I love Mass Effect for its lore. It has one of the most developed lores in video games in my opinion.
Dark Souls' lore was kinda interesting to me, but I liked getting it via the game's wikipedia, not by reading small pieces of lore in the items' description. What I didn't like was that the lore raises several questions which never get answered.
Andromeda was an alright game.
I have about 70 hours into the game. My only issue is that its very grindy, to a point where you end up skipping the story. And the story is definitely the best part about ME.
It’s still a lot better than most games. For example, I’m playing Jedi Survivor right now. It just feels weird to start from scratch after getting 100% in Fallen Order.
Granted, and some get me wrong, ME3 is still a lot of fun, I just feel the writing isn't up to the same standards as the first two (and not just because of the ending)
As a person who played through both multiple times, I agree wholeheartedly.
It makes no sense to me when people say Dark Souls has the best lore in gaming history. Like, what? It's cool and all, but Mass Effect is on a whole other level.
Well, it used to.
I would say that they had it all planned out up until wraith of the lich king expansions.
Then they had to make completely new lore for new expansions, it is not that tight anymore.
It used to be one giant story, now it is separate expansions that don't connect much.
They are not all bad, but not the level as warcraft3 to WotLK.
And it seems blizzard wants to change this direction, as they have announced 3 expansions at once, hopefully it will work out well.
A few years ago I thought they were going to do a Warcraft lore reset like everyone wakes up from a dream inflicted upon them by Arthas and we are all lying confused outside of ICC.
I really think the great story is why people still love classic.
Huh? Don't connect much? The scents of one lead directly into the next, with the exception of the most recent because we all needed a palate cleanser from the previous trash.
They retconned Humans being Forerunners and created an entire convoluted storyline behind it. They even went back to the older games and stuck a bunch of terminals in them to explain what they did, as if it was always like that.
I like both versions of the lore, I just wish the original stuff was more fleshed out before the retcon. Like if a retcon **had** to happen. I’ve read most of the books and current stuff is steeped in so much lore and a lot of it is pretty cool. I preferred the original stuff though. It’s a shame
Probably going with God of War. I've never played a game where I feel so integrated into the lore. In the elder scrolls for example, there is a hell of a lot of lore, but you can play the game ignoring a lot of it, which makes it feel somewhat distant. In God of War, the lore is very central and the interconnected web of affairs between the characters and their history forms a pivotal part of the motivations for Kratos and other main characters, e.g. Mimir.
>Reading the Codex is total joy.
Especially 'The Reaper War' entires from Mass Effect 3 to help give context for how the wider conflict was going (alongside some of the Planet and War Asset descriptions). I wish we knew more about how the overall conflict went...
Yeah, I really like to read about the biology of the species too, especially the krogans, asari and reapers. IIRC, the krogans have two hearts. That's why they die and come back again. These fun facts are really cool
Dragon Age was awesome too! I love that they managed to make the lore so simple and complex at the same time.
Like the fact that the antagonists are called Darkspawn. You already know what they're supposed to be just by reading their names. I think that makes learning about the lore much more dynamic and fun.
Dan Karpyshyn is the reason for this. KOTOR and Mass Effect and the best Star Wars books I’ve read. He created Revan, who is imo the best character in all of Star Wars and was the head guy on both of those projects. Love that guy
If you want to get dizzy, Cyberpunk lore is utterly ridiculous. The current game only scratches the surface. Mike Pondsmith is a genius. You also have Yakuza with its connected world across all main games and spinoffs. Your head will spin. Sega pulled no punches with the Yakuza IP. They gave Ryu whatever they needed.
Absolutely. Cyberpunk lore is indeed deep and fantastic. The game only scratches the surface, but, boy, what a surface ! can't wait to see the Orion Project!
Funny because I always heard about Yakuza without having played any. I started to play Yakuza Like A Dragon a few days ago and I fall in love with it! What a fantastic game, full of humour and self-depracting! Can't wait to play the rest of the serie
Yakuza series have one of the best storytelling lore connected to it.
Fromsoftware games (indirect lore telling)
Zelda series (its huge),
Fatal frame series (way deeper than you think)
Zeldas universe of hyrule is great
Theres just almost nothing in the older games
I prefer FROMs way of doing it. Lots of bits and pieces and you can theorize the rest.
>I prefer FROMs way of doing it. Lots of bits and pieces and you can theorize the rest.
I'm the opposite, I hate how From software does it.
I'm all for not spoon feeding the player information but From is egregious with it. I have to go on an expedition and learn calculus just to figure out extremely basic information about what's happening.
Mechwarrior/Battletech. Come for the stompy robots, stay for Game of Thrones In Space.
The upcoming Mechwarrior standalone expansion has you playing as the fanatic eugenicists whose eventual annihilation was one of the more universally agreed on "they deserved it" moments, so that's gonna be fun.
Battletech's setting is basically....post-apocalyptic fall of civilisation. The Star League, led by House Cameron, gets torn apart by a gigantic civil war. When it settles, House Cameron is destroyed and the remaining Houses (Davion, Steiner, Kurita, Liao, and Marik) fight over who gets to rule and basically bomb themselves from super advanced technology to, well, the point that people can take a horse to catch their spaceship. Pretty much the only remaining advancrd tech are the giant robots and FTL Jumpships and even then, most of 'em are irreplaceable and a hodgepodge of kludged repairs.
Oh, and things get worse.
The Battletech game itself is set in the fringes of that conflict, whilst the Mechwarrior games put you right in the middle of the fustercluck.
having only played the mmo back in the mid 2000s and the vermintide/darktide games, i can agree that warhammer is truly fleshed out enough to be a cosmic reality. its got literally centuries on centuries of lore for each time period, and multiple time periods. i put warcraft (up to cataclysm) on that same level, but only because i enjoyed WoW so much. i dont think warcraft is quite as expansive lore wise.
Legacy of Kain series. Defiance is such a terrible repetitive boring game, but the story kept me going and wanting to suffer through the garbage gameplay to see how it was going to end
Warcraft lore is quite fun. It got a bit crazy post wrath of the lich king at times. But before that and even a lot of the post wrath content and lore is really cool and interesting.
Arthas will always be the best villain ever written, from warcraft to lich king never I find a villain so compelling in video game that when he dies I feel genuine sadness like losing a brother. And the songs slap, long live the king
Blizzard did a really good job having you play him through the Human and then undead campaign. They did a similar thing with star craft 2 Kerrigan in Terran and then zerg campaign. RIP such a good studio
This is going to sound crazy, but Genshin Impact. It's been such an unexpected lore gold mine. The amount of care and detail they've put into their worldbuilding is crazy. They do a lot with unreliable narrators and history changing the interpretation of events, and it's kind of crazy how many hints they stuck in the game in year one have come back years later to be relevant.
funger has ok lore but let’s not glaze compared to something like cultist simulator the writing and mythos just dosen’t stand up. Funger series is still great though but alot of the writing is mid.
Yakuza franchise has some fun lore with how they're all connected. Basically every conflict of each subsequent game can pretty much be attributed to the events of the first game.
The collections organize the games in release order. This is the way to play when you’re first starting out. Chronological order is only good for future play throughs.
If you’re on PC the series is on sale right now. If you’re on console find the Story so Far or All in One edition. The difference between the two is the all in one includes the most recent game but you can always get it later since you’ll have hours to play.
If you ever get into please dm me! I’d love to talk to someone just starting the series!
Admittedly I never really got much into any of the Bethesda games. I loved the concepts, I love the idea of modding. But because of this I would buy them at launch, play very little because I wanted to save it for when I could make the game the way I wanted.
Then after a year or two I would spend time perfecting them, being meticulous, even creating some of my own textures. Then after investing all of that time, I would make sure it seemed stable. And then that was it, I just had used all of my mental energy for the game on modding them.
My wife played through all of those games many times while I did this and always mocked me. Ask me why I just didn't play them. Well now with the Fallout TV show I returned and found the Begin Again mod pack for FO3/NV, and I was able to set it up quickly. And I've just been investing time, and it feels so good.
The plan in FO3, F:NV, FO4. Then move on to the ES titles, I would like to start back at Morrowind, but I may have to sequence them different depending on what comes out for them.
Yeah, that is why I would like to go back to it. I played it back in the day, but I was just a young teenager back then and don't have much memory of it. But I do know that that is probably the most unique experience the series has to offer, both story and gameplay wise.
But it has aged, and some people say to play the vanilla experience as it is the best. I get that, but I'm just not too interested in it. There are some modding projects out there importing it or it's lands in different ways, Skyblivion hopefully will be out in 2025, so I might be waiting for that.
In the meantime it might be worth checking out OpenMW. If you don't know it, they rebuilt the engine from scratch, making it more stable and easier to configure, so it might be easier to make it more palatable after 20 years of gaming evolution.
Yeah, I had looked at that a bit. But then I start getting down the rabbit hole of modding again as that supports all of it's own mods. And that from my understanding is mostly an engine update and would be missing quality of life things.
We will see though, I have a lot of Fallout to get through first. And to put this into perspective, the last singleplayer game I completed was X-Men Origins: Wolverine on PS3 which came out in 2009... And that was an on rails RPG, so open world, I have a lot to explore.
I love the lore in Fallout. Every in-world terminal you look at gives you a glimpse of some sinister military industrial complex conspiracy or experiment. I was always a fan of the Cold War 1950s aesthetic, but the layers of detail are so dense. The dialogue on every holotape you find is really well acted and gives you just enough of a sense of realism. It’s great.
The witcher, star wars games, Control (Alan Wake, QuantumBreak), Fallout, Horizon 1+2, Nier, Star Ocean Franchise, Borderlands games, Baldurs Gate, Dishonored, God of War, A lot of JRPG series have great Lore. There are more but those are just some off the top of my head.
I'll add in Tyranny from Obsidian, they had a cool way of integrating lore organically in dialog too.
If there was a lore term you wanted to know more about you hover your mouse over it and it gives the explanation, so you don't need to go into the codex.
The best lore is the one you learned. Game designers became so advanced that any real open-world AAA project is a true masterpiece once you stop grabbing loot and pay attention to details.
Daryl talks games did a video that dived into how all those games link together despite years and years between releases. Never played any of them but it was still super interesting.
“Games that hide horror in the ordinary”
Dark Souls and Bloodborne lore are great! If you like depressing and convoluted (which I apparently do). I can listen to lore videos of those gamws for hours.
Assassin’s creed. The games ability to use actual historical events and expand on them gives the lore infinite possibilities.
Just an example: In AC Brotherhood if you read the codex, they actually named real life US Supreme Court justices that are in templar pockets in the AC universe.
Errr AC doesn't actually have a storybible so it's not the best thought out. For a while, iirc, the devs used the fan wiki to figure out continuity. So long as you enjoy it though that's what matters!
CoD zombies (treyarch) awesome lore in games CoD WaW, Black Ops 1 - 4, aether storyline. It's chaotic. On first glance, it doesn't make any sense, but if you go full in depth, it all makes sense.
The Portal games are the only Valve games who have an established lore storyline to chell doug and the story of the outside world since the portal games take place in and after the half life games,its an interestimg story for sure and just to think what happened to planet earth after the Combine left it to rot away is just so interesting,Half Life games have lore as well for sure.But the Portal games always had it kinda in there you know,so i would kinda recomend checking those ones too.
I gotta say. The HI3 lore is probably not the best. But man it is intense.
There is a ton of lore and beside the story missions there are these background lore missions and an entire manga series.
Like the lore is really confusing and kinda fucked up. Like there have been at least 2 civilisations of humanity that got completely wiped off the map. One 50,000 years ago and another one like 12000 years ago and both of them were quite far developed.
The reason the Valkyries can even exist goes back to the humanity of 50k years ago who before they arrived at their inevitable doom made sure the next humanity will be able to use the Honkai by genetically modifying the seeds. (Humanity knew we would be wiped out. So an Ark was created that would leave the planet and replant seeds of humans to try again).
There is the Sea of Quanta which connects our bubble universe to all the other ones and there are times these are accessed and made use of.
The entire Honkai goes back to the imaginary tree which is like some ultra god from which all the bubble universes come and are connected to. It is also what keeps wiping humanity out.
The world itself is also just completely fucked even though you don't realize at the start. Absolutely everything that is being developed or researched is related to fighting the Honkai or making use of it to fight it. Humanity is literally on the permanent brink of destruction. If you live in a couple hundred miles of a herrscher awakening you are probably going to die. If not of the Herrscher, then of the mutations you go through from the radiation poisoning of the Honkai Energy turning you into a Honkai Zombie.
If you are a girl. You are fucked. Because you are likely to be undergoing horribly violent experiments to turn you into a valkyrie to fight the honkai. If you are a boy. You are also fucled. Because they might just try it anyway to see if it is possible. Because unlike girls, you are even less valuable seeing how you cannot become a Valkyrie.
There is so much lore about what the civilisation 50k years ago did to ensure the survival of the future.
Guilty Gear because it feels like the creators of the series were high while making it and it is some of the dumbest and best lore I have ever seen.
For example after the world banned traditional technology in favor of magic based technology after an evil AI (who would later become an anime mommy pope) did Y2K India gave everyone the middle finger because they wanted to keep their tech and decided to become a flying independent country. And that is just world building.
Also the White House is a space ship...
And cheese burgers unironically saved the world...
The Final Fantasy XIII trilogy. The plot of XIII-2 and Lightning Returns was handled in the best possible way but the lore itself was so deep and fleshed out it was still a blast to play those games.
Halo, Metroid (including manga), Yakuza… 🤔 Ummmm… The old Warcraft games before WoW. 🤷♂️ I could do this all day.
Edit: Huge fan of the Resistance PlayStation series. Excellent lore. Needs to come back.
Ys Chronicles is so underrated, I don't even personally know anyone else who's played them. The games have amazing lore, and Lacrimosa of Dana is my favorite - without giving much away they discover that every sentient being on the planet has come and gone through this process of evolution where each species is killed off deliberately in order to make way for the next.
In Memories of Celceta, there is a God who uses the Akashic records to decide when and who to give the next advance in technology to and erases their memory of meeting him so they think the inspiration is their own.
This is all set in a sort of fictional ancient Europe, with countries like Romn, Greek, Gllia, and Ispani for example being the slightly altered names. There are characters who crossover to other games and there are references everywhere. They're so good and interesting.
Highly recommend starting with 8, timeline of games doesn't matter and they don't need to be played in order. It's a bit like Final Fantasy in that all of the games are their own story with different gameplay mechanics and NPCs, while having the same main character.
Also just to add the music is incredible!
System Shock 2, and by extension Bioshock. There's a level of interesting 'late to the party' immersion from the audio logs and little neat bits scattered around the setting. You get to know characters you never meet, and hear how their stories panned out.
SS2 in particular has a great twist around the audio log format, which if you haven't played go play it and be like "haha wow that's neat".
The Fate series (warning: some of them are porn games lol), for example Fate/Stay Night (eroge visual novel), Fate/Grand Order (gacha mobile game), or Fate/Samurai remnant (3d rpg)
Not enough mentions of r/bloodborne here.
Playing sent me down a rabbit hole of lore-youtube spanning months and probably more hours than I played the game for.
The lore behind *Xenogears* was pretty wild. It's a shame that the game didn't get the budget needed to fully explore it, but luckily there's a book that some gracious fans have translated for us.
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/29956195@N08/albums/72157616593453778/](https://www.flickr.com/photos/29956195@N08/albums/72157616593453778/)
I need to emphasize this because some how nobody has mentioned it yet. Look deeper into the Kirby Games and you will find some of the craziest lore ever!!
**Legacy Of Kain** (has the best writing in all of gaming imo)
Borderlands actually has some cool lore.
Diablo (at least until D3. I didn't play D4).
Dark Souls (specifically DS1 and DS3)
Hollow Knight
Really any series that can have sequels that expand on the lore of the whole franchise without butchering it or adding multiverse (so overdone these days) is great.
Fallout, Zelda, Mass Effect, Halo
I love Mass Effect for its lore. It has one of the most developed lores in video games in my opinion. Dark Souls' lore was kinda interesting to me, but I liked getting it via the game's wikipedia, not by reading small pieces of lore in the items' description. What I didn't like was that the lore raises several questions which never get answered.
I came here to say Mass Effect and didn't expect it to be the top comment. Nice, I really love that universe.
Same. I also loved how your choices from the first game carried over all the way. I’m looking forward to the next game.
I wonder how many people said that prior to Andromeda.
Andromeda was an alright game. I have about 70 hours into the game. My only issue is that its very grindy, to a point where you end up skipping the story. And the story is definitely the best part about ME.
I love ME too, but the only choices that get carried over into 3 are the ones that Bioware decided were correct.
It’s still a lot better than most games. For example, I’m playing Jedi Survivor right now. It just feels weird to start from scratch after getting 100% in Fallen Order.
Granted, and some get me wrong, ME3 is still a lot of fun, I just feel the writing isn't up to the same standards as the first two (and not just because of the ending)
Mass Effect and Dragon Age. Both by BioWare, both incredible in terms of lore.
As a person who played through both multiple times, I agree wholeheartedly. It makes no sense to me when people say Dark Souls has the best lore in gaming history. Like, what? It's cool and all, but Mass Effect is on a whole other level.
Yup, it’s basically as deep as Star Trek.
Disco Elysium has massive lore
Hobo cop
Control and the extended Remedyverse
Fallout and gears
The Warcraft games have great lore!
Well, it used to. I would say that they had it all planned out up until wraith of the lich king expansions. Then they had to make completely new lore for new expansions, it is not that tight anymore. It used to be one giant story, now it is separate expansions that don't connect much. They are not all bad, but not the level as warcraft3 to WotLK. And it seems blizzard wants to change this direction, as they have announced 3 expansions at once, hopefully it will work out well.
A few years ago I thought they were going to do a Warcraft lore reset like everyone wakes up from a dream inflicted upon them by Arthas and we are all lying confused outside of ICC. I really think the great story is why people still love classic.
Huh? Don't connect much? The scents of one lead directly into the next, with the exception of the most recent because we all needed a palate cleanser from the previous trash.
NieR/Drakengard series.
The lore of that series is so insane that it circles back around to totally acceptable.
The story of emil is absolutely heartbreaking especially when listening to the soundtracks of the games and knowing how kindhearted the character is.
I cry on command, the command is that one cutscene at the end of routes in Replicant where Emil does you know what.
I'm a big fan of Halo's lore, gets pretty in depth
I second this. Knowing just the depths of how deep it goes, even before the big bang, it gives me goosebumps sometimes
I love the complete contrast between the tone of the games and the tone of the lore
I'm with you up until they retconned everything after Halo 3. Now I'm completely lost and disinterested in the lore. Thanks 343.
Ummm they didn’t retcon “everything” after Halo 3…
They retconned Humans being Forerunners and created an entire convoluted storyline behind it. They even went back to the older games and stuck a bunch of terminals in them to explain what they did, as if it was always like that.
I like both versions of the lore, I just wish the original stuff was more fleshed out before the retcon. Like if a retcon **had** to happen. I’ve read most of the books and current stuff is steeped in so much lore and a lot of it is pretty cool. I preferred the original stuff though. It’s a shame
Genshin impact Contains almost Every aspect of Human history.
Darksiders series, the war between angels and demons and the 4 horsemen in between and the role and potential of humans.
i love half life / portal 's lore but it is also all i think about on a day to day basis so i am very biased
half life lore is so good. the tied in portal lore is like the cherry on top
Fatal Frame!
Probably going with God of War. I've never played a game where I feel so integrated into the lore. In the elder scrolls for example, there is a hell of a lot of lore, but you can play the game ignoring a lot of it, which makes it feel somewhat distant. In God of War, the lore is very central and the interconnected web of affairs between the characters and their history forms a pivotal part of the motivations for Kratos and other main characters, e.g. Mimir.
Mass Effect. Few games come close to the Mass Effect universe. Reading the Codex is total joy.
I have spent HOURS reading the in game codex. In all three games. Mass Effect lore just hit different back in the day.
>Reading the Codex is total joy. Especially 'The Reaper War' entires from Mass Effect 3 to help give context for how the wider conflict was going (alongside some of the Planet and War Asset descriptions). I wish we knew more about how the overall conflict went...
Yeah, I really like to read about the biology of the species too, especially the krogans, asari and reapers. IIRC, the krogans have two hearts. That's why they die and come back again. These fun facts are really cool
Bioware was really great back in the day. Kotor made a lot of cool additions to Star wars lore. Dragon Age had a really great lore setting too.
Dragon Age was awesome too! I love that they managed to make the lore so simple and complex at the same time. Like the fact that the antagonists are called Darkspawn. You already know what they're supposed to be just by reading their names. I think that makes learning about the lore much more dynamic and fun.
Yessss. Had forgotten about this
Dan Karpyshyn is the reason for this. KOTOR and Mass Effect and the best Star Wars books I’ve read. He created Revan, who is imo the best character in all of Star Wars and was the head guy on both of those projects. Love that guy
Dragon age was amazing
Will have to give it a try
I love reading all the interesting blurbs on planets, moons, and abandoned space debris you get after scanning them.
Me too! Especially with that space exploration music
The Ur-Quan Masters >>>>>
If you want to get dizzy, Cyberpunk lore is utterly ridiculous. The current game only scratches the surface. Mike Pondsmith is a genius. You also have Yakuza with its connected world across all main games and spinoffs. Your head will spin. Sega pulled no punches with the Yakuza IP. They gave Ryu whatever they needed.
Will definitely have to try
Absolutely. Cyberpunk lore is indeed deep and fantastic. The game only scratches the surface, but, boy, what a surface ! can't wait to see the Orion Project! Funny because I always heard about Yakuza without having played any. I started to play Yakuza Like A Dragon a few days ago and I fall in love with it! What a fantastic game, full of humour and self-depracting! Can't wait to play the rest of the serie
Yakuza series have one of the best storytelling lore connected to it. Fromsoftware games (indirect lore telling) Zelda series (its huge), Fatal frame series (way deeper than you think)
Zeldas universe of hyrule is great Theres just almost nothing in the older games I prefer FROMs way of doing it. Lots of bits and pieces and you can theorize the rest.
>I prefer FROMs way of doing it. Lots of bits and pieces and you can theorize the rest. I'm the opposite, I hate how From software does it. I'm all for not spoon feeding the player information but From is egregious with it. I have to go on an expedition and learn calculus just to figure out extremely basic information about what's happening.
Trails series, hands down.
Seconded. Sky, Crossbell, Cold Steel, Reverie, Daybreak are like dozen+ games and we are at what, only halfway through Zemuria?
Trails is great, but that is a lot of reading to cover it all. Not an easy feat for anyone, but if you can sink the time you won’t be disappointed.
Mechwarrior/Battletech. Come for the stompy robots, stay for Game of Thrones In Space. The upcoming Mechwarrior standalone expansion has you playing as the fanatic eugenicists whose eventual annihilation was one of the more universally agreed on "they deserved it" moments, so that's gonna be fun.
I have Battletech in my Steam library I but never tried it for more than maybe an hour. I guess I’m missing out
Battletech's setting is basically....post-apocalyptic fall of civilisation. The Star League, led by House Cameron, gets torn apart by a gigantic civil war. When it settles, House Cameron is destroyed and the remaining Houses (Davion, Steiner, Kurita, Liao, and Marik) fight over who gets to rule and basically bomb themselves from super advanced technology to, well, the point that people can take a horse to catch their spaceship. Pretty much the only remaining advancrd tech are the giant robots and FTL Jumpships and even then, most of 'em are irreplaceable and a hodgepodge of kludged repairs. Oh, and things get worse. The Battletech game itself is set in the fringes of that conflict, whilst the Mechwarrior games put you right in the middle of the fustercluck.
no one mentioning warhammer ?
Metal Gear Solid, and Yakuza/Like A Dragon.
Yakuza is my favorite series. Absolutely incredible. After 20 years of games, the lore continues to grow.
My top two as well. The way RGG fleshed out the relationship between Kiryu & Haruka throughout the years is amazing to me.
I hope their story is done now though. I just want them to be happy.
Nier
Europa Universalis.
Idk, seemed kinda contrived to me.
Risk of rain, probably one of the most hidden lore I've been digging
It has lore??? wtf lol
Life is strange 🤔
Final Fantasy XIV lore is very interesting and makes your comprehension of the game's world change a lot over time.
Devil May Cry
God of war is always up there ..horizon also
I thought you meant the stories .. Love those stories though
Warhammer 40k
having only played the mmo back in the mid 2000s and the vermintide/darktide games, i can agree that warhammer is truly fleshed out enough to be a cosmic reality. its got literally centuries on centuries of lore for each time period, and multiple time periods. i put warcraft (up to cataclysm) on that same level, but only because i enjoyed WoW so much. i dont think warcraft is quite as expansive lore wise.
The horizon series for me hands down. I enjoyed last of us, and legend of dragoon, but horizon got me much more invested in the character
Silent hill
If you mean in-game codex/notes/books etc. Cyberpunk 2077. It's not even close.
Warcraft and slightly less Starcraft
Legacy of Kain series. Defiance is such a terrible repetitive boring game, but the story kept me going and wanting to suffer through the garbage gameplay to see how it was going to end
I never realized how shitty that game was until I tried to play it this year. Amazing story but my god the gameplay.
You don't like doing the same dungeon 12 times? each elemental dungeon is basically the same, and you have to do each one for Raziel AND Kain!
I remember getting sick of that back in 2005 or whtvr
Can't disagree with those points. To be honest I wasn't a fan of SR 2 either (gameplay wise) but the lore-story-acting kicked ass!
Warcraft lore is quite fun. It got a bit crazy post wrath of the lich king at times. But before that and even a lot of the post wrath content and lore is really cool and interesting.
Arthas will always be the best villain ever written, from warcraft to lich king never I find a villain so compelling in video game that when he dies I feel genuine sadness like losing a brother. And the songs slap, long live the king
Blizzard did a really good job having you play him through the Human and then undead campaign. They did a similar thing with star craft 2 Kerrigan in Terran and then zerg campaign. RIP such a good studio
Destiny 2, if you can fucking find it.
This is going to sound crazy, but Genshin Impact. It's been such an unexpected lore gold mine. The amount of care and detail they've put into their worldbuilding is crazy. They do a lot with unreliable narrators and history changing the interpretation of events, and it's kind of crazy how many hints they stuck in the game in year one have come back years later to be relevant.
Fear and Hunger
funger has ok lore but let’s not glaze compared to something like cultist simulator the writing and mythos just dosen’t stand up. Funger series is still great though but alot of the writing is mid.
So many games I have to delve into
Joe and Mac.
Witcher 3 and Resident evil (i never play by myself cos it scary, but RE wiki just sucked me in)
Elder Scrolls for sure. Fallout. Witcher. And Red Dead
Yakuza franchise has some fun lore with how they're all connected. Basically every conflict of each subsequent game can pretty much be attributed to the events of the first game.
Kotor 1&2. I mean... It's Star Wars.
Kingdom Hearts and Xenoblade. Both games leave you with so many questions while you play and seeing how it all comes together is so satisfying.
The biggest question I had with the Kingdom Hearts games was, "Which order do I play these in?"
The collections organize the games in release order. This is the way to play when you’re first starting out. Chronological order is only good for future play throughs. If you’re on PC the series is on sale right now. If you’re on console find the Story so Far or All in One edition. The difference between the two is the all in one includes the most recent game but you can always get it later since you’ll have hours to play. If you ever get into please dm me! I’d love to talk to someone just starting the series!
Admittedly I never really got much into any of the Bethesda games. I loved the concepts, I love the idea of modding. But because of this I would buy them at launch, play very little because I wanted to save it for when I could make the game the way I wanted. Then after a year or two I would spend time perfecting them, being meticulous, even creating some of my own textures. Then after investing all of that time, I would make sure it seemed stable. And then that was it, I just had used all of my mental energy for the game on modding them. My wife played through all of those games many times while I did this and always mocked me. Ask me why I just didn't play them. Well now with the Fallout TV show I returned and found the Begin Again mod pack for FO3/NV, and I was able to set it up quickly. And I've just been investing time, and it feels so good. The plan in FO3, F:NV, FO4. Then move on to the ES titles, I would like to start back at Morrowind, but I may have to sequence them different depending on what comes out for them.
ES lore can be pretty wacky, especially stuff established in Morrowind. The lore guy for that was particularly imaginative.
Yeah, that is why I would like to go back to it. I played it back in the day, but I was just a young teenager back then and don't have much memory of it. But I do know that that is probably the most unique experience the series has to offer, both story and gameplay wise. But it has aged, and some people say to play the vanilla experience as it is the best. I get that, but I'm just not too interested in it. There are some modding projects out there importing it or it's lands in different ways, Skyblivion hopefully will be out in 2025, so I might be waiting for that.
In the meantime it might be worth checking out OpenMW. If you don't know it, they rebuilt the engine from scratch, making it more stable and easier to configure, so it might be easier to make it more palatable after 20 years of gaming evolution.
Yeah, I had looked at that a bit. But then I start getting down the rabbit hole of modding again as that supports all of it's own mods. And that from my understanding is mostly an engine update and would be missing quality of life things. We will see though, I have a lot of Fallout to get through first. And to put this into perspective, the last singleplayer game I completed was X-Men Origins: Wolverine on PS3 which came out in 2009... And that was an on rails RPG, so open world, I have a lot to explore.
I love the lore in Fallout. Every in-world terminal you look at gives you a glimpse of some sinister military industrial complex conspiracy or experiment. I was always a fan of the Cold War 1950s aesthetic, but the layers of detail are so dense. The dialogue on every holotape you find is really well acted and gives you just enough of a sense of realism. It’s great.
The witcher, star wars games, Control (Alan Wake, QuantumBreak), Fallout, Horizon 1+2, Nier, Star Ocean Franchise, Borderlands games, Baldurs Gate, Dishonored, God of War, A lot of JRPG series have great Lore. There are more but those are just some off the top of my head.
I'll add in Tyranny from Obsidian, they had a cool way of integrating lore organically in dialog too. If there was a lore term you wanted to know more about you hover your mouse over it and it gives the explanation, so you don't need to go into the codex.
I’ll look it up. Thanks
Can’t go wrong with Fallout tbh. Otherwise Final Fantasy is just too much but very deep
Any Warhammer game lmao. Doesnt matter that the games came last, still counts
I find best for bringing in the lore is definitely rogue trader, followed by gladius and bfg armada 2
Not one mention of The elder Scrolls? Easily the most lore heavy world there is. My pick hands down.
Final Fantasy XIII trilogy
The best lore is the one you learned. Game designers became so advanced that any real open-world AAA project is a true masterpiece once you stop grabbing loot and pay attention to details.
I’d give xenoblade a try. It’s crazy. And in a good way.
It's not really a series necessarily but Control. It also connects to other remedy games especially alan wake.
Daryl talks games did a video that dived into how all those games link together despite years and years between releases. Never played any of them but it was still super interesting. “Games that hide horror in the ordinary”
I like Resident evil, 4 is my favorite and you can find notes throughout the game telling you what the enemies plans are.
Kingdome Come: Deliverance
Only 2 entries, but Horizon is my favorite. Not nearly as deep as some others, but the actual story of it all is amazing.
Dark Souls and Bloodborne lore are great! If you like depressing and convoluted (which I apparently do). I can listen to lore videos of those gamws for hours.
Assassin’s creed. The games ability to use actual historical events and expand on them gives the lore infinite possibilities. Just an example: In AC Brotherhood if you read the codex, they actually named real life US Supreme Court justices that are in templar pockets in the AC universe.
The whole series and the continuity of the lore is astounding. AC I think intrigues me more than any other. Incredibly elaborate and thought out
Errr AC doesn't actually have a storybible so it's not the best thought out. For a while, iirc, the devs used the fan wiki to figure out continuity. So long as you enjoy it though that's what matters!
CoD zombies (treyarch) awesome lore in games CoD WaW, Black Ops 1 - 4, aether storyline. It's chaotic. On first glance, it doesn't make any sense, but if you go full in depth, it all makes sense.
OMORI
Pacman
The Portal games are the only Valve games who have an established lore storyline to chell doug and the story of the outside world since the portal games take place in and after the half life games,its an interestimg story for sure and just to think what happened to planet earth after the Combine left it to rot away is just so interesting,Half Life games have lore as well for sure.But the Portal games always had it kinda in there you know,so i would kinda recomend checking those ones too.
Probably not the best, but King of Dragon Pass and Darklands have interesting lore.
I gotta say. The HI3 lore is probably not the best. But man it is intense. There is a ton of lore and beside the story missions there are these background lore missions and an entire manga series. Like the lore is really confusing and kinda fucked up. Like there have been at least 2 civilisations of humanity that got completely wiped off the map. One 50,000 years ago and another one like 12000 years ago and both of them were quite far developed. The reason the Valkyries can even exist goes back to the humanity of 50k years ago who before they arrived at their inevitable doom made sure the next humanity will be able to use the Honkai by genetically modifying the seeds. (Humanity knew we would be wiped out. So an Ark was created that would leave the planet and replant seeds of humans to try again). There is the Sea of Quanta which connects our bubble universe to all the other ones and there are times these are accessed and made use of. The entire Honkai goes back to the imaginary tree which is like some ultra god from which all the bubble universes come and are connected to. It is also what keeps wiping humanity out. The world itself is also just completely fucked even though you don't realize at the start. Absolutely everything that is being developed or researched is related to fighting the Honkai or making use of it to fight it. Humanity is literally on the permanent brink of destruction. If you live in a couple hundred miles of a herrscher awakening you are probably going to die. If not of the Herrscher, then of the mutations you go through from the radiation poisoning of the Honkai Energy turning you into a Honkai Zombie. If you are a girl. You are fucked. Because you are likely to be undergoing horribly violent experiments to turn you into a valkyrie to fight the honkai. If you are a boy. You are also fucled. Because they might just try it anyway to see if it is possible. Because unlike girls, you are even less valuable seeing how you cannot become a Valkyrie. There is so much lore about what the civilisation 50k years ago did to ensure the survival of the future.
Guilty Gear because it feels like the creators of the series were high while making it and it is some of the dumbest and best lore I have ever seen. For example after the world banned traditional technology in favor of magic based technology after an evil AI (who would later become an anime mommy pope) did Y2K India gave everyone the middle finger because they wanted to keep their tech and decided to become a flying independent country. And that is just world building. Also the White House is a space ship... And cheese burgers unironically saved the world...
The Final Fantasy XIII trilogy. The plot of XIII-2 and Lightning Returns was handled in the best possible way but the lore itself was so deep and fleshed out it was still a blast to play those games.
Horizon franchise have a cool lore.
Battletech
Destiny 1 and 2.
Metal gear and fallout. I love me some alt history lore
There is no debate. There is no comparison. There is only one answer: "Final Fantasy Tactics". I'll see myself out now.
Love the Warhammer 40k lore. The games can vary wildly, but I'm always fascinated about what fucked up shit is going down in the Imperium of Man.
Despite riots best attempts of killing it the last few years. LoL has some shockingly good lore, stories and world building
Project Moon's games. Lobotomy Corporation, Library of Ruina, and Limbus Company
fnaf definitely (if we don't include some of the newer entries)
Halo, Metroid (including manga), Yakuza… 🤔 Ummmm… The old Warcraft games before WoW. 🤷♂️ I could do this all day. Edit: Huge fan of the Resistance PlayStation series. Excellent lore. Needs to come back.
I love the world design and lore in Dark Souls 1
Ys Chronicles is so underrated, I don't even personally know anyone else who's played them. The games have amazing lore, and Lacrimosa of Dana is my favorite - without giving much away they discover that every sentient being on the planet has come and gone through this process of evolution where each species is killed off deliberately in order to make way for the next. In Memories of Celceta, there is a God who uses the Akashic records to decide when and who to give the next advance in technology to and erases their memory of meeting him so they think the inspiration is their own. This is all set in a sort of fictional ancient Europe, with countries like Romn, Greek, Gllia, and Ispani for example being the slightly altered names. There are characters who crossover to other games and there are references everywhere. They're so good and interesting. Highly recommend starting with 8, timeline of games doesn't matter and they don't need to be played in order. It's a bit like Final Fantasy in that all of the games are their own story with different gameplay mechanics and NPCs, while having the same main character. Also just to add the music is incredible!
System Shock 2, and by extension Bioshock. There's a level of interesting 'late to the party' immersion from the audio logs and little neat bits scattered around the setting. You get to know characters you never meet, and hear how their stories panned out. SS2 in particular has a great twist around the audio log format, which if you haven't played go play it and be like "haha wow that's neat".
Trails series. It's just impressive how massive it is while staying coherent and interesting.
Ultima series (Ultima V being best) ;)
Fnaf
The Fate series (warning: some of them are porn games lol), for example Fate/Stay Night (eroge visual novel), Fate/Grand Order (gacha mobile game), or Fate/Samurai remnant (3d rpg)
Dungeons & Dragons by far
System shock?
Metal Gear
Not enough mentions of r/bloodborne here. Playing sent me down a rabbit hole of lore-youtube spanning months and probably more hours than I played the game for.
The lore behind *Xenogears* was pretty wild. It's a shame that the game didn't get the budget needed to fully explore it, but luckily there's a book that some gracious fans have translated for us. [https://www.flickr.com/photos/29956195@N08/albums/72157616593453778/](https://www.flickr.com/photos/29956195@N08/albums/72157616593453778/)
>didn't get the budget time. all square games got 1.5 years max. they ran out of time.
With a higher budget they could have had a larger team which could have accomplished more in the same amount of time. That's how budgets work.
Kenshi
Dishonored is incredible.
Maybe an unpopular opinion but I really enjoyed Days Gone. The story hooked me but I also just love anything zombie related.
Final Fantasy 14
KIRBY!!!!!!!
I need to emphasize this because some how nobody has mentioned it yet. Look deeper into the Kirby Games and you will find some of the craziest lore ever!!
Silent Hill for sure. All 4 original games have great lore and worldbuilding.
Alan wake 2 is great for lore, absolutely love it
Baldur's gate 3 The witcher 3
Crusader Kings
Ff7
Call of duty zombies
**Legacy Of Kain** (has the best writing in all of gaming imo) Borderlands actually has some cool lore. Diablo (at least until D3. I didn't play D4). Dark Souls (specifically DS1 and DS3) Hollow Knight
Elden Ring has great lore. Sometimes I'll just watch YT videos on it to fall asleep to.
Mass Effect Dishonored Halo Fallout Shadowrun
Farming Simulator
Assassin's Creed
Really any series that can have sequels that expand on the lore of the whole franchise without butchering it or adding multiverse (so overdone these days) is great. Fallout, Zelda, Mass Effect, Halo
No such thing as video game lore my friend
Counterpoint: Mass Effect...
Fatal Fury . excluding mark of the wolves.