As someone who is far from being an expert on First Person Shooters, I hope more knowledgeable community members can satisfy my curiosity and answer me this ignorant question:

When did FPS games become more cinematic and start to tell actual stories? Which would you say was the first one and which the most influential one?

I mean games like Wolfenstein 3D, Heretic, Doom etc. did have some kind of background story, I guess, and maybe there were occasional hints of it in the game, too (e.g. environmental storytelling?), but if I'm not mistaken it wasn't really fleshed out and it didn't really matter all that much. I think Half-Life (1998) is often mentioned as very influential, because it used scripted events to tell a story, but was it also the first one to do this? Outlaws (1997) was telling a story, too, mostly by way of cutscenes between levels though, not scripted events during the levels. Were the late 90's the period that started it, or were there any older FPS games that tried to integrate the shooting into an evolving story? (Does the old Rise of the Triad tell one during the course of the game, for example?)

Dark Forces 2 was the first FPS I noticed where story rivaled gameplay for significance. Before that gameplay was king.

Heh. I was just about to mention that very same game. Funny fact: both it and Outlaws were released in the same year. Other than some inconsequential intro (and maybe outro?), the story was just about setting up the game's theme like most of its ilk at the time.

Good call.

I actually thought the 1st Red Faction kind of had one and that is an older title. Yes a lot of people will tell me I'm full of it but I was always struck by how you are just hanging out, and then a scuffle, lots of screaming, and all of a sudden you are running around constantly being thrown plot twists albeit in the middle of a lot of mindless shooting. :D

Mention should also go to the NOLF games. The plots are kind of hack but they deserve credit for adding so much to the 'set dressing' in terms of characters and dialogue.

I would say System Shock, but Ultima Underworld predates it by about two years. 1992 vintage for the Stygian Abyss, just a year before DOOM's release.

Incidentally I'm currently playing it for the first time and it's fun. :) Of course it's an older title from today's perspective, but it's a 2001 game, so it was preceded by Half-Life and others and released at at a time when, I believe, the idea of storytelling FPS was already quite established (Max Payne was released in the same year and you can probably find several others from that period).

. Of course! I totally forgot about the first System Shock, and maybe also Ultima Underworld. I wonder, are they actually seen as influential for the evolution of (storytelling) FPS games though or rather for the evolution of the RPG genre? I mean they could definitely be regarded as the first storytelling FPS, but also as a derivative of (grid-based) 3D dungeon crawlers by combining them with a free movement FPS engine, a precursor of games like TES Arena and Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession, and for RPGs it was pretty common to have a story at that time already. Do you know of any FPS games before 1997 that clearly tried to follow System Shock's or Ultima Underworld's example, without being an RPG?

Hm. I guess Strife (1996) and Thief follows System Shock's bloodline, though in very different ways. I will let the video below explain Strife, but as for the influence of these games: Looking Glass Studios was an early pioneer in weaving together the first person perspective and storytelling, which spawned many such games that followed that philosophy. A world without System Shock won't have Bioshock, and Deus Ex may not have been conceived. Thief has had less an influence...unfortunately. Still, the series inspired Dishonored.

Ross's Game Dungeon: Strife


Ultima Underworld --> Grimrock
System Shock & System Shock 2 ---> Deus Ex, Bioshock, Vampire: Bloodlines
Thief & Thief II ---> Dishonored

i'd say ultima underworld has more to do with elder scrolls than grimrock, which i relate more to the might & magics and wizardries. and yeah, i do believe that system shock is probably the best example when it comes to storytelling elements, content and implementation in a fps.

I'd say Grimrock isn't really an advancement in FP RPG history at all but rather a throwback/tribute to the Golden Age of grid-based real-time dungeon crawlers like Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder (real time combat in a 3D environment, but no free movement in all directions like FPS engines offer). So yeah, it should probably be more like:

Ultima Underworld --> Skyrim

Besides Outlaws & Dark Forces 2, another 1997 FPS was Quake 2 that had short animations between missions to forward the story as well as an intro and ending, though I don't know how in depth this was compared to the former 2 games mentioned.


Hexen 2 had some instances of this too, didn't it? (Also '96/'97)

I don't think of cinematic storytelling as inherently superior to anything else. For instance, I like the subtle exposition woven into Marathon (1994, sequels in 1995 and 1996) even though it's basically just reading communication between various parties - i.e. occasionally directed at you, sometimes to anyone who might be listening, sometimes you are allowed to access information that does not directly involve you, sometimes you gain access to something that you weren't supposed to. You are left to your own devices trying to figure out what you can trust and what you can't, and what hasn't been told, deliberately or not - which made me think that I was thinking like the silent protagonist, which I really rather liked.

It probably doesn't count, but Unreal had a decent story not necessarily in the game while also not quite being in the manual. It is read in logs and whatnot found in levels kinda like Metroid Prime. Actually in a lot of ways one might argue Metroid prime borrowed elements from Unreal.

I really like the Metroid Prime series, on account that they usually don't bludgeon you with "cinematic" storytelling. Games shouldn't try to be movies, on account of movies being better at what they do. Games are best off telling interactive stories, because that is something that neither books or movies could accomplish without coming off as clumsy.

I dont have a good answer, but I can recommend several amazing FPS games with fantastic stories, my top pick being Spec Ops: The Line.

Realms of the Haunting came out in 1996 and has very well-developed storytelling throughout the entire game. There are cutscenes appearing regularly and frequently, and they're done in FMV with live actors. Also, dialogues were neatly incorporated in the game – you could examine the items in your inventory and ask your companions about them. Apart from that, you find journals that shed more light on the situation.

Some might say it's more of an adventure game, but it does have a strong FPS component, due to the number of enemies you encounter and weapons to destroy them with. The shooter part could use some improvement, but it's not much worse than other FPS games of that era.