Hello! It’s BannerThief, your boy, host of such famous breaking points for this community as the “Best Musical” tournament and the “Most Underrated Film” tournament. And we’re here to determine…which video game has the best story?
What does that mean? Is a story merely the cutscenes in between an otherwise disconnected series of gameplay moments? Is it the mechanics informing the narrative in meaningful, impactful ways? Is it the journey you, as a player, embark upon, with trials and travails, leading to a meaningful emotional catharsis for you and only you?
Yes!
A video game’s story can and has been all of these things, and we’re here to determine which one is the best by consensus voting!
Well, “best” as determined by a bunch of nerds who occupy a sequel site to a spin-off channel of an already niche pop culture website. That’s what makes these so exciting!
Ground Rules:
1) The thirty-two participants will be arranged in 16 brackets according to their placement as determined by upvotes received during the first round.
2) Feel free to comment inside the competition comments; however, don’t respond to the top-level comments, as to avoid clutter.
3) Video games are art. Deal with it.
BONUS: Round One was a tough battle!
- Closest match-ups in Round One were 14 and 18, with What Remains of Edith Finch taking it over Telltale’s The Walking Dead: Season 1 with 29 upvotes to 27, and Journey narrowly losing to Final Fantasy X, 26 to 28.
- The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was the most popular challenger to not make it to the second round, its 37 votes just barely falling short of Final Fantasy VII‘s extremely strong 41 vote showing.
- The Last of Us proved worthy of its number one seed position, with an authoritative 58 (!) votes.
- Perhaps unsurprisingly, Super Mario Brothers 2 and Tetris, the two games with the most threadbare narratives (putting it mildly), were nearly shut out, with 10 and 11 respective votes making them the least popular entries in this tournament. Still, to have been part was an honor; 70 other nominated games didn’t even make it in.
The dust has fallen, only for a fresh round of blood to be spilled. Let’s do this.
