i buy sequals for stories. and i buy games for the story. other then dota.

Some history and theory on the art of video game storytelling:

For me, it's not really about having a great story. I want a good story at the least, but I'm not overtly demanding. What matters to me is the storytelling, how the story is conveyed to the player and how immersed you become in the story, and this is where stories in games shine. When done right at least.

Heavy Rain is a pinnacle for story-based games in my opinion, not because the story is good (it's good, but nowhere near great), but because the story is still so powerful, and the game is built to suck you in, and actually make you feel the story. And the game does that so incredibly well, that I can't think of any other story I have ever read, watched, heard or played that can compare on the overall experience. A book can be exciting, and you can get sucked in and not want to put it down, but you don't actually feel what the protagonist feels. And that's why I play story driven games.

Heavy Rain is kind of a niche though, since very few games actually let you shape the story and do it well too. The Mass Effect games are another high point, because the way the story is conveyed with the conversation system and how your decisions carry on from game to game is absolutely brilliant, but Mass Effect is a franchise of two sides. On one hand you have the story, the universe, the characters which are all great (some of my all time favorites in gaming in fact), and you have the action that (in Mass Effect 2 at least) is great and there are some great set pieces. But the two rarely cross paths, as the action and story are kept as mostly seperate entities, unlike Heavy Rain where the two fold together very well.

I could keep talking about immersion into storylines, but my point is that you don't necessarily need a great story to feel like the story is great, because the immersion can heighten the experience beyond that point. Games like Heavy Rain and the Mass Effect series do a great job with that (and to a lesser extent games like Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Splinter Cell: Conviction, Batman: Arkham Asylum and others), where as other games do less with the immersion, but focus more on telling a great story, like MGS4.

All the games mentioned for the different categories are of course subjective, and your preferences can be wildy different from mine, so the specific games won't necessarily hold up for you just because they did for me.

The story doesn't always have to be narrated to be great. The world can do a great job telling the story as well, see ICO and SoTC.

The longest journey and grim fandango are my favourites as well, Syberia also had great story telling.

Sometimes the overall story can be a bit thin but the characters make up for it. Dragon Age Origins had great character development and interaction. Mass Effect 2 was all about the characters and their backgrounds.

Heavy rain is one of the few recent games that actually bring story and character development together.

I agree that non lineairity and sandbox rpg's stand in the way of good character development. The world can still tell a good story but the characters are almost always just 1 dimensional and not effected by anything that happens around them.

I come for the story, stay for the gameplay.

Games like gow3 and heavy rain are immensely entertaining to me.

However, my current most played game is League of legends, and that's just a top down Multiplayer Beat-em up of sorts. No story, no plot, but still very fun. Even though I play the shit out of that game, every night, I'll put in at least an hour toward gow or ff

your average well-produced videogames has waaay more interesting storylines than the average movie...just saying. 

I think when it comes to stories, most video games suck. The actual storyline is usually unoriginal or cliched and predominantly stick to sterotypical tropes associated with that particular genre of fiction. Even JRPGs suffer to some extent becuase they apply a lot of sterotypes from anime. The only game I can think of with a truly original and thought-provoking story is Planescape Torment (although I've yet to finish The Longest Journey so I can't comment on that).

The more interesting aspect of video games as a storytelling medium is the interactive nature and trying to tell the story through the world and gameplay. This aspect is completely unique to video games and should really be utilised more frequently.

Half-Life 2 (and a lot of Valve games like Portal) are very good at this. As you explore the world tit-bits of info are given to you and it retains the first-person perspective throughout so you're never taken out of the world. Character speak directly to you and never in a passive, out of control cut-scene. When you do lose control it's because your character has lost control and the feeling of helplessness is portrayed quite effectively to the user. ICO and Shadow of the Colossus are other great examples of games that tell the story through the gameplay. They have some cut-scenes but the emotion is purely delivered through gameplay.

I think the world most games create is also more important than pure story as it immerses the player more than just story and chracterisation. Deus Ex is a good example of having a deep, interactive and involving world; whilst it has a great and twisting story, the world is what makes it so immersive.

I've only played the Metal Gear games and while I agree that they have a decent story that pulls me in, when reviewing the game series as a whole, it's kind of a joke. Go to a person on the street and try to explain Metal Gear and they'll look at you like you're an idiot. "Nanomachines. Nanomachines. NANOMACHINES."

....Kingdom Hearts made absolutely no sense whatsoever and neither did X or the latterhalf of VII....

Infamous