Witcher.

I'd say Planescape. After all it's a game, a pen & paper one.
The Ultima series is a classic.

And of course, Silent Hill.

Diablo series and Starcraft series.

I'm a sucker for Forgotten Realms. Been since I played the first game in that world.

The storyline itself from Assassin's Creed isn't that impressive, but I like the way they are trying to flesh it out. It is obvious a lot of work went into that storyline, especially with subject 16's stuff and so on.

When talking about better storylines, the background lore of the Elder Scrolls is really nice, with all those books. A lot of work must also have gone in that.

No they didn't. Bethesda actually tried to make the lore more canon with the first game. The first three Fallout games were not really canon (even the devs admitted this in an interview).

Definitely NOT WarCraft, or Elder Scroll, or Dragon Age, or even the Witcher, (btw, the Witcher is NOT an original IP.) Those are fairly generic sword-and-sorcery Tolkienesque fantasies with minor variations, with elves and dwarves and dragons and orcs and trolls, with some minor/contrived differences between them.

Fallout and Diablo were fairly unique as far as games go.

However, Fallout was based on Wasteland, which was in turn based on post-holocaust films like Mad Max.

Diablo had the angels-versus-demons, gothic theme; but the third one had horrible stories and numerous inconsistencies with the previous two games, and it totally ruined the lore. (It was NOT a good idea to hire the Fallout guy to make a Diablo game.)

Planescape was unique but it was based on a pre-existing pen-and-paper IP. Vampire the Masquerade was also based on a pre-existing IP. The Witcher were based on a book series. So they should not count.

Someone mentioned StarCraft... but it was just a blatant ripped of Warhammer 40k, but with inferior settings and stories.

Honestly though, games with better lores or stories are generally based on books or other pre-existing IPs. Video games are still pretty sucky when it comes to original stories and settings. Gamers really don't care about stories; they say they do, but they really do not. Most gamers would not know what makes a good story and would not recognize a good story even if one hit them right in their head and knock them out. (They think Final Fantasy 7 has good story. Seriously. That's laughable.)

Then again, gameplay is more important than stories for video games. Stories really don't matter all that much.

This year the Walking Dead stands out as having a good story. But that's more like an exception in the gaming industry. And The Walking Dead was based on an outside IP.

Gamers like to say how BioWare made games with "great" stories. While I have enjoyed BioWare RPGs, I have never thought BioWare make great stories. BioWare makes BETTER stories than other game developers. But if you compare BioWare games to good books or good movies, they are still way far behind. And up until recently BioWare was widely considered as being the best storyteller in the game industry. That gives you an idea how far behind the videogaming industry is in terms of storycrafting and storytelling.

But again, stories are not that important in gaming. Blizzard has always sucked really bad in storytelling, (but they made great cutscenes,) still I loved playing their games.

Since that also is based on an outside IP doesn't that also rule that out?
Your thinking is something I don't really like. There are always some that say stories, plot and such in media isn't something special because it's based on something else or a ripoff. That was old pretty much right after the trend started.

Mass Effect
Fallout
Homeworld
Final Fantasy VII
Might & Magic/Heroes of Might & Magic

Yeah, there were games that had good stories. I am old enough to have played Infocom games. Sometimes I still l play the newer parser games. Some have really, really good stories. But they are not really good games, i.e., they are NOT fun.

If you actually consider The Witcher tolkienesque you totally didn't get the franchise. The Witcher universe is mainly based on European folklore and heavily inspired by actual medieval Europe, it's an attempt to create a realistic vision of what societies would have looked like if many of the superstitions people believed in had actually been true. And with the witchers being relics of the past that slowly loose their function in "modern" society where most threats and conflicts are of political and social nature it's kind of a statement on social and technological progress. You really can't put that kind of universe in one bin with Tolkien's and all the other tolkienesque works.

I am fascinated by an ongoing conversation in here regarding originality (yet another reason you all make this forum far and away the best forum in the known universe).

Shakespear said there are only six plots and anyone who sits down and diagrams any storey anywhere (game, movie, book, cartoon, comic, etc) will no doubt pretty quickly realize how right he was.

Dork Warning: I am a huge Star Wars and Harry Potter fan (yes I am single, how could you tell!?) bit if you look at their 'lore' the only real difference between the two is the name of the characters. Ditto for most of the games mentioned.

I'm babbeling. I'll stop for now. :)

1. Could you turn down the rude & unneeded elitism and snobbery(Towards gamers in general and the pro-book bias.) just a tad? It is mildly irritating, and it also doesn't help you prove your case(as it is).

2. Just because something has been thought up or done before doesn't mean that something based off of that previous idea or work is or will be bad(Or that it is/will be worse than similar works or ideas which came before.)

(I know you didn't explicitly say this but I sensed a similar vibe while reading parts of your post.)

Like it or not but most things have been done before anyways(Imo not much can claim to be 100% original anymore.). Does this mean we should stop making new things/products/services because of this fact?