Best Story Video Games To Play in 2024
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At a Glance: The Best Story Games
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EDITOR’S PICK: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
BEST FANTASY GAME: Baldur’s Gate 3
BEST ADVENTURE: Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection
BEST POST-APOCALYPTIC: The Last of Us, Part I & Part II
BEST HORROR: Alan Wake II
BEST SCI-FI: Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition
BEST WESTERN: Red Dead Redemption II
BEST ACTION: Horizon Forbidden West
BEST STEALTH: A Plague Tale: Requiem
While some of the best video games are known for their action, adventure, and fantasy elements, one of the reasons you stay with particular games for a long time is their in-depth, cinematic, and emotionally-driven stories. Much like reading a good book or watching an excellent movie, you gain a real connection with a video game’s characters and stories.
Just like any narrative-centric art form, video games come in a wide range of genres, like horror, science fiction, westerns, and even a touch of romance. In fact, some games can move us to tears with heart-warming or emotionally-wrecking perspectives too.
We put together a list of some of the best story games, including selections we’ve played ourselves, games there were nominated or won gaming awards, and games that received higher than a four-star rating from gamers using Amazon and Best Buy, as well as the GOG.com and Humble Bundle digital distribution platforms. Here are our top choices.
In This Article
What Are the Best Story Games?
Buying Guide; How to Pick the Best Story Game
What Are the Best Story Games?
Ahead are some of the best story-driven video games to consider playing in 2024. All picks are sold at reputable online retailers, have good reviews from game critics, nominated or won major gaming awards, and feature at least a 4/5-star rating from gamers.
1. ‘The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom‘
$56.79 $69.99 19% off
With its in-depth and touching story, open-world mechanics, and strange and bizarre characters, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is one of the best games for the Nintendo Switch. You play as Link, a Hyrule Warrior and Champion in a quest to find Princess Zelda throughout time. Along the game, you travel to distant regions, rescue creatures, go on side quests and adventures, and discover what it means to be a hero, as you gain experiences and combat skills to defeat the evil Ganondorf and restore Hyrule to its former glory after the Upheaval cataclysmic event that starts the game.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is the height of Nintendo games, while it’s pick-and-go learning curve makes it easy to play, but tough and challenging to master for beginners and Zelda experts, alike. The game is also a great example of the journey is more important than the destination, so enjoy every second of it.
In our play through, Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a leap ahead of its predecessor, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, in just about every way from its touching storytelling and open-world design to it advanced combat mechanics and memorable cast of characters. The experience playing it is completely up to you, whether it be simple or complex.
2. ‘Baldur’s Gate 3‘
$59.99
Baldur’s Gate 3 is a role-playing fantasy game with open-world design that’s playable on Sony PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and Windows PC. It’s also single-player game, but also offers online multi-player cooperative mechanics.
The fantasy game features a large number of quests and side adventures for solo gameplay or you can go online to gather your own party to embark on a journey. Baldur’s Gate 3 take place throughout the Forgotten Realms in the world of Dungeons & Dragons, while you awaken with a mind-controlling parasite in your brain. The game is based on your choices: You can either fight off the evil thoughts and resist darkness because of the parasite, or you can give into darkness to get absolute power and destruction in the realm.
Meanwhile, Baldur’s Gate 3 gained critical acclaim for its high-quality writing, storylines, production quality, romance elements, and voice acting that have effectively combine tabletop gameplay with gaming. In fact, It’s the winner of the Game of the Year Award and the Golden JoyStick in 2023.
3. ‘Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection‘
$36.35 $49.99 27% off
For Sony PlayStation 5, Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection combines Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and its expansion pack The Lost Legacy into one package. The adventure game follows Sam and Nathan Drake, two treasure hunters on pursuit of Captain Henry Avery’s long lost pirate booty. The pair set off to find the pirate colony of Libertalia that’s located in Madagascar’s deep forests. The game takes you on an adventure through jungles, cities, and mountains for the ultimate prize — fortune.
Uncharted: The Lost Legacy is a different adventure within the game. However, it features a different lead character, Chloe Frazer, a treasure hunter looking for the Tusk of Ganesh in the Western Ghats in the mountains of India. She’s joined with ex-mercenary Nadine Ross, as the pair try to look for treasure, while also preventing a civil war.
Both adventures were nominated for the Golden Joystick Awards for Best Storytelling in 2016 and 2017, respectively.
4. ‘The Last of Us, Part I & Part II‘
Winner of the Golden Joystick Award for Best Storytelling, The Last of Us, Parts 1 & 2 — which are both playable on Sony PlayStation 5 — elevates the post-apocalyptic zombie genre with nuance, pure emotion, and just a little subversion. In fact, the storytelling in the game is so expertly told that it’s now a successful TV adaptation with eight Emmy Awards on HBO.
The story starts at the beginning of a mysterious outbreak that finds Joel, his brother Tommy, and his daughter Sarah trying to escape Austin, Texas. However, during the frenzy, Sarah is shot by a soldier and dies. It picks up 20 years later and the world is overrun with zombie-like creatures, while the fate of humanity is with a little girl named Ellie. Joel must travel and protect Ellie at all cost, while the pair form a bond that will either keep them alive or dead.
5. ‘Alan Wake II‘
$49.99
Winner of the Game Award for Best Narrative in 2023 (along with best game direction and best art direction), Alan Wake II — which is playable for Sony PlayStation 5, Windows and Xbox Series X/S — is a survival horror game that has elements of mystery and detective narrative.
The game follows Alan Wake, a horror author who’s trapped in an alternate dimension where he spent the last 13 years trying to escape. However, his nightmares about penning a story about Saga Anderson keep him awake and stuck in limbo. Anderson is an FBI agent on the case in pursuit of a serial killer in the small fictional town called Bright Falls in the Pacific Northwest. You must try to unlock the mysteries of the game and story, so Alan Wake can escape his nightmares.
Fun fact: Alan Wake II was released in 2023, which is actually 13 years after the first game in the series was released in 2010.
6. ‘Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition‘
For Xbox Series X/S, Sony PlayStation 5 and PC, Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition is a Gamescom Award-winning dystopian sci-fi action game that takes place in the fictional Night City in the distant future. You play as the character V, a mercenary with a cybernetic “bio-chip” implant that features the biometrics and personality of the former terrorist turned rock star Johnny Silverhand (modeled and voiced by Keanu Reeves). But when Silverhand’s consciousness starts to take over your character, you must do everything you can to separate yourself from the charismatic visionary.
7. Red Dead Redemption II
Set in the Old West in 1899, Red Dead Redemption II — for PC, Xbox, and PlayStation — is a prequel and massive open-world game that encourages you to explore and interact with the world around you to gain experience and combat points. You play as Arthur Morgan, one of the Van der Linde gang, who must save his family of outlaws from the encroaching presence of law and order to civilize the west.
And since gameplay is dependent on your decisions and actions, the longer you play, the more you get invested in the character’s way of life and why they want to preserve the gray morality of survival of turn of the 20th century America.
8. ‘Horizon Forbidden West‘
$59.99
Winner of the Golden Joystick Award for Best Storytelling in 2022, Horizon Forbidden West for PlayStation 5 is set in post-apocalyptic “Burning Shores” of west coast of the United States — namely in the ruins of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Las Vegas.
The story follows Aloy, a young hunter from the Nora tribe. She’s on a quest with her band to the “Forbidden West” to find the source of a mysterious and very deadly plague in an open-world adventure. Along the way, she discovers new tribes, regions, and conflicts in an effort to put an end to the plague and restore the Earth to its former glory.
9. ‘A Plague Tale: Requiem‘
Released in 2022, A Plague Tale: Requiem is a action-adventure stealth game where players must hide from enemies while traversing its story. Set in Southern France during the Black Plague in the 14th century, it follows Amicia and Hugo de Rune, a pair of siblings on the hunt for Hugo’s blood disease. They have to sneak around to avoid soldiers of the Inquisition and mischiefs of rats.
A Plague Tale: Requiem — which is playable on Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, Windows, and Nintendo Switch — was nominated for five Game Awards in 2022, including best narrative, best action and adventure game, game of the year, and more.
Buying Guide; How to Pick the Best Story Game
When it comes to story games, there are many factors to think about when choosing the best ones. Below, you’ll find a few important things that we considered when putting this roundup together.
Storage: Modern gaming is almost like a double-edge sword. While there are great things about it, like in-depth storytelling, realistic graphics, precision controls, and online multiplayer, there are drawbacks too, namely storage space on consoles, long download times, and massive files. Long are the days of sliding in cartridges into a console to play your favorite games. Now you have to wait for a long time until games are completely loaded on your system (sometimes minutes, sometimes hours). This can be very frustrating when you just want to play a video game.
It’s important to be mindful of file size and storage space. Although 1TB of storage might sound like a lot, you can easily blow through that if you have games that’s are over 100GB in size.
Awards: It might be tough to find a good story game at first glance. You know the old adage, “never judge a book by its cover.” You’re not exactly sure if a story will be good unless you play it. However, a good indicator that a game might be worth spending hours playing is if it’s won (or nominated) for various awards, like the Game Awards, Golden Joystick Awards, or the D.I.C.E. (Design Innovate Communicate Entertain) Awards. These awards are consider the top tier of the gaming industry, so it might be a good starting point for new gamers to check out winners and nominees.
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