Can Gameplay Surpass Cinema?

Narrative in video games has not surpassed that of cinema.
In fact, it’s still quite far behind.
While cinema was producing films that are historically significant for their scripts, gaming was mainly about "good guys beating bad guys" to entertain teenage boys.
There were some attempts at more serious storytelling in past decades (mainly in adventures and RPGs), but generally speaking, the script was secondary, often hastily put together, with amateur-level acting—even in games that are now considered legendary.
Games, in general, started as simple pixelated tennis matches (excluding certain genres like text adventures), moved to 2D graphics, and eventually to 3D, but they remained at that level, trying to mimic cinema without having the tools to do so, without the creators having the skills, budget, or willingness to truly follow in the footsteps of film.
As much as we love games we played during the '90s (and later), the truth is this: their scripts, especially when compared to those of other media, were in their infancy.
The storylines of games from that era cannot be compared with those of films from the same—or even earlier—periods; for instance, video game dialogues are way behind. Nor can they be compared (especially) with literature.
As the medium began to evolve technologically, gaining a larger audience and striving more to “catch up” to cinema, some leaps were indeed made.
Even in the realm of blockbusters, things are much better today in terms of the script, the work of screenwriters, and the performances of actors.
However, the medium still cannot reach the highest moments of cinema or literature.
Why is this the case? I believe it’s due to gaming’s constant need to sweatily follow cinema, instead of trying to stand on its own feet and give us something that we can only get from a video game.
It’s a relatively new medium, and this approach by creators is somewhat justified, but at some point, a true evolution could occur.
Of course, there are some bright exceptions, some games with scripts that could compete with those of other media, even if they ultimately fall short—and which also rise to another level because they are games, approaching storytelling in a way unique to the medium.
Here are some moments in gaming that I consider bright examples, moments that fully utilized the medium’s unique capabilities and offered scripts that transcended the infant/childish/adolescent stage of narrative in gaming.

Disco Elysium

A drunken detective wakes up in a room. There’s been a murder, and he must solve it, but his mind leads him down strange paths. He talks to the residents of the fictional city to find clues, but also to aspects of himself to reach conclusions.
A bizarre script in a bizarre world, mixing detective thriller and political drama elements, with a gameplay system that contributed greatly to the storytelling, an artistic style that enhances the plot, and, generally, with every element of the experience serving the narrative.
The writing here isn’t in its infancy, it’s not even adolescent. No game has probably reached this level of writing so far.

Norco

In the town of Norco, Louisiana, the world is on the brink of Change. Huge refineries dominate the city’s skyline, to which the protagonist returns after her mother’s death. Oh, and there are robots.
A recent game that again breaks from the norm, reminding us that the medium has the potential to address issues relevant to our world, to speak about politics, and to satirize situations. Fantastic writing that becomes even better through gameplay and audiovisual elements.

What Remains of Edith Finch

Your entire family is dead. You will live in first-person through the final moments of its members—a child falling off a swing, and a baby drowning in a bathtub, among others.
A noteworthy script, which includes some marvelous moments that could exist in their form only in a video game. For example, when controlling a character who is bored at work and “loses himself” in his mind, you use one hand to gut fish and the other to control characters in a fantastical world of knights and kings, which the man’s imagination creates. Some impressive ideas in the realm of storytelling.

BioShock

It masterfully used the plot twist technique, utilizing some of the medium’s unique characteristics, such as the fact that a game has you “be” the hero for dozens of hours, spending much more time in its world than in a movie—comparable to the time spent with a book.

Red Dead Redemption 2

A game that correctly utilized the medium’s capabilities to tell an entirely cinematic story with equally cinematic terms—and it succeeded. Again, it utilizes specific elements of the medium: it has you spend dozens of hours in its world, controlling the protagonist for a long time, shaving his beard, doing daily activities. All of these contribute greatly to the narrative, even if they seem boring at first glance.

Pentiment

You are an artist in a monastery in 1518. Someone dies, and after a series of events, you end up doing detective work. A story that starts as a whodunnit but ends up talking about generations, the influence of the past on the present and future, and it does so with style.
An attempt at serious storytelling in a historical context, with historical elements and depth in the script, well-written dialogue, and, again, with game language and various interesting ideas at the forefront: for example, when you go for a meal, after choosing which villager to share dinner with, you go to their house and look at the table for a while, reading the characters’ dialogue as they eat, and you can see what kind of food is on the table to understand things about the people who live in that house.

Silent Hill 2, The Last of Us Part II
The same tool again: you control a character for several hours, and the interaction immerses you deeper into the role, eventually revealing shocking truths, with an impact that becomes more intense due to the elements a video game can develop.
The same goes for The Last of Us Part II: it crafted a narrative that works the way it does BECAUSE it’s a video game script, because there’s gameplay. The same goes for Spec Ops: The Line, which has you cause pain and tragedy with your own hands, in the context of war—the writing and presentation aren’t as timeless, but the storytelling method is “rich.”

The “battle” against cinematic storytelling

However, some games try to tell stories in ways similar to a movie blockbuster, but they move far away from cinema. Some examples.

Death Stranding

Although the main plot is entirely cinematic, there’s another part of the narrative that deviates from cinema.
In Death Stranding, you find yourself in a world that has fallen apart. Rain destroys everything, and people live in isolation. You are a courier tasked with walking through the shattered world, braving dangers to deliver important packages.
Part of the plot unfolds through cutscenes, with fully cinematic terms. Another part, however, is unique to the medium: it tells small stories created by gameplay. For example: to deliver a package, you might cross rivers, lose packages when you fall into deep water, get chased, fall off a cliff, climb a mountain, find something strange in the world, lose your shoes, get stranded on a snowy hill. All these are parts of the narrative, little stories in themselves (since you could recount them to friends, for example, to exchange such stories), and in my opinion, these are elements the medium should invest in the future to expand the scope of plots that can unfold in such ways, so it doesn’t remain so simple. The asynchronous multiplayer is also interesting, a technique with plenty of potential for the future.
(This is also how, in part, games like Skyrim work, in the exploration aspect).

Elden Ring (and other games by the same company)
Again, something that can only stand in the form of a video game (or maybe a comic). A story that unfolds through abstract dialogue, through reading, through imagery and gameplay, far from the language of cinema and its tools (not entirely, but in such a direction). Yes, it has a story, but we’re not used to consuming such a form of plot because we’ve been taught by cinema, even when we play games. The future, in my humble opinion, lies somewhere here and not in cinematic blockbusters—although, again, bold steps are needed to develop this type of storytelling, which is still in its early stages.
The same category includes The Legend of Zelda.

Journey

This is the future, for me. A game without a conventional script, without dialogue, in which you simply climb a mountain and along the way, you meet other players controlling characters like yours with whom you cannot communicate verbally. It’s possible, many things are possible.

Some more bright examples:
Planescape Torment, Portal, Shadow of the Colossus, The Talos Principle, Nier: Automata, Hades, Undertale, Celeste, Outer Wilds, Citizen Sleeper, Kentucky Route Zero

Multiple Choices
There are also games that let you shape the story with the choices you make in dialogues. It’s something all media (cinema, books) have tried, but only video games have succeeded in doing.
A good example is The Walking Dead, while we can also broadly include RPGs like Mass Effect 2 or Baldur’s Gate 3, where you make choices that significantly impact the world and characters.

Nostalgia
Another narrative element, which is highly sought after these days, that video games can use with impressive results: nostalgia.
A game differs from a movie, usually, in several ways, but the main one is the interaction with the player through gameplay. This gives a game the following advantage: you can spend hundreds of hours in it. So, after 200 hours in Skyrim, you don’t just say you watched it and liked it, but that you lived in its world. You practically grew up there, or, for younger people, you will grow up there.
For this reason, nostalgia works more effectively here: after you’ve spent 1000 hours in a game and maybe revisited it years later, nostalgia works better when you go back.
Examples include remakes of older games (like Resident Evil) or series continuations that appeal to the same audience.

Other experiences

Another interesting example is the survival-horror games, which often have thin scripts, but the immersion they offer in their worlds is so strong that the narrative element, through environmental storytelling, becomes crucial and adds to the overall feeling.
Other examples include first-person adventures like The Stanley Parable and Firewatch, which successfully implemented other ways of narrating a story.
Or the games of David Cage (Heavy Rain, etc.), with strong scripts that are not, however, distinct in their storytelling. They belong to the category of “interactive movies” that mostly rely on cinematics.
In conclusion, the future lies in the proper utilization of the medium’s capabilities, creating something entirely new, something only a game can offer, even if it doesn’t necessarily tell a story but something else that we can’t even put into words yet.
That’s why the debate about whether games have surpassed cinema is incorrect. The point is not for them to surpass cinema, but to develop their language.
In short, narrative is not a race but a way of speaking and telling stories, and gaming has found its own voice in recent years but still has a long way to go to be recognized for what it offers: something unique.
To sum up, while the gaming industry has made great strides and has given us some impressive narratives, it is still in its infancy in terms of scriptwriting when compared to other media. There is great potential for the future, but it will only be realized when creators stop trying to emulate cinema and instead embrace the unique aspects of the gaming medium to tell stories in ways that only games can.