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Video games are some of the best interactive and narrative mediums that offer players a momentary escape from reality, allowing them to immerse themselves in a vivid world that is outside their own.
Often the narratives leave a lasting impression, even filling the audience with existential dread. This leaves them questioning the very meaning of life, contemplating the discourse of reality and everyday existence.
Being a more interactive medium, games oftentimes have a bigger impact than a written narrative, and over the years, there have been certain titles that have had lasting impressions on players.
Today’s article will therefore talk about five such games that made players contemplate life, and five others that, despite having great gameplay, presented a narrative that left a lot to be desired.
5 video game stories that filled players with existential dread
Before moving onto the list, it’s important to note here that the catalog of titles presented below is subjective and reflects the writer’s opinion. The list is not made out of a universal consensus, and should therefore not be treated as such.
1) NieR Automata
NieR Automata was quite successful in pondering the very meaning of life and existential despair throughout its the story. While the first playthrough was often considered by many to be light on the game's darker themes, the magic of the title lay in the subsequent playthroughs. Through the aid of multiple perspectives, Yoko Taro was able to weave something that is unforgettable.
The theme of NieR Automata revolves around topics such as finding one’s cause, as well as seeking the very reason to live. The game contains NPCs who champion the names of prominent existential philosophers like Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir (boss fight) and more.
The quest for meaning in an otherwise barren world and the existential dread that comes from the very act of seeking it is something that NieR Automata champions magnificently.
Coupled with the gut-wrenching music that often sends shivers down one's spine, the title creates an environment of synesthesia that allows players to experience one of their senses through another.
2) Soma
Soma is often praised for being one of the best psychological horror games that deals with the concept of consciousness and immortality. The story starts off with the player waking up in a science lab present at the foot of the ocean. Here, they encounter robots who possess human consciousness and unique personalities, but are broken and decaying.
The dilemma in the narrative occurs when the tragic characters question their own conscious reality, and if they are at all human, having moved to a mechanized body.
When players interact with them, they constantly have to redefine their perspective of the characters and what it means to be truly immortal. “As there is no fear of death, can they at all be called human?” were all the pervasive and uncomfortable questions that the game throws at the player over and over again.
The images and the narrative progression are often gut-wrenching, while also boasting some of the most disturbing sets of incidents in video game history.
3) Dark Souls
Championing the Junji Ito-esque concept of the Fibonacci Sequence, Dark Souls is a spiraling tale that repeats itself time and again. The lighting of the Bonfires to keep the Age of Fire alive is at the very core of the game’s narrative. Furthermore. the trilogy does a fantastic job of portraying the existential questions that are often raised when one comes face-to-face with the “absurd.”
As Gwen wants to keep his Age of Fire alive, going against the very cycle of nature, he tries to evince the dark soul of humanity, till it eventually corrupts and turns them into a hollow.
As humanity tries to seep through the ring of fire, the curse that Gew put on man, the emerging spiraling chaos leads to the birth of the Ashen One, who can either continue the age of fire by linking all the Shrines or purge it as natural law dictates the coming of the new Age of Man.
In many ways, Dark Souls feeds into Nietzsche and the Ubermensch idea of the “superhuman”, whose sole purpose is to upset the established order and usher in a new cycle. As “Ash seeketh embers” so must the Age of Fire die to herald a new Age of Man, for the entire spiral to repeat itself over and over, till existence itself is null.
4) The Talos Principle
Serious Sam developers, Croteam, had in 2014 launched a game that was quite out of the box. The Talos Principle is a puzzle game that casts players as robots in a sort of simulation where they must use their wits to triumph.
However, the title is more than just a puzzle solver and at its very core, tests the philosophical and religious ideas of the players as the computer keeps asking them questions that eventually make them ponder the very meaning of life.
The title creates a discourse around the human consciousness, and if it is at all “grounded in action” from the various interactions with the world, or is it an abstraction that is “exclusive to all humans.”
As the player-controlled robot journeys through the narrative at the beck and call of Elohim, who plays the god and master, it eventually starts to possess a fully-formed consciousness. However, to completely attain it, players will need to defy Elohim, who, from the onset, has been the very purpose of the robot’s existence.
Players will need to finally climb the tower that Elohim commands them not to, ultimately lifting the robot out of its simulation into a sort of enlightened reality.
5) The Stanley Parable
The Stanley Parable plays on the notion of determinism and how the choices of one are often times the result of sociological, environmental, and historical factors. In the sense that no person’s choice in the world is their own, and is pre-determined by a series of factors and events, every decision is influenced by everything that is around.
In the game, players inhabit Stanley, and much like one can see in The Talos Principle, in this title too, the player-controlled character is receiving instructions on what to do from a voice.
However, this voice pre-determines Stanley's actions, so when the narrator states “Stanley will go through the door on his left”, players can decide to either obey or completely disregard the command.
The very tension of attempting to carve out one's own path is what sits at the very heart of the Stanley Parable. It makes players question themselves as gamers and as human beings, and whether there is at all something called free will.
5 video game narratives that left a lot to be desired
1) Far Cry 5
From a narratorial perspective, Far Cry 5 was perhaps the weakest entry in the franchise, and the story did not remotely hit as hard as some of the other titles in the franchise.
The story starts with cult leader Joseph Seed laying his claims in the fictional Hope County in Montana. While the Far Cry series is notorious for its pragmatic set of villains, Joseph Seed does not make the cut and is often termed by many in the community as one of the blandest villains in the franchise.
He has led himself to believe that the world is coming to an end, and as the game closes out, the protagonist will be given the choice to either walk away from the Eden’s Gate cult or resist it to the very end.
Picking either choice leads to some incredibly bad story-telling that convinces no one. There were some pretty awful ways to round out the game, and while Far Cry 5 as a title had enjoyable gameplay, its lackluster narrative did cost it some brownie points for franchise fans.
2) Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
While the first Uncharted game was a visual marvel at the time of its launch in 2007, its narrative did not play out as well as one would have hoped for. Uncharted: Drake’s Deception had great gameplay that many enjoyed, but the plot had too many holes and indeed left a lot to be desired.
Things started to go completely off track in the third act, where Nathan had to face off against hordes of mutated Nazi zombies with the aid of an MP-40. While being over-the-top is one of the Uncharted series’ more appreciable qualities in the first game, Naughty Dog never really did find the ceiling.
The story went completely off the rails, and players had a hard time digesting the narrative in the later stages.
Fortunately, subsequent titles in the franchise fared much better and are considered some of the best PlayStation exclusives that made their way to PC.
3) Fallout 4
Obsidian Entertainment's Fallout 4 was a rather enjoyable title, at least from a gameplay perspective. However, when it came to the story, many believed that it failed to live up to the legacy that other titles in the franchise were able to create.
Fallout: New Vegas was one of the most celebrated entries in the franchise, not just for its gameplay but the plethora of narrative choices, end-game progression, and scenarios that drove its story.
The worldbuilding and narrative were incredibly rich, with a lot of memorable moments that fans won't forget anytime soon.
However, Fallout 4’s progression was quite stale in comparison. It had a limited number of endings, amounting to four, and irrespective of the path chosen by the player, the narrative was not at all convincing. In summation, it left a lot to be desired.
Characterization was also not one of its strongest suits, and the great FPS gameplay was marred by poor narrative choices.
4) The Evil Within
Marred by an overarching narrative, Shinji Mikami’s The Evil Within tried too hard to make sense of a plot that had nothing at its core. Even with the final exposition, and everything being revealed, players had a hard time grasping the story, let alone assessing if it complimented the narrative tone and the environment.
The plot was incredibly complicated from the get-go and forced players to take a more cerebral approach, instead of delivering a straightforward survival-horror game.
As the story of The Evil Within progressed, players were brought face-to-face with the machinations of an evil organization that wanted to create a biochemical reality and rule the world.
Eventually, however, the man that the organization left in charge, betrayed them and foiled their entire lifelong scheme.
There is little to no foreshadowing of what will eventually happen as the narrative rounds out. Furthermore, the already complicated plot was made even more abstruse with forced events and expositions.
5) Call Of Duty: Ghosts
While some Call of Duty titles had incredible stories for players to enjoy, Ghosts was not one of them. The geopolitical issues that drove the game’s story were considered by many to be repetitive and uninspired.
It was also quite over-the-top, with the story's progression making little sense to players.
The story begins ten years after all the South American countries banded together to form the Federation of the United Americas, which then went on to capture a U.S. orbital bombardment satellite to destroy San Diego.
The story traces the aftermath and how the Federation was eventually destroyed, along with most of South America. When it comes to narratives going off the rails, Call of Duty: Ghosts has the cake and eats it too.
