Soooo… you’re telling me there’s a game whose story you really love that avoids all these tropes completely? Hmmm… How about Stardew Valley? The premise isn’t entirely unrealistic (leaving a boring corporate job for a dream hobby farm), the story unfolds on its own, you get to decide who you side with, who you become close to and hang out with. Or perhaps you only enjoy franchises that have volumes and volumes of lore behind them to make up for game campaign plots that are too straightforward (Lord of the Rings, Starcraft for example).
Or (like me) your favourite games have little to no story at all. American Truck Simulator, Bloons TD, Age of Empires, Satisfactory, Cities Skylines, Transport Fever are a bunch of my favourite games to play.
If you believe everything you wrote in this post, you are quite hard to please. A game’s plot can’t be too straightforward, yet any surprise twist seems shoehorned in the game. Telling the story through the environment is walking simulator, telling the story through quests is MMORPG Simulator, telling it through Textboxes/Cutscenes is Reading Simulator. Someone hiding something about their character until later in the game is unrealistic, being taken for a ride in a fantasy world is “losing your basic sense of agency”.
Are you playing to try to have fun, escape real life for a bit, or are you playing just to tell people you beat the game? I like games over films and books because you are part of the action and the story, but it’s also part of the game design how far your choices ultimately take you in the world, sometimes they affect everything, sometimes it has no bearing and you’re doomed with what the game has in store.
your examples are so weirdly vague I think this post would get a proverbial “mega-boost” from some actual examples of video games.
And I can agree with a few of these but some of them seem so weird. Like, assuming that an episodic story automatically means each episode is self-contained with 1 major conflict is a really archaic way of thinking about episodes. In television, that all but died out in like 2002. And a fixation on things as opposed to people is actually what makes a lot of dystopic writing great. The removal of the “self,” can lead to a feeling of nihilism and can lead the viewer to appreciating how much of the world has lost its life.
Also, jokes on you, you probably don’t hate my favorite video game’s story because it actually has no story ;)
If you are looking for “learn fight, get better, epic win” without much of a death penalty, maybe look at Monster Hunter?
It’s not the same as a Souls game - not much world exploration, not much plot, zero gothiness - but it is 3D Fantasy Boss Fights: The Game. With 14 genuinely different weapon classes to choose from.
And if you faint three times and fail the quest, all you’ve lost are the consumables you spent on the attempt. (If you give up early and bail, you haven’t even lost that.)
Have you tried What Remains of Edith Finch? It’s a good story heavy game that’s pretty short. Return of the Obra Dinn is a deduction puzzle game that can be done in short sessions. Celeste is also good for short sessions if platformers are more of your thing.
I’m usually way more into short arcadey yet narrative games like Hotline Miami, but based on your list I’d wholeheartedly recommend What Remains of Edith Finch. It’s a bunch of very short story vignettes, so even if you only have 30 minutes you know you’ll complete one.
Night in the Woods might also interest you. I would always play one in-game day (which is about 1 hour each) to relax before going to bed.
Czego oczekujesz od takiej lewicowej literatury? Pytam serio, bo pierwszy raz spotykam się z pojęciem lewicowej fantastyki. Raczej szedłbym w stronę interesujących Cię motywów, lub rozejrzał się za autorami o określonych poglądach
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