The Best Game Stories Are Told in the Past Tense
I just finished playing Analogue: A Hate Story, and it is a great game. While playing it I noticed a few patterns of game stories that I can’t find collected anywhere, so I’ll do that here then.
The main one is that the best game stories are told in the past tense. Meaning most or all of the story has taken place before the player starts playing. Bioshock does this, Portal does it, Gone Home, To the Moon and Analogue also do it. It’s easy to come up with counter examples that also have a good story (just look at Christine Love’s previous game: don’t take it personally babe, it just ain’t your story) but it’s interesting that this pattern should prove so successful in an interactive medium.
Probably Dance 