10 Perfect Stories Told In Video Games

8. Soma

Switching out one brutal post-apocalypse for another, that’s about where the similarities stop between The Last of Us and Soma, the 2015 survival horror adventure from the developers behind Amnesia: The Dark Descent. If you didn’t already pick this up playing Amnesia, Frictional Games really know how to tell a story, and to say that they tried some narratively and thematically challenging things with Soma would be an understatement.

In short, a major extinction event wiped out the inhabitants of Earth in 2104 and what remains is the crew of PATHOS-II who were working in an underwater research facility.

You explore the events that followed, learning what became of humans trying to grapple with their predicament, and figure out why you’ve awoken in this facility after nearly dying in a car accident in 2015. In a Delilah-like twist, you’ll spend a lot of time talking with Catherine, a brain scan of a PATHOS-II worker housed inside a robot. To say much more would be to spoil the narrative but suffice it to say, it really goes places. The story deals with themes like the human condition, artificial intelligence, what makes us who we are, and the muddy intersection between technology and humanity. It’s not as scary as Amnesia in its moment-to-moment gameplay, though there are monsters here and there, but it doesn’t need to be as the implications of the narrative come chocked with enough psychological horror for a good handful of sleepless nights.

Frictional absolutely nails the landing on this one, too, so if it’s a story you missed out on I’d really recommend you check it out. And if you’re a big scaredy cat you can play it in safe mode so the monsters can’t kill you so no excuses.