Dragon’s Dogma is pretty good at making you both the center of the world and being surrounded by people that want you to succeed with how the pawns constantly talk, and even out in the middle of nowhere, you’ll run into people just walking around between settlements so the world never feels empty, even in places it maybe should.
Echo
Have you tried Adastra? That story can make you feel pretty good… Until it ends…
Which typically culminates in rolling up everyone on Earth by the time you get to the final stage, no less. If that’s not a group hug, I don’t know what is.
Edit: I’m also going to second the Psychonauts recommendation, especially the second game. Despite the gameplay itself inevitably lending itself to the protagonist performing every little bit of work by himself, there are strong themes of teamwork all throughout the game’s story and the excellence of its final sequence cannot be understated:
To your edit, similarly the final sequence of Nier Automata is so deeply rooted in not being alone, and encouraging one another, and being there for one another. A chance to break the cycle.
I guess you’re looking to spend time with interesting characters.
Endearing party of playable characters:
Bug Fables — A big tiny adventure of three cute insects, with Paper Mario-inspired turn-based combat
Cassette Beasts — Creature-collecting with heart. You bring one of several interesting companions with you.
Moonlight Pulse — A metroidvania set on a planet-sized creature. You play as a team of planet-creature denizens fighting off a parasite infestation.
Encountering interesting NPCs:
A Short Hike — A very small but dense open world game. You encounter characters on your way to find a cell signal in a remote mountain park. With no quest tracker or minimap, you just wander and do what you want.
Inscryption — Card game with an immersive, spooky atmosphere. The game is hiding secrets from you, though, and you’ll meet plenty of shady characters before you can get the truth.
CrossCode — Action RPG set in a fictional VR MMO of the distant future. You wake up as a player character with no memories of real life, unable to log out. You quickly make friends, go do MMO stuff together and get to the bottom of why you’re stuck in-game.
Parasocial weirdness:
Hypnospace Outlaw — You are a janitor on a Geocities-like service in a simulated 1999 internet. You learn about all the users through their personal websites. This game expresses a large emotional range with just website updates (or the lack of them).
I was going to suggest CrossCode, it has some great characters. And while the game is balls-hard on default settings it has many adjustable options to bring it in line with whatever your skill level may be.
Honestly, my issue with it is that it gets mired in real MMO tedium when it didn’t need to simulate that. Stuff like running between NPC traders to trade your supplies up for good equipment and other stuff like having a gigantic pile of consumables.
And of course, I finish the final boss with all the best consumables still in my inventory. The game never pressed me to use them, so I always saved them for something more important. “Oh, that was the final boss. Guess I should have been eating more sandwiches.”
The plot and worldbuilding are still really cool. Just don’t get into MMOmaxxing.
I like a lot of singleplayer games, but I also play games that can be played multiplayer (open world survival crafting games).
Borderlands is pretty good imo. You can play alone, but you never really feel alone with all the characters constantly asking you to do stuff for them.
Someone else said Kenshi, which is strictly singleplayer but you can build up your party and have multiple squads running around, taking care of things. And there are generated conversations between them. And there’s tons of mods that can change or add things to the game; personally I’ve added a couple new subraces to the vanilla ones, a couple new whole races of characters to play with, new building and weapon types and such.
Edit: Untitled Goose Game and Thank Goodness You’re Here, or even any cozy game really.
The new Star Wars: Jedi games like Fallen Order and Survivor are great singleplayer games without making you feel alone. Mostly cause of BD-1.
I keep seeing aa lot of neat things about Kenshi, but when I tried it out I felt completely lost and lost interest before I really figured anything out.
I don’t like when games baby you, but I do like a little hand-holding to get me started.
Maybe I’m just a big dum and turned off the tutorial/tips/skipped something I shouldn’t have? Not sure but your comment definitely makes me want to give it another go when I have a couple of days free.
But no seriously if you can get past the extremely weird … basically early 00’s style mmo control scheme… for what nowadays you’d expect to be third person ARPG controls… Kenshi is an absolutely incredible game, and it’s got a lively modding scene as well.
“Binary Domain” is an option. You are almost all the time accompanied by 1-3 NPCs of your Team. The game also has a, more or less working, voice System to talk to your team through your microphone. That way you can give orders and have some small talk. The game is quite good, give it a try.
Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana. You will work together with an increasing team of friends and allies to survive ridiculous circumstances.
The story is incredible, but the character building is excellent. Great fast paces action RPG with party switching, so you’ll always have 2 playing with you. The story really shows deep friendship development, especially if you ensure to do all side quests and talk to characters at various story points.
bin.pol.social
Aktywne