Yer thats why I loved dreamfall : the longest journey graphics more than any other this gen, its definetely not technically best (it came out in 2006 after all...early days in this gen). But the music and the surroundings take you half way to what the story and setting is trying to tell you!

Depends what a good Story is for you.For me, Nier has - by far - the best story this gen. (with MGS4 very close to it)

Xenogears, my favorite videogame story ever has had the unfortunate side effect that everything else just hasn't measured up and thus leaves the slight taste of disappointment after each game is completed. I'm still awaiting that elusive game that will match my lofty expectations.

The whole half-life/portal universe of games are very interesting especially if you take a night to understand it all. Final Fantasy 6 is also really good and to a lesser extent ff7.

And this is why we are friends.

Yes!

And I'm pissed off that Funcom's taking years making their MMORPG and not continuing with this magnificent franchise.

Other than that I'd say games generally reach to a good story level, but rarely great. Even with ones like Bioshock and Mass Effect, it's more about the world and atmosphere that has great potential - their story within that setting is pretty damn good already, but because you still got the main gameplay sequencing to worry about, to make action interesting, story complexity and richness still does not reach very high.

Games have alot of room to grow in this area, and it's exciting to see innovations. Such as Heavy Rain, though the story's isn't THAT great, still the way we experience the narrative is deeper than many other games.

Baldur's Gate
Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast
Baldur's Gate 2: Shadow's of Amn
Baldur's Gate 2: The Throne of Bhaal

Planescape: Torment

Suikoden
Suikoden 2

Metal Gear Solid
Metal Gear Solid 2
Metal Gear Solid 3
Metal Gear Solid 4

Valkyria Chronicles

The Secret of Monkey Island
Monkey Island 2: Le Chuck's Revenge
Monkey Island 3

The Longest Journey

I could go on for longer, but I'll leave it at that.

The Story and characters became the main reasons for me when I pick my games. I stopped buying "competitive games" because I totally lost interest. I used to play games like Gran Turismo, Tekken, Mario Kart...

But after the storytelling got better and better each generation I can no longer go back to Non-Story games for a long time... Wii Play, Wii Sports, Smash Brothers Brawl, Mario Kart Wii were among my biggest mispurchases this gen, because I lost interest after the very first day... No story to keep my hooked and competitve gameplay feels like a waste of time for me now (Started working 3 years ago with the beginning of this gen and now Time is my constraint instead of money). I also stay away from online gaming and ignored games if they had an online mode. Just have no time for this.

The Problem with this gen is the servere lack of JRPGs. Well, after reading stellar Reviews I decided to fight the RPG draught with some WRPGs like Oblivion, Dragon Age and Borderlands... puuh, and I have to admit, that I didn't like their storytelling at all. All these games sacrifices a scripted main character to give you freedom to play yourself in the game... and that killed the games for me. The main story suffers heavily and the whole game feels like a bunch of Sidequests without much depth.

 I just prefer the Japanese way of linear storytelling. They have stronger characters, the story is based on underlying moral dilemmas and do not overly rely on brutality. I do not think that a book can be a substitute for a video game. I read a lot of fantasy novels (Tolkien, Pratchett, Feist, Martin, Lewis, Pullman) and Final Fantasy or Kingdom Hearts gave me a more intense form of enjoyment.

I just think that there is a real big cultural difference between US/Uk and Continental Europe. It is hard to discuss such a topic when the expectations on the story are very different. While Nonlinear games got very high reviews in the US I must admit that after Oblivion, Dragon Age, Borderlands and the Mass Effect 2 Demo I personally think that nonlinearity is a really bad thing. I am just not the target group.