Top PC Games with a Brain: Five Great Story-Driven Games

Modern PC games have upped their graphics and gameplay to unprecedented levels, but at the same time their often sketchy and predictable plots can leave discerning gamers frustrated. Back when a video game was little more than text and some pixels on a screen, story was everything. But now a game can skate by with little more than a basic premise and succeed by merely giving the gamer the ability to shoot some zombies. Even otherwise brilliant RPGs like The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion often have central plotlines that fall short.

But a game with a truly engaging and developed story is ultimately a far more memorable experience, immersing the gamer completely in the plot and characters the same way you might become immersed in a novel or movie. It touches on concepts that mean something and creates characters you can believe in. At the same time, a great storyline doesn’t necessarily mean sacrificing action and excitement. So without further ado here are five PC games, some older and some newer, that are each built around a creative and compelling storyline.

 This classic is not only one of the best Star Wars games ever made, but it’s one of the best PC RPGs as well. Though its format is fairly linear, there are enough choices available to make your game a fairly personalized experience. Where this game really shines, however, is in the story department. By choosing an era thousands of years before the Star Wars movies, the designers were able to create fresh characters, locations, and storylines that aren’t constrained by existing material. Whether you’re a Star Wars fan or not, it’s easy to appreciate the originality of Knights of the Old Republic.

There’s a lot of depth and detail to the KOTOR story. Though you travel to several different worlds, events on one world will often impact your experience on the next—resulting in a rewarding sense of continuity. The NPCs (non-player characters) have their own backgrounds and personalities, and their relationships with each other and with you evolve over the course of the game. A lot of the NPCs, main or secondary, are surprisingly engaging and/or funny.

You can choose to play your character as good, evil, or somewhere in between, and your choices and actions help determine this alignment as well as other characters’ reactions to you, which gives you the opportunity for some character development. But the number one reason KOTOR belongs on this list is for the huge and shocking plot twist two-thirds of the way through the game. Believe it or not, it’s even better than “Luke, I am your father.”