Hardcore gamers always ignore The Sims, but it really was the first story generator type game to cross into the mainstream

kenshi is great, one of my favorite games. Ive played it way too little, and its the only game i published (7!) mods for

One recent indie game I'm into right now that blends the idea of structured story and organic character building is Wildermyth. It plays almost like XCOM, but with more emphasis on building up your team of customizable characters narratively and watching them develop in different ways. Party members will collect unique load-sets, fall in love, form rivalries, have children, make deals with elder Gods, etc. You might lose an encounter and see one of your party members lose a hand, or an eye. Or someone might sacrifice themself to get a critical hit on the final boss, or offer a loved one a permanent defense buff in their memory. I really like the type of game that has linear end-goals to work towards, but makes it so different players can walk away from the same story with their own unique experience on how it played out. Like how I don't remember much about Shadow of Mordor's main plot, but I remember a lot of fun stories regarding the random Orc rivalries and alliances.

Very good video, you are mentioning a lot of imporant games for this genre and put them into relation very well. I know just having 500 subs sucks while putting so much effort into your videos, but your videos are of great quality. Cut, audio setup and quality, everything is really good. I hope you haven't stopped making videos alltogether for the last 9 months because if you keep up outputting videos with this standard it is not a question IF more subs and viewers will come, but rather WHEN. So I hope you come back with a more content. All the best, and subbed obviously :)

Rimworld has one of my favorite stories. Of the colony sims I play it's not my favorite, but I have sunk the most hours in. Long after I had finished building up in my fortress in stone and had waged a campaign to cull some of my enemies around me, they marshaled a vast raid to put me down. They sent hundreds of pawns, as well as, thanks to some mods I had installed, armor and air support, and while my defenses were vast and lethal, and they lost hundreds as a result, they eventually broke through and into my fortress, slaughtering most of my colonists. I ended up in a situation where my colony was collapsing around me, with hordes of raiders rampaging through my burning underground fortress, the walls crumbling down around the facility as the uncontrolled fires caused structural failures. People were dying, rocks were falling, it was not good. Deep in the heart of the facility, in a valley we had uncovered on the incredibly large map size I was playing on deep in the center of the mountain, my few remaining pawns defended the battered ruins of my nuclear missile silos & associated control station, as well as our reactor. My last remaining engineer worked on getting the systems on line as we slowly but surely lost ground, with the missiles being launched moments before the engineer had his head blown off by some guy with a rifle. After that, my final two soldiers defended this room they were trapped in as enemies swarmed around them in the fires consuming the base. They were holding them off, for now, but it was only a matter of time. Then, just to top it all off, one of the raiders damaged the reactor, which proceeded to meltdown and explode. Because of the facilities damaged nature, pretty much the entire structure was flooded with superheated air, cooking everyone alive, and lighting the few remaining intact sectors of the facility on fire. While the room my pawns were in didn't immediately catch fire, the room was heated up like an oven, and the two injured pawns were cooked to death. Not a single person survived. Not a single raider, not a single pawn. And the entire map was flooded with radiation. I leave it running every once and a while, just on the off chance that a caravan will come, or a survivor will show up and call the mountain fortress home, so I can begin again. But the map is lifeless, and remains blanketed in radiation. And some sections of the map are still unlivably hot due to heat being trapped deep in the burnt remnants of the facility, which is in and of itself mostly gone at this point. My mark on that world is the radioactive bases and towns that have become tombs for their inhabitants under my rain of nuclear fire, which eventually came to include my own.

100 colonists in Rimworld... I can already feel the single processor core the game runs on yelling in pain.

Phenomenal video, especially for a small content creator. I see big things for your channel's future! Your content makes me proud to bear the name Bergen

Remember, !LOSING IS FUN!

Damn bro your content is better than channels 200x your size, great stuff. You got my sub, can't wait to see you pop off.

For anyone looking for modern 'story generator games' that this video doesn't mention, check out both Shadows of Doubt and X4: Foundations. Shadows of Doubt is an open world simuation where you are the lone detective in a city of hundreds and hundreds of AIs all with their own lives. Your job is to solve murder cases (and other cases too as side jobs). Every playthrough is different as there are different murderers and cases and the map and all the buildings and people in it is randomly generated each playthrough. X4 is easier to explain, it's more or less Bannerlord in space.

Imersive sims are story generators too

I am really surprised that such a small and young channel has such a high quality video production, I am very happy I have found your channel and look forward to future videos.

What I see a lot with TLOU is that people didn't engage with the gameplay beyond a Normal playthrough back in 2013. Playing it on Grounded (specially the remake) is a complete game changer, and you need proper mechanical knowledge and mastery to get through it. Easily one of the best difficulty settings in any action game, since AI has actual changes, not just damage tables; your weapon damage also changes and so does item placement. Tlou also uses mechanics in a subtle manner to tell its story in a way the show, while it got a lot of acclaim, fell flat, specially when trying to sell Joel and Ellie's relationship. In the game, how Ellie behaves during gameplay changes throughout the story. Not helping at first, then using her knife to save Joel from grapples and throwing bricks sometimes, all the way to helping out with her own gun later on. The winter chapter where you play as Ellie also serves as a perfect example of why TLOU's story only really works well as a game. The show had tension in that part of the story, but didn't do much to showcase Ellie's growth, aka what she learned from Joel, becoming a survivor, with gameplay showing the player how defenseless and inexperienced she is compared to Joel. This also bleeds into Part II, since when you play as Abby to fight Ellie in the theatre, Ellie's loss of humanity and arc of descent is showcased by her fight's mechanics mirroring that of David, who's fight in the first game displayed him as a twisted monster.

bro my most recent kenshi playthrough, I had a skeleton smith and a martial artist who thought he was a skeleton, I set up shop in bast and was originally gonna destroy all the major factions but then the United Cities saved my ass from like 2 holy raids and magically I became alot friendlier to slavers

Always pick up cloth masks in GAMMA, they can be used in cleaning kits like the +30% one to give an extra 10%. Also I always remove all parts off guns I find but I'm a loot hoarder, at least keep any part above 60%, never know when you might need em

20:55 story generators are better than the other.... in my eyes. In fact I strugle to play games that fall too much to the left. Though I get they might not be better on the eyes of everyone.

Incredible stuff. So so glad yt recommended me your video man, excited to see where your channel goes.

Great vid! I'll definitely check out more of your stuff. Your claim that the psychology of your dwarves doesn't affect gameplay in Dwarf Fortress makes me think you haven't played enough Dwarf Fortress, or paid close enough attention to your dwarves when you were playing. I can't compare it to Rimworld, as I've never played it, but the psychology of your dwarves in Dwarf Fortress absolutely affects gameplay, and is something to be meticulously managed. I had a dwarven child who was incredibly angry as a result of having to watch his father's corpse decay when he was younger. He had no shame as a result of his clothes rotting off his body a few years later. He was incredibly strong-willed after being forced to drink his own vomit when he was trapped in a cave for a few weeks. One day, he walked into the tavern, didn't like the poem the bard was reciting, and went on a rampage, killing several adult dwarves and eventually toppling a sacred statue (leading him to be cursed and become a were-horse). I'm not trying to say "YOU'RE WRONGGGG" or anything like that. I'm just saying, if you like the individual psychology you see in Rimword, you should look a bit more closely at that aspect of DF, because you'll probably love that as well!

dwarf fortress is mainstream when talking about non-mainstream stuff

Good Quality Content, i hope your channel blowing up. keep on good works, cheers

12:28 The only multiplayer games I’d truly consider actual “Story Generators” are games with big maps, like Battlefield games. And also Battle-Royale games. And the most story generators of all are those tactical milsim games like Squad, Project Reality, TARKOV, Hell Lee Loose, etc. To elaborate: those games have longer matches and more complexity, more room for you and your squad to go off on your own little mission. And you can encounter all kinds of drawn-out, intense combat engagements, close-calls, narrow escapes, dragging a friend to cover to revive them, etc.

Love this video! I've recently just been playing story generators, Crusader Kings 3 is my favourite :)

Holly smokes this is sutch a high value video... Anyways i also love story gens so so much because they always make the craziest stories... they are like books of videogames yk... This is sutch a lovely video, thank you for producing it :) (sorry for bad english btw its like me second language and im still trying to be better in it)

Kenshi Vibes

Yo what the fuck this video is absolutely gas. Keep it up cause this went crazy

excellent video

Hilarious Fox news info wars line

AI will run on commercialized GPU hardware soon and new games will come out with AI that you can freely converse without script, randomly decide based on your current input and dynamically adapt on the situation. These will be the new story generators in a few years.

Amazing video!

Good video. I'm Rimworld fan. Need to add Project Zomboid to the list.

Great video!

Dang, keep up the good work, this vid was excellent.

Good stuff.

My problem with Dwarf Fortress was exactly that I had no reason to do anything in the game. Sure, I could build a fort and guide these Dwarves but I just didn't get why it mattered. Secondly, knowing that eventually it's all going to fall just made it all feel futile. It's the same feeling I get when watching a movie that isn't part of a franchise, like I'm just wasting my time on something that has no larger consequences. I also found the simulation of Dwarven society to be very shallow. Like, sure the game simulates individual eyelids, but at the same time their society has no real depth and complexity to it. Also there's too much micromanagement. I can't tell each dwarf to do something, but I still have to manually place every table and chair in the bar? I just told them to build tables, I assigned a region as a tavern, and now you're telling me that they are too stupid to decorate it on their own? Get out of here, man, I thought this simulation was supposed to be clever. The combination between a lack of purpose, shallow society and tedious micromanagement just got in the way of any fun emergence for me. At the same time I've played Worldbox and Wildermyth for hours and hours, and while neither have the mechanical depth of DF the gameplay allows for simpler emergence of magical moments.

Nice video

Great video but u forgot ck3!

Mario

Don't suppose anyone knows the source for 20:02?

16:20 you don't take the "rescue prisoner" missions - touching the prisoner crashes the game, unless they fixed it XD

Generative AI could be huge for story generators.