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Essays 05 October 2020, 01:24

Video Games With the Best Stories

Although most games treat storytelling very instrumentally, some developers take it more seriously, creating stories that are exciting, touching and stay with us forever. We decided to create a list of games that tell the most powerful stories.

Table of Contents

Silent Hill 2

INFORMATION

  1. Genre: survival horror
  2. What's good beyond the plot: tons of horror – but not cheap jump-scare horror, but horror born in our own heads and making us afraid of silence and that which we cannot see.

In my restless dreams, I see that town.

Silent Hill.

You promised you'd take me there again some day.

But you never did.

Well, I'm alone there now.

In our special place.

Waiting for you.

I played Silent Hill 2 some fifteen years ago. And yet I have recalled the letter that the game's main character, James, received from his supposedly dead wife Mary, without mistake or hesitation. It is stuck so deep in my memory, reminding me of not necessarily the scariest, but certainly the most melancholic and sad survival horror game I've ever played.

In search of his wife, James travels to Silent Hill, a fog-covered town and a purgatory for lost souls. The town forces him to fight for survival against creepy monstrosities, but also enables him to encounter other characters lost in Silent Hill, including Mary, who looks like a somewhat more mischievous twin of his beloved wife. Eventually, all roads lead him to discover something he definitely wasn't ready to learn, at least not at conscious level – a truth more terrifying than all the nightmares the town threw at him.

AVOID THE HD EDITION!

If were are tempted by our description and would like to try out Silent Hill 2, we strongly recommend you avoid the HD version released for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 as part of Silent Hill HD Collection. Konami outright messed up when preparing this edition, and the result was one of the worst HD remasters of our time. A much better choice would be the original release on either PC, PS2 or Xbox. It is only available in boxed version, so you may have to do some searching to get it. Trust us, though, it's worth it – aside from slightly archaic controls, this game hasn't aged badly.

  1. More about Silent Hill 2

Michael Grygorcewicz

Michael Grygorcewicz

He first worked as a co-worker at GRYOnline.pl. In 2023 he became the head of the Paid Products department. He has been creating articles about games for over twenty years. He started with amateur websites, which he coded himself in HTML, then he moved on to increasingly larger portals. A computer engineer, but he was always more drawn to writing than programming, and he decided to tie his future with the former. In games, he primarily looks for stories, emotions, and immersion that no other medium can provide - hence, among his favorite titles, are games focusing on narration. Believes that NieR: Automata is the best game ever made.

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The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

NieR: Automata

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Life is Strange

Life is Strange

The Last of Us

The Last of Us

Mafia II

Mafia II

BioShock

BioShock

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Mass Effect

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Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

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