The gaming industry now accounts for more than half of the UK’s entertainment market and is bigger in North America than Hollywood.
As such, there’s a far more mainstream conversation on the quality of video games than ever before.
And one of the biggest topics centres on storytelling.
Famously seen as secondary to the action, and dismissed as being childish, storytelling in video games has always been ignored. That’s changing, however – with games like The Witcher 3, The Last of Us and God of War brought in cinematic, sweeping plots which hit the player on an emotional level.
Presentation design agency Buffalo 7 wanted to find out which game had the best storyline of all. By running two sets of research, one a survey and one a data index on games released after 2010, Buffalo 7 has revealed gaming’s most revered, and gaming’s most memorable, storylines.
Buffalo 7 took a list of post-2010 games known for their great storylines and researched critical articles, Google, Reddit, and YouTube to discover how popular each story was. These ‘story success factors were then given weighted scores, with a top total score out of 100.
The index reveals that The Last of Us has the most revered storyline in gaming – scoring 88/100. This is followed by God of War with 72/100 and God of War, with 71/100.
Buffalo 7 also surveyed 1158 gamers asking which video game storyline was the most memorable. 67% said that modern video game storylines are now better than TV and film.
Responses were ranked to reveal that The Last of Us has the most memorable video game story, with a 47% majority of responses putting it in the top spot. The Witcher III came next with 35% followed by God of War (2018) with 31%.
Top 10 Most Memorable Video Game Storylines:
| Rank | Game | Percentage |
| 1 | The Last of Us | 47% |
| 2 | The Witcher III: Wild Hunt | 35% |
| 3 | God of War (2018) | 31% |
| 4 | Red Dead Redemption 2 | 28% |
| 5 | Horizon Zero Dawn | 24% |
| 6 | Portal 2 | 20% |
| 7 | Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End | 19% |
| 8 | Undertale | 17% |
| 9 | Hades | 10% |
| 10 | Marvel’s Spider-Man | 8% |
“People haven’t always associated video games with good stories. Historically, storylines in games were a bit of an afterthought, something on which to hang the action, something which was secondary to the gameplay itself. People didn’t play video games for the storylines,” says James Robinson, Marketing Manager at Buffalo 7.
“Countless articles, Reddit threads and YouTube breakdown videos discuss the merits of different video game stories. Story-telling is part of our brand, so we wanted to find out once and for all which video game stories had really resonated, which were the most memorable. It’s no surprise that Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us came out top in both our data sets. The game tells an engaging and emotionally draining tale and it’s no wonder we’ll soon see it adapted into its on HBO series.”
Edited by Luis Monzon
Follow Luis Monzon on Twitter
Follow IT News Africa on Twitter
