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Which games take themselves the most seriously?

David Cage's games feel like they expect the gamer to gasp in shock at the immersion of waggling a thumbstick around to unscrew a jam jar.
 
Toodles said:
David Cage's games feel like they expect the gamer to gasp in shock at the immersion of waggling a thumbstick around to unscrew a jam jar.
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I'm just gonna go ahead and spoiler-tag post the Wikipedia plot synopsis to Farenheit/IP, because jesus fuck david cage

On a cold New York City night in January 2009, Lucas Kane, in a possessed trance, stabs a man to death in the restroom of an East Side diner and then flees the scene.
Lucas attempts to uncover the reason behind the murders. He initially attempts to move past the experience, talking his way out of a visit from the NYPD, but he begins to experience hallucinations, primarily involving mysterious arthropods, which attack him, forcing him to flee from his banking job.
Lucas contacts a spiritual medium, who places him in a trance to try to recall the events in the diner. Upon discovering that he was approached by a mysterious man in the diner, who seemed to be controlling him during the murder, he leaves the medium. The following night he returns, only to find her dead body. Meanwhile, the police have identified him as the murderer, and they lay a trap to capture him. However, he demonstrates superhuman strength, reflexes, and agility, dodging bullets fired by police and leaping 30 feet into the air onto a moving subway train. Lucas's ex-girlfriend, Tiffany Harper, is eventually kidnapped by the man who approached Lucas in the diner, a Mayan Oracle, in an attempt to draw Lucas out. In his efforts to save Tiffany, both she and himself are killed. However, he is subsequently brought back to life by a group of AIs called the "Purple Clan."
Eventually, Lucas is able to convince Carla that he is innocent, explaining to her that both the Oracle and the AIs are seeking the Indigo Child, a young girl who possesses a secret that will give great power to whoever hears it. Learning of the location of the child, Lucas steals her out from under the noses of both the Oracle and the AIs, bringing her to a military base where he grew up. However, he is followed, and a final battle takes place between the three; Lucas, the Oracle and the AIs.
Depending on what happens in the final chapter of the game, there are three possible outcomes to the game. In each ending, taking place three months later, Lucas states that he has been living with Carla since the end of the game. He then adds that Carla is pregnant, but the world they are living in is very different depending on who won the final chapter:
Good ending: Lucas learns the secret of the Indigo Child, and the winter disappears. He and Carla have boundless hope for the future.
Neutral ending: The Oracle learns the secret of the Indigo Child and three months later everything seems like normal, but Lucas knows that one day the plans of the Mayans will reveal themselves.
Bad ending: The Purple clan learns the secret of the Indigo Child the world is covered in an eternal snowstorm, with three quarters of humanity wiped out, and the rest living underground. The only hope Lucas and Carla have for the future is their unborn child presumed to be the next Indigo Child.
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And all that is done with the most painful self-seriousness imaginable.
 
THEF3AR said:
I feel like Halo 4 takes itself seriously because of the tone of the developers and the tone of the game.
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Yet it failed it's job at making people care about Halo 4's story.

And don't get me even started with the Didact. What a fucking disappointment that was.
 
Operation Flashpoint, but the dry,serious tone really suits the games and imo, adds to the tension felt.
Large parts of TES are super cereal and sometimes to the point of zzzzzz
 
Aeolipile said:
I am talking more about the situations present in the games. For instance, in Sonic Adventure 2 you have to save the world from a space station being held on a collision course with the planet by a giant bio engineered lizard creature. Sonic '06 was probably the worst offender, though; that was the last, and the last, Sonic game I played.
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You're talking about games from 14 and 9 years ago.
 
How does taking yourself seriously equal maturity?

Halo is the game series I've played that takes itself most seriously, even though we all know it's B-movie stuff, and it's worse for it.
 
eot said:
I recently played Crysis 2 and I felt that game took itself way, way too seriously.
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"Welcome to the future, son. Welcome to the war."
"Oh yeah... one last wish.... It won't let me go that easily. Symbioses. Gotta break the link."
*grabs pistol*
"I gave you the suit. I gave you my life. Promise me... Find Gould. It's all I can do now. You are all I can do."
"They used to call me Prophet. Remember me."
*shoots himself*

vomit all over the place. This is how Crysis 2 begins.
 
Mecha said:
Not sure if I understand this complaint. If Kingdom Hearts was full of forced meta humor and jokes because the concept and events are so wacky and hilarious it wouldn't be nearly as entertaining.
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Not taking itself too seriously =/= the whole story being a joke

If kingdom hearts would embrace the fact it's a game that takes place in Disney worlds and would use a story and writing that's more in line with Disney animated movies it would be MUCH more enjoyable.

Instead we get Nomura´s idea of a super "deep and emotional story"
While stuff like Wall-E can avoke emotion with almost no dialog and using several touches of humor in a fun little story about a robot finding love. Kingdm Hearts is a clusterfuck of cheesy dialog and corny one liners in a overly convulted mess of a story made by a writing team that seems to be convinced that they are writing a complex and deep drama that will change my life

My idea of the Square writing staff is some 12 years old Emo/Otaku kid in a room writing stuff like (and I'm going to come up with something I expect to see in every square game nowadays):
"I know your soul is infused with darkness that can't let go of your aching heart. But the ties you have made with me and all our friends will help you break free from the dark chains of destiny".
Believing they are writing the deepest storyline ever
 
I go with Kingdom Hearts too....

Valhelm said:
Which videogames are the most stark, sober, or tonally mature? I don't mean just dark or violent. Gears of War has huge amounts of violence but is hardly a serious game. The gore is meant to shock and entertain, and neither the aliens or the human characters are very complex or morphologically realistic.
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Taking thenselfs seriously is diferent from really being a mature serious game.

Gears of War DOES take themselfs seriously.
Every single Call of Duty like modern fps take themselfs seriously.

Probably any of them are
 
Gorillaz said:
Every CoD after MW2, it's the definition of "smart dumb" stories
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I couldn't possibly disagree more? I feel like CoD1-WaW take themselves seriously, they actually try to show the horrors of war and tell a somewhat grounded tale of the men that fought those wars, and MW2 is where shit started getting ridiculous "Defend Burger Town!" and it kept going downhill from there.
 
Aeolipile said:
I am talking more about the situations present in the games. For instance, in Sonic Adventure 2 you have to save the world from a space station being held on a collision course with the planet by a giant bio engineered lizard creature. Sonic '06 was probably the worst offender, though; that was the last, and the last, Sonic game I played.
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Well, every game after 06 didn't take itself seriously at all, so :P
 
Mass Effect 1+2 were fun, Star Trek type adventures, but ME3 wanted to be a serious meditation on the effects of war/genocide.
 
Suikoden 2 and 3.

Real life isnt all grim dark. It has its ups and downs, and its share of clowns. The Suikoden games really portray that aspect.

Suikoden 3 espically is MUCH more serious in tone, and questions the benefits of mortality and is living forever such a good thing?

It also shows the ugliness and futility of war more than any modern military shooter. Spec Ops the line is the only one which does a good job of that.

Heck Suikoden 2 even has a ending where
you can run away form the war.

Above all you really start care/hate the characters and actually give a damn when something happens.
 
Watch Dogs. There isn't a single giggle in that bland "story"

Even the profiling, which sometimes seemed like it was trying to come off as tongue-in-cheek just came of as "the world is a crappy place" to me.

Then I drove over some people and parked my car in an art installation.
 
Silent Hill 2 (well, if you ignore joke endings - but those are rather easter eggs than a part of the narrative). The themes the game deals with (
illness of your loved one and how hard it is to cope with that; sexual abuse of a child; violence as a way to cope with bullying; the whole crime and punishment/redemption thing
) and how it presents them through story, characters, settings, monsters and music is really well done.

Currygan said:
I have no mouth and I must scream
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Good choice. Nimdok's chapter was terrifying.
 
Every single 3 dimensional Final Fantasy game. Even though the musical scoring in these games can be much beloved and of quality, it evokes a sense grandeur and creates a stark contrast for games with juvenile storytelling, absurd and cartoonish weaponry, with derivative and shallow characterization.
 
antitrop said:
I couldn't possibly disagree more? I feel like CoD1-WaW take themselves seriously, they actually try to show the horrors of war and tell a somewhat grounded tale of the men that fought those wars, and MW2 is where shit started getting ridiculous "Defend Burger Town!" and it kept going downhill from there.
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I include MW2, (maybe it came off that I didn't) but MW2 was what you get when you tie in as many action war movies as possible then try to create a coherent story with a "twist" in it.

1-4 tried to be serious about it, and WaW kept it straight for the most part
 
hodgy100 said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW2rZfSEZHU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnqHdwkngjU
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haha, I knew the duck racing was going to come up when I made that post. I don't think it's very representative of the game as a whole though. It stands out precisely due to how differently it comes across compared to everything else.

As for the forklift race... as crazy as it was, they played it completely straight in-game as if it was some daily team building exercise or something lol.
 
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