Games

Thats a bit of a weird way of saying that, but I get what you mean.

For me, it has to be A Girl Who Chants Love at the Bound of This World YU-NO. The original PC-98 release.

Be warned, the game has very explicitly drawn and described sex scenes, some of which I found extremely disgusting, personally, but I understand it is a game from a totally different time and culture and I am not here to police any of that. Fortunately, I learned pretty early on that none of those scenes contain anything actually relevant to the story of the game, so I could just quickly click through them until the picture changed. Fair warning, if you aren't the kind of person that can overlook this, then you will probably only be focusing on the like, two parts that amount to maybe 5% of the whole game. But its pretty bad, at least in my opinion.

YU-NO took me no joke 80+ hours to beat, on a blind first playthrough. The story is about time travel, and features a very complex branching story, especially for the time the game came out. It has like 9 different endings. Basically the main character is trying to travel through time to find his father, who was a historian that disappeared one day. You get a device in a package from your father that basically acts like a Quick Save for the various timelines in the game that get created by the choices you make as a player. If you give or don't give a certain item to a certain character at a certain time, that could have consequences that put you onto a different timeline, and if you need to get to a different one then you can Quick Load back to a point you used a jewel at. As you go through each timeline, you pick up jewels that act as more Quick Save points in the story. You have to collect all the jewels to get the True Ending of the game, which literally is just a sequel game. The Epilogue of YU-NO is so fire I almost wish it was its own game, YU-NO 2. It was a twist I was not expecting, but loved.

Needless to say, that game had me hooked. And while there were a few parts that were beyond my own personal opinion of redemption, I am glad I could look past those parts to see the rest of the game. There was a remake in 2017 that IMO totally destroyed the art of the original game, which was unfortunate, but I also don't think it even censored or removed the sex scenes, so I couldn't even be happy about that. Its just an all around downgrade except that it is easier to get that in English since it is on Switch, Steam, and PS4.

Brigador has surprisingly excellent writing. And moreover, I mean it literally.
Between maps, you have a config interface where you pick a pilot, guns and a vehicle to put it all on. But you also have a window with Intel. You have to pay ingame money to unlock this Intel, in the same you have to pay to unlock pilots, guns, vehicles, maps. They prices are not negligible. I unlocked every single piece of Intel, many times before I unlocked other more useful things, because it was that good.
I wanted to read more. I wanted to know more. I should point out that most of the Intel was self sufficient : it wasn't a huge story cut up in parts. I could read one Intel and there was no incentive to buy the next more expensive one to know the end. But it was quality military sci-fi and so much lore building. And here and there, hints about cool equipment combos to try out in game (this pilot in that mech with those guns and gizmo).

It was a complete shock to find such quality in what is otherwise a shooter. Yes, many action RPGs have encyclopedias worth of lore, disseminated freely throughout the world, on items, etc. I think the presentation here helped. But I was genuinely surprised at how good and enjoyable it was to read. I literally sat down and few times spending like an hour reading through bits and pieces and going to play a map or two only so I'd have enough cash to unlock some more.

I hope I get to enjoy such surprisingly good writing in a game again in my gaming lifetime (and I've been playing for about 37 years, I should add).

Yakuza 0 got me very hard in the feels...

Such a shame that the next ones (1-4) weren't as good. But Zero... what a ride.

Been replaying FFXII, and now I notice it is extremely rich in plot and worldbuilding, including a lot of non-verbal details.

A Plague Tale Requiem

FADE, a pocket pc game with a shocking, emotional twist at the end. Worthy of a remake or movie.