There once was a time in history when video games faced an uphill battle to be recognized as an art form in the way that movies and television are. Those on the outside saw the medium more as toys than anything that possessed artistic merit.
And then, sometime around the 2010s, that uphill battle became less and less of a struggle as video games began experimenting more and more with engaging narrative. The episodic-style video game became a landmark achievement in that field.
Since then, the production of episodic video games has fallen off slightly. But when the genre was popular, it was popular and produced some truly spectacular video game experiences with strong narratives and a unique approach to delivering content within the medium. To this day, there are still eight such games that still stand out as memorable and entertaining releases.
8 Life Is Strange
Hate it or love it, Life Is Strange has made a noticeable impact -- not just in the world of episodic video games, but in the world of video games in general.
With so many games releasing constantly, many can fade from a player's memory entirely. Ask yourself these questions: how many six-year-old video games can you quote multiple lines from? How many do you even remember at all? How many are successful enough to spawn a series that extends to three main entries and two spin-offs?
Life Is Strange has stood the test of time. The episodic video game that stands as part supernatural thriller, part murder mystery, part teen drama, part love story, remains to this day one of the most relevant titles in the episodic format, as well as one of the best.
7 Tales From The Borderlands
Telltale Games are pioneers in the field of narrative-driven video games.The studio has always possessed a strong ability to take works of fiction that people know like the back of their hands and give them a fresh story within that world. Oftentimes, they will do it with movies or television shows.
As such, you'll see their name and their video games popping up a lot on this list, beginning with their 2014 collaboration with Gearbox Studios titled Tales From The Borderlands.
This time, they did it with a video game, spinning the notoriously action-focused world of Borderlands into a narrative experience that fits right in with the fun, light-hearted, fast-paced world that the first-person shooter series had already established.
Whether a fan of Borderlands or not, this installment from the Telltale lineup was a fun time for everyone lucky enough to take a chance on a plot-driven game based on a gameplay-driven property.
6 Hitman (2016)
Many of the great episodic video games are structured in the format because the experience of playing them is often similar to how you would watch a tv show. In other words, there's an emphasis on storytelling over traditional gameplay mechanics.
2016 Hitman goes in a different direction. Not that any semblance of a plot is removed entirely, of course. More to say that, even with the episodic structure, the game still manages to stay true to the roots of the Hitman series by maintaining its increasingly wacky stealth gameplay, and prioritizing that over a heavy narrative in the way that many other episodic games might lean towards.
5 The Wolf Among Us
The Wolf Among Us is one of the highest-rated entries from Telltale games and is considered royalty of the episodic video game genre. It earned high praise from critics and gamers alike thanks to its engaging, multi-layered story.
One of the strengths of the episodic format for video games is, similarly to television programs, the narrative is able to string its audience along by introducing new twists, turns, and hooks by the end of each episode. The Wolf Among Us and its murder-mystery style fantasy story do the same in as captivating of a way as possible. It keeps the audience guessing and wanting more until the final episode.
4 Dreamfall Chapters
In a way, the Dreamfall Chapters was a decade in the making. Following up a 2006 release, Dreamfall: The Longest Journey as a direct sequel, Dreamfall Chapters put a spin on the series in 2016 by making a sequel that was released in the episodic format.
Similar to other episodic-style video games, Dreamfall Chapters prioritized exploration of its sci-fi-inspired world in order to tell its story through five episodes, or books, as they're referred to in the parlance of the game.
3 Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space
As an intellectual property and cast of characters, Sam and Max have been around since the late 80s. In that time, the two have been featured in webcomics, an animated series, and, video games.
In Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space, the two take to the episodic video game format in order to deliver a five-episode adventure in the style of an interactive graphic novel. The game is as fun, fast, weird, and wild as you would expect from a cast of cartoon characters with now four decades' worth of staying power.
2 Half-Life 2 (Episodes 1 & 2)
For all of the memes centered around begging for Half-Life 3, Valve released a game that kind of was Half-Life 3 years ago in the form of Half-Life 2 Episode 1 and 2.
Similar to the original Half-Life 2, the episodic sequel to the game combined first-person shooter combat with a healthy blend of narrative to make for a balanced experience unseen in many of the most celebrated episodic video games. This game in particular mainly focuses on Gordon and Alyx in a race against the clock as they attempt to prevent the Citadel from exploding.
Essentially, it's everything that made Half-Life 2 great, broken up into episodic chunks. And, funny enough, an episode three was planned for this specific game, but that, too, was never released.
1 The Walking Dead
The Walking Dead might not be Telltale Games' first branching-narrative, episodic video game, or even their first video game at all. But it does stand to this day as their magnum opus -- and a landmark achievement in plot-driven video games.
Telltale was able to captivate its audience with a property that the general public was all familiar with thanks to the popularity of The Walking Dead tv show, but a specific story within that world that many people had not seen or heard before, doing so at a time when video games began fully making the transition to becoming as narrative dependent as they were on their gameplay.
The story is emotional, the characters are investing, and with nine years separating The Walking Dead and its initial release, it still remains the gold standard for episodic video games.