Video game storytelling has come leaps and bounds in recent decades. Some titles, like The Last of Us and Red Dead Redemption II, have reached a level of prestige and acclaim with their storytelling that rivals the best output of other mediums. These games largely take themselves deadly seriously, with a dark tone and realistic story. However, this isn't the only way to make a game that can touch players.
Some games go for the other extreme. Whether intentionally or accidentally, they tell a ridiculous story with goofy characters, improbable plot twists, and bizarre storytelling choices. Many of these games still hit players emotionally despite or because of this oddness, and they're all the more memorable for it
10 Resident Evil: Village
The entire Resident Evil franchise draws heavy inspiration from science-fiction and horror B-movies. Never is this more blatant than in its storytelling. Resident Evil Village, like most other Resident Evil games, is willfully bizarre. Its plot follows Ethan Winters as he fights through a village of thinly explained gothic horror creatures, cracking cheesy one-liners and panicking in equal measure.
Everything about Resident Evil Village is faintly ridiculous, from the contrived nature of its plot to the poor communication that hides its major twists. Nonetheless, its characters provide a genuine emotionality to its narrative, particularly with Ethan's improved depiction over Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. Its final act, with Chris' assault on the village and Ethan's final death, proves stirring and tear-jerking in equal measure.
9 Devil May Cry 5
Devil May Cry 5 makes few changes to the successful formula of previous Devil May Cry games. It blends over-the-top darkness with the goofiest comedy possible and some heartfelt moments scattered throughout. Its scenes veer from nightmarish to comedic to emotional at the drop of a hat, sometimes changing mid-conversation with no warning.
Devil May Cry 5's plot features its characters fighting through the hellish demonic infestation of Red Grave City while taking time to crack jokes, bicker, snark, and dance like Michael Jackson. Nonetheless, fans find the character arcs of Nero's inadequacy, Dante and Vergil's rivalry, and V's quest to stay alive genuinely compelling and affecting.
8 Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
The entire Ace Attorney franchise is infamous for its cheesy and melodramatic nature. Its action takes place in an exaggerated and unrealistic depiction of a courtroom. The opposing lawyers are almost always cartoonish and outrageous, while everybody involved treats sudden objections and holes in testimony like they're lethal blows in a duel.
However, Ace Attorney manages to work despite the goofiness inherent to its storytelling. It helps that many of its cases deal with genuinely hard-hitting subject matter, causing the unrealistic court scenes to serve as welcome levity. The well-crafted characterization and development of characters like Phoenix Wright and Miles Edgeworth also help to ground the story.
7 Kingdom Hearts II
The very premise of Kingdom Hearts verges on the ridiculous. It's a crossover between Final Fantasy and iconic Disney movies. The protagonist fights through different worlds accompanied by Goofy and Donald Duck. This masks an infamously convoluted plot that even diehard franchise fans struggle to follow through its many contrived plot twists.
Despite all of this, Kingdom Hearts II has a reputation for especially hard-hitting storytelling in the franchise. It hits some of Kingdom Hearts' most emotional story beats, particularly regarding Roxas and his identity as Sora's Nobody. Despite the ludicrous premise, it still manages to tug at fans' heartstrings.
6 Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
The Metal Gear series has always been strange due to the unusual auteurship of series director Hideo Kojima. However, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, a spin-off without Kojima's involvement, doubles down on the oddness. Any trace of grounded Cold War military fiction is gone, replaced by a sci-fi thriller where cyborgs battle one another to thwart one senator's attempt to make America an anarchist state.
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance begins with a human-sized cyborg throwing a building-sized robot to the ground and gets more extreme from there. It ends with Raiden arguing against Senator Armstrong's politics while the latter beats him to a pulp. However, its characters, presentation, music, and more create a fascinating narrative rife with compelling characterization. Under the strange plot and off-key humor, there is a genuinely deep and human story.
5 Deadly Premonition
Deadly Premonition is an infamously polarizing game in every aspect. More contentious than its strange gameplay, however, is its bizarre story. Deadly Premonition goes beyond oddness or zany humor. Its narrative is strongly off-beat as it blends a small-town cop thriller with a psychological and spiritual horror game, with the two bleeding into one another.
Deadly Premonition's story happens through bizarre character decisions, contrived twists, and a nonsensical atmosphere. However, this elevates its thriller-horror tone far above what a slicker and more polished narrative would manage. Everything feels out of place and unsettling, and this feeling is aided by the sheer bizarreness of events.
4 Yakuza Kiwami
The Yakuza franchise takes an unusually humorous and wacky look at the dark and serious world of organized crime. Kazuma Kiryu has fraught and intense dealings with the Yakuza between bouts of karaoke and video games. Yakuza Kiwami takes things further with plot points like Majima Everywhere, as infamous criminal Goro Majima assaults Kiryu in increasingly ridiculous disguises.
Despite this, Yakuza Kiwami tells a genuinely affecting story. A significant strength is that, despite its overall wackiness, the game knows when to get out of its own way and let serious moments breathe. It's also down to strong characterization, with Yakuza's Kazuma Kiryu and Goro Majima being nuanced, deep characters audiences instantly identify with.
3 Disco Elysium
Disco Elysium has earned itself a reputation as one of the best-written games of recent years. This is despite a persistent tone of absurdist and avant-garde humor throughout. Disco Elysium's protagonist is an amnesiac and disastrous cop who resolves his internal struggles by having exaggerated aspects of his character yell at each other in his own head.
Everything about Disco Elysium is overstated and strange. It passes commentary on substance abuse, political extremism, bigotry, history, and more through satirical dialogue and worldbuilding. Disco Elysium is deliberately ridiculous, using its off-kilter humor to add to its themes while making them more entertaining for the audience.
2 NieR: Automata
NieR: Automata's ridiculousness is more in concept than in execution. The game's story itself is dark and relatively somber, with its restrained tone overriding its moments of strangeness. However, in principle, the game is about lingerie-wearing androids battling robots while they ponder questions of identity, the human condition, redemption, and sexuality.
NieR: Automata's premise seems like it shouldn't make for a compelling narrative. However, the game manages to pull it off. The lingerie-wearing androids are deep characters with intense development and nuanced dynamics. Its recurring sexual themes are mature and human rather than lurid and exploitative. A tight sense of characterization and plot helps its more extreme twists and endings to be some of the most affecting in recent years.
1 Portal 2
Portal 2 is different from most video games in that it's built to be a comedy from the ground up. However, like the best comedies, Portal 2 has a compelling and entertaining story to accompany the jokes. Its zany humor, characterization of Wheatley and GLaDOS, and overall strange worldbuilding should be hard to take seriously. Instead, they enhance a story that is deadly serious at times.
Portal 2 turns the idiotic Wheatley and sadistic GLaDOS into far more than one-note characterizations, with both having surprising gravity despite their overriding personality traits. Some of its twists, such as Wheatley's betrayal, are genuinely well-crafted to hit hard. Many gamers and reviewers consider Portal 2 one of the best-written games ever made, because of its ridiculousness rather than despite it.