this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2026
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If we want to be charitable there's a nugget of truth to what he's saying though. I'm 48 now and I've played computer games since I was seven, and I've worked with game development myself. TLOU was the first game that felt like it had a story for someone who's 40+. It felt like some kind of milestone. The art of games has matured significantly in the past 15 years.
Clearly you've never played the cinematic masterpiece that is Sonic Adventure 2.
I think there are a lot of candidates before TLOU, and you are being very charitable I would say.
The first game that I remember having a worthwhile story is probably Max Payne (themes of bereavement, drug addiction, betrayal) or the Thief games (environmental storytelling!)
Hey, it's subjective. And you're misrepresenting what I'm saying. I'm not saying there haven't been games with excellent storytelling. FF7, Another World, Space Quest 3 come to my mind. There are undoubtedly a hundred more. But in reality those games still appealed more to us kids than my dad. With TLOU I feel like something new happened: the story resonated more with the dad in the house (me) than with the kids.
Come on, Space Quest V was not written for kids
Neither was Leisure Suit Larry. But I'd argue that the the game still appealed more to kids than to adults. With TLOU I saw something else happen: many kids hated the ending, while dads like me totally got it.
It's like you've never heard of Star Control 2: The Ur-Quan Masters
Yeah, it's worded stupidly, but there's a point there. TLOU was emotive in a way I haven't felt often in video game writing. Ref how well it adapted into TV.
I think what he's getting at is that gaming has focused more on gameplay loop than storytelling, which is generally fair.
If anyone has recommendations for games they think have writing of comparable quality, lay them on me. For me so far the pantheon is bioshock, RDR2, TLOU, and I have high hopes for Bg3.
Planescape Torment, The Longest Journey, Max Payne, Mafia the city of Lost Heaven, BioWare games (KotOR, Mass Effect, etc), Persona 3/4, Dead Space, Alan Wake, Deus Ex... I mean storytelling over gameplay is Quantic Dream's whole schtick, success/failure aside. Previous Naughty Dog games.
There's a bit of a a conflation between cinematic presentation and storytelling. I literally grew up on story driven games well before TLoU. Homeworld was absolutely haunting with its understated dialogue, sweeping score, and timeless themes.
Even the year before TLoU, Spec Ops the Line came out, a deft and timely reimagining of The Heart of Darkness for the late Iraq war era--adding into it through the mechanics of the shooter genre. Talk about literary.
Oh shit dead space, yeah that definitely needs to go higher up my list.
Cinema/storytelling interesting point. For sure there's a lot of personal taste at play. Maybe the other dimension is agency in the story. A branching narrative is obviously harder to write/produce but is what separates games from other media (which is a reasonable critique for e.g. TLOU, which works so well as just... a HBO series).
The first two are "walking simulators", i.e. very linear. But the story telling of all three is amazing. Firewatch also feels like a "game for grown-ups". It deals with a person who leaves his wife because she gets early onset dementia. He runs off to work as a firewatch in a national park. Lots of complicated feelings involved and an extremely engaging mystery unfolding.
I need to find more time for walking sim stuff. Played "everybody's gone to the rapture" and ejoyed it.
Firewatch and What remains of Edith Finch both take around four hours to finish. You can easily finish them in a day or two.