BellosTheMighty said,

Oh! Another one: REDDER. A simple exploration platformer, but with some interesting tricks that become apparent as you progress.

How about the climactic sequence of Super Metroid? Possibly one of the most famous uses of storytelling in-engine in gaming history.

Barry Brenesal said,

I think PS:T did subtle well. There was the whole sly reference to the convention of bringing a dead PC back to life: why does the PC keep popping up in full health once he’s been killed in front of us? The Old Woman who gives you an apparently nonsensical series of fetch quests would seem to be a comment upon gatekeepers in RPGs. The woman who comments acidly about adventurer questions (What’s your name? What’s your profession?) is a dig at the old Ultima titles. There are many more. Few games had quite as many self-referential comments as PS:T, I think, though I could be wrong in this.

But I agree, subtle isn’t what game creation or playing is about, especially nowadays when it seems the average Industry title is squarely aimed at 10-year-olds. They’re not noted for subtlety.

Califer said,

I dunno. I can’t even get people to read three lines of text in an unskippable tutorial. How many players have I watched stare blankly at the screen as “Press start to select a skill” slowly moved by only to look up at me right before the text vanished and ask why they can’t do anything yet.

Gamers are hopeless!

LateWhiteRabbit said,

Kind of tied to yesterday’s topic; shorter games tend to do subtle better than longer games.

This is mainly because they allow frequent replays while the knowledge of earlier levels or gameplay is still fresh in the player’s head.

The Stanley Parable is a Source engine mod game that makes excellent use of replays to reinforce both subtle and not so subtle ideas and thoughts.

I love games that let ideas and comprehension dawn on their own. Those moments where you realize or figure something out that has never been explicitly pointed out or told to you. Those are such powerful moments. Not to mention the fact that because YOU deduced the information it will stick with you for a LONG time.

Subtlety is also good for introducing hard to accept ideas or information, or knowledge that would seem silly if simply told to you. Thief does this to great affect in the Cradle level. The player knows the building has a long and sad history – it has been an asylum, an orphanage, it is rumored to be haunted, etc. Through a series of small and subtle clues scattered throughout the level the player can come to the stunning realization that the Cradle was an insane asylum and an orphanage at the SAME TIME.

If simply told this fact most players would consider the idea silly at worst, or a case of developers trying too hard at best. But because no one tells you or confirms this theory and you are made to reach it on your OWN – the idea is arresting and shocking, because the creepy possibility has germinated in your own brain, fed by drops of disparate but significant pieces of information, only to blossom out of your mind as a thing of terror full-formed. “But wait, that can’t be right . . . unless that other thing meant this instead of that, and – OH, MY GOD! They were keeping children with the criminally insane!” Sound outrageous? What are you going to do? Call yourself a liar?

I like games that reward careful observation, and subtle clues can enhance the mood, story, or both. Bioshock has environmental clues that tell little mini-stories in most levels – you can trace the final days or last moments of an individual or family. Many players will run through shooting, sure, but how many stop and regard the corpses lying on a bed, spilled pills on the floor and booze on the nightstand? How many will listen to the audio diary in a nearby room of parents looking for a missing daughter? How many will connect those things to the Little Sister Program going public? Those two parents dead on that bed must have certainly made the connection. You can see the scene play out in your own mind – the parents finally seeing their daughter again, only she’s an unnatural thing, sucking from a corpse. They have no recourse, no escape from Rapture – except suicide. A sad and personal tragedy that might make you think again about the Little Sisters not simply being a source of ADAM, but someone’s little girl. Or you can run by it all in a second while shooting dudes – your choice.

Fallout 3 and New Vegas have a lot of these mini-dramas of the environment. A child skeleton wrapped between two adult skeletons on a bed, radio nearby. A skeleton in a bathtub – with a toaster. Or they can go even darker – a raider den with a bar, stage, and stripper pole on stage . . . with a teddy bear and toy blocks. Then you go backstage and find cages with beds inside . . . and toys, and stuffed animals, and tricycles . . . and a cash register and counter prominently in the middle of the room, with no goods anywhere around for sale . . . except what was in the cages.

I doubt many games could get away with having a child brothel or a pedo gang of killers in a game, at least not blatantly. But if they set it up so you draw that conclusion on your own? Impact.

erratio said,

I can’t believe no one mentioned Shadow of the Colossus here. I only had trouble finding the Colossus once, every single other time I felt like I was just organically riding in the rough direction of the Colossus, checking out a cool landscape feature, and then next thing I knew there would be the cutscene opening the battle. If only the battles themselves had been as well-orchestrated..

Another game that comes to mind is Arcanum, where the developers put a huge amount of thought into their worldbuilding, and it shows, with old newspapers scattered around, chains of sidequests that reveal interesting facets of the world, and a few parodies that play on real-world people and events transposed into a magical setting (at one point there’s a sidequest you can go on that involves replacing PT Barnum’s fake yeti-skin with the real thing)