10 Best Games With Environmental Storytelling

Among the dozens of unique features that make video games a special medium, their depth and narrative potential fascinate me immensely.

Even using the same interactive channel, it’s difficult to find two games that communicate in the same way, as everything changes in the message and its presentation to enhance the experience beyond common artistic means.

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Whether through dialogue, cinematics, descriptions, soliloquies, or other alternatives, video games have so many tools at their disposal to express their intentions that it’s tough to conceive them all, which is wonderful.

However, I’m quite sure that, regarding narrative techniques, titles that use the environment naturally and spontaneously to reinforce the story are the clear winners, lending an indescribable aura to their adventures.

Therefore, in the interest of celebrating this communicative style that has given me so much over the years, there’s nothing better than dedicating a list of the ten best games with environmental storytelling to it.

10 INSIDE

A Deafening Silence

Typically, video games use environmental narrative to support more traditional means of communication, but in INSIDE‘s case, it’s the only way to explain its events.

This is one of the key aspects that makes this indie game such a marvel, as each new screen channels entire pages of a script through aesthetics, sound, lighting, and even architecture.

Throughout the campaign, not a single line of dialogue is spoken, nor is a single cinematic revealed. Instead, everything happens in real time to make you the protagonist of this confusing and immersive journey, which I’m positive will leave you shaken once you finish it.

INSIDE is among the most outstanding indie games of our time, and its environmental narrative bears much of the responsibility for that, especially given how it permeates its platforming and puzzle mechanics. It’s only three hours long, but it’s as intense and memorable as you can imagine.

9 Prey

A Story That Tells Itself

Arkane Studios is one of the best developers at environmental storytelling, and if it were up to me, the entire list would be made up of their projects.

Regardless, I have to be discreet, so I’ve used Prey as the representative of the company’s talent, thanks to the fact that Talos I, the space station where the game takes place, is among the most lively and engaging atmospheres in recent years.

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With every step you take, with every new division of the ecosystem you discover, you unravel years of history, both from the game’s lore and from the campaign itself, blending seamlessly with its immersive sim-style gameplay.

Both the mechanics and the story are a giant puzzle you piece together as you progress, and everything is positioned to help you. From text notes and the corpses of your former companions to the names of certain characters, every element reveals something to you, even if you can’t understand it at first.

For this and many other reasons, Prey is part of the decade’s most underrated games, so it’s always important to give it the credit it deserves.

8 Jusant

Vestiges of Civilization

I think all of us who play indie games have a moderately well-known title that, while not entirely niche, we fervently believe deserves more recognition. In my case, that game is Jusant.

Whether it’s because it gives me the vibe of a vertical Death Stranding or because Don’t Nod is honestly astonishingly adept at worldbuilding, it’s among the most captivating adventures I’ve ever experienced, mainly because of how it handles the narrative.

The entire game revolves around climbing, and in the process, you discover the vestiges of an entire civilization, learning about the remnants of their hobbies, architecture, histories, concerns, and desires, but never directly.

The title encourages you to connect the dots, to dig deeply to understand the reasons for this community’s demise, reading dozens and dozens of moving writings that truly make you reflect, especially when you combine them with the spaces in which you find them.

In Jusant, you’ll know everything you want to know. You can complete the game in a few hours without even understanding why you’re doing what you’re doing, or you can connect so deeply with its world that it becomes one of your favorite indie games, like I did.

A Parallel Life

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is a title I can’t play again simply because, unlike when I first tried it over 10 years ago, I don’t have dozens of hours a day to dedicate to it.

I mention this because Bethesda‘s masterpiece is one of those experiences that envelops you in such a way that we could easily refer to it as a second life, which is only possible thanks to the way it draws you into its world.

The Elder Scrolls is a series with an enormous lore, packed with enough content to write entire anthologies, and it manifests this through its latest installment through so many books, characters, names, areas, legends, Easter eggs, and more that it’s simply impossible to see it all.

It’s a masterclass in worldbuilding, one of the most immersive works of all time, largely due to the fantastic care with which it tells stories, both important and inconsequential, to draw you into its tale.

Truthfully, there’s nothing more memorable than entering a dungeon, seeing a corpse next to a trap, investigating it, and finding a note that naively describes that there are no traps. It’s peak storytelling, and no one does it like Skyrim.

6 Portal

Light Among Deceptions

I’ve played Portal multiple times in my life, and not only is it among the best puzzle games ever, but it’s also a demonstration of how to tell a story with subtlety and elegance.

Its ability to narrate between the lines is so elevated that I finished it twice thinking there was no plot at all, but one day I stopped seeing it as just a series of challenges and started to detail the environment, and it’s packed with information.

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From the moment you wake up in your sealed cabin, Valve explains dozens of things without telling you, such as the fact that you’re a laboratory subject who isn’t being observed by anyone, and then more directly with hidden rooms filled with drawings confirming your suspicions.

It’s a delicate, almost superficial narrative, but that’s precisely what Portal wants you to believe. With very little, the game explains everything you need to know to understand your circumstances, and it’s truly poetic that only those who want to learn the truth can appreciate the game beyond its perfect mechanics.

5 Outer Wilds

Discovering the Galaxy

Considering Outer Wilds addresses complex themes in a world whose systems are equally convoluted, the game uses every tool possible to make you feel appropriately within its confines.

However, beyond traditional tutorials and dialogues that help you take your first steps, it integrates everything within the rules of its universe to make the experience fluid and natural, making you forget you’re in a video game.

Each planet tells its own story through its biomes and previous expeditions, creating a grand global puzzle that can only be solved by those who choose to accept its rules, understand them, and apply them.

Believe me when I say there’s nothing more beautiful than analyzing your surroundings, reading the anecdotes of those who came before you, using logic, and finding the solution to a problem that has been bothering you for hours, without relying on indicators or artificial guides.

Outer Wilds‘ entirety unfolds spontaneously and at the player’s pace, which is why it’s the masterpiece it is. This indie gem excels at blurring the lines between a video game and a digital immersion experience, which increasingly seem to be two different things.

4 Dishonored

The Most Changing Environment

I apologize for blatantly lying to you about the magnitude of Arkane Studios’ presence on this list, but I wouldn’t sleep peacefully if I didn’t include the magnificent Dishonored.

It’s one thing to tell stories through the environment, utilizing conversations between NPCs, paintings on walls, traps, notes, or even corpses, and another to modify these elements based on the gameplay decisions you make throughout the campaign.

The unique thing about Dunwall is that it changes based on your mechanical actions as Corvo, so the environment tells as much of the story of its streets as it does of you as the player. It’s not just different cinematics or other dialogues, but a completely significant change in the spaces you travel through.

From the color of the sky to the number of guards, the story is told as you experience it, because you literally define what is happening rather than living a premeditated path. You still play within a preconceived set of rules, but the freedom to shape them is greater than the common denominator.

Throughout this process, Dishonored captivates you with an ease that, to this day, I’ve rarely felt since. This level of detail and passion is practically unrepeatable and a blessing to play.

3 Silent Hill 2 Remake

Symbolism At Its Peak

It’s no coincidence that a title we can define as one of the best horror games of the last couple of years, Silent Hill 2 Remake, is on this list, as I believe few genres leverage environmental storytelling like this one.

When I think of conscious design, of development decisions made with a strict goal in mind, the retelling of James Sunderland’s journey pops into my mind at lightning speed, because I’ve rarely seen such dedication to even the smallest details.

If you stop to think about why the game takes place in the areas it does, why it uses super-specific items for unusual puzzles, why it presents enemies with inexplicable aesthetics, and so on, you realize how all the answers have always been right in your face.

Silent Hill 2 Remake plays with the player’s ignorance, beliefs, and expectations outstandingly, conveying through the environment and sound everything it can’t say through cinematics and dialogue, revealing its true face in the process.

I know I love a game when I spend hours watching YouTube videos of people who understood it better than I did, and I’m not ashamed to say I spent months watching videos of this wonder, because it’s that impressive.

2 Dark Souls

A Legend to Deconstruct

I believe all of us who love video games have our respective moments of enlightenment with a particular experience, which brings me to Dark Souls.

For me, it’s the most transcendental work in FromSoftware’s catalog, as it opened my cognitive doors to a new way of interpreting video games, its narrative being the differentiating factor.

Switching from cinematics, the only communicative medium I knew, to item descriptions, deliberate positioning of enemies, bosses, and structures, and even contrasts in the soundtrack truly created in me a vision of video games as art I haven’t been able to shake, nor do I want to.

Everything in Lordran is cryptic and obtuse, as if trying to prevent you from understanding why you do what you do, masterfully coinciding with the themes of death, loss of identity, and the will to live, producing a flawless ludonarrative coherence.

While games were tackling this kind of narrative approach before Dark Souls, I’ve never felt so passionate about staring at a statue, theorizing about what it might explain about the world around me, so I have to appreciate it.

1 BioShock

The Perfected Narrative

As one of the best trilogies of all time, and also one that can never surpass the impact of its original entry, I can’t think of a better way to close this article than with BioShock.

The overall landscape of video games changed completely after Irrational Games redefined how stories are told in the interactive medium, marking a narrative turning point whose influence we still see today.

Rapture details its history and circumstances through its walls, audio diaries, locations, idols, decorations, and artistic movements, relegating dialogue and cinematics to key points where it ensures the rest of its elements are channeled.

Little by little, it adds new tools to tell its story, such as the game’s interface and the mechanics themselves, creating a structure that functions like a symphony whose talent is easier to attribute to the magical than the earthly.

BioShock is among the video game masterpieces of the 21st century, and no one should be surprised to see it here. If you’re impressed by its position, it’s probably because you haven’t played it, and if you haven’t, you’re missing out on a life-changing experience.

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