Best Narrative of 2017 – Winner

The end of the year has rolled around, which means it’s time to sum up 2017 with the Game of the Year Awards. PlayStation LifeStyle is doing our year-end awards slightly different from previous years. We wanted to put more importance on the nomination for each award, so we limited each category to five games. That’s not many, especially in a year stacked with great titles. It took a lot of careful deliberation to come up with each list.

As far as game narratives go, it was a great year in gaming. Not only did role-playing games like Persona 5 deliver on grand stories, but we saw some great stories from indie game as well. Oh, and NieR: Automata came out as well.

Last week, we announced PlayStation LifeStyle’s nominees for the Best Narrative of 2017. Here’s a reminder of what got nominated:

Best Narrative of 2017 Winner

NieR: Automata

NieR: Automata features a story and themes that stick with the player far after the credits have rolled. Its philosophical ideals alone are worth plenty of praise, but the way its twists are laid out really cement it as the year’s best narrative. Our review said, “Much like the original, Nier: Automata’s full story is hidden behind the veil of multiple playthroughs, which the game calls “Endings.” Going through the first chapter of the story twice will unlock the second chapter and completing that opens up the third and final chapter, which in itself consists of two possible playthroughs and multiple endings. But unlike Nier, players don’t always control the same character in all of the game’s chapters or playthroughs, with the latter chapters giving players the option to choose the character route they’d like to play through first. The change makes this style of delivery feel less tedious and lets elements of the story be told and revealed through different perspectives, which opens up opportunities for more powerful storytelling.”

The rest of our Game of the Year 2017 award winners will be announced during this week, leading up to the reveal of PlayStation LifeStyle’s Game of the Year 2017 on December 29. This year will go down as one of the greatest in gaming, so we’re very excited to unveil all of our picks!

Of course, we’d also love to hear what you think. Did your favorite narrative of 2017 match our pick, or would you have liked to see one of the other nominees take the award? Stay tuned to find out the rest of the winners this week!

Don’t miss the rest of the announced year-end award nominees and winners.