have a lot of thoughts

and opinions too about what games had the best stories

and what games' stories moved you the most.

So let us know, in the comments.

Tell us.

Maybe if you got a great top five list there,

it could end up on a future show.

Who knows?

We're crazy like that.

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