The 10 Best Narrators in Gaming

It’s a special feeling when a videogame’s story speaks to us – especially when it really does. Literally.

Narration is everything when you want a story to jump off the screen and into your head. A good narrator can make all the difference in making a world feel more alive and realer than it is. They are there to remind us why where we are, where we’re going and maybe even where they’ve been themselves. They make us laugh, they make us cry and they make us challenge why we’re here at all playing games when we could be anywhere else. It’s how as much as who’s telling the plot that separates the talking heads from the real storytellers.

Here are the ten best narrators in gaming that tell a story right.

1. Bruce Campbell (Spider-Man 2)

Nobody likes a backseat driver, but you can’t find a better one than Bruce Campbell. Part tour guide and part comic relief, Campbell serves up the snark as no one but his wonderfully smarmy self as he narrates the game’s initial tutorial and players’ progress as they swing around the game’s virtual New York City. As such, he takes every opportunity to poke players in the ribs, either his flippant remarks regarding players’ imminent deaths or his own terrible advice by way of the city’s hint markers. That kind of humor shouldn’t be so rare in a game about tight-clad crime fighters.

2. The Narrator (The Stanley Parable)

A commentary on our capacity of self-deception or on the limits of player choice itself, "The Stanley Parable" is a game as difficult to describe as it is to understand through the eyes of its narrator. Known only by the function of his namesake, "The Narrator" is the incessantly judgmental voice pushing you towards your apparent goal. Happy, sad, angry, or just downright obnoxious, his wildly erratic mood swings depend on what story you choose. The events of the game’s first ending are no stranger than the last, but as you uncover them all, “The Narrator” fashions its absolute absurdity into chilling clarity the deeper down the rabbit hole you go. Deep down, though, he simply can’t stand that he has as little control as you do.

3. Atlas (Bioshock)

You can’t always believe everything you hear and characters like Atlas know how to lie through their teeth – or what’s left of them. The fiery voice of Rapture’s working class man, (and just a voice for most of the game) Atlas is a mystery even to his posters who ask, like you, "Who is Atlas?" It’s only by the head-spinning end of his breadcrumb trail of deathly polite fetch-quests across the crumbling city that you finally get your answer. Atlas’ cryptic words betray far more than he intends with his unreliable narration a retelling of the city’s own fall as much as the players’ meager knowledge about themselves.

4. The Narrator (Sam & Max)

Sam and Max are masters of the absurd, so it’s only fitting that their adventures be told by someone born of the same insanity. With an outrageous pompadour and childish suit jacket, "The Narrator" looks like he could host the Twilight Zone as well as a third-rate variety show, but don’t let appearances fool you. "The Narrator" would like nothing less than to be the bane of “armpit farts and locker room giggles” as the defender of all things highbrow, but all his hilariously self-referential humor can’t hide his pitiful existence as the byproduct of a hyperkinetic, three-foot rabbity thing. He’s the least reliable and most amusing narrators you’re likely to ever hear.

5. Zobek (Castlevania: Lords of Shadow)

You would be hard-pressed to find a role of Patrick Stewart’s that he ever phoned in and by all accounts, his performance of Zobek is no different. A narrator’s narrator, Zobek embodies the eloquence you would come to expect from the villain of a Shakespearean tragedy. Every word of his conceals his true nature as his masterful narration of events only serve to disguise how many strings he’s pulling of Gabriel Belmont’s. As deceptive as he is powerful, he commands our fear, respect and hate as easily as he toss on a three-piece suit.

6. The Narrator (Thomas Was Alone)

"Thomas Was Alone" is a puzzle game about a rectangle named Thomas and his silent little geometric friends. Leave it to Danny Wallace who single-handedly breathes life into the game’s off-kilter story with a levity not lost on the quirky quadrilaterals. As The Narrator, he describes the personalities and thoughts of each shape as the game progresses, building up a believability to their oddly intricate relationships. Who knew a puzzle game could be so moving?

7. Gaia (God of War)

The primordial goddess of the earth and onetime ally to the God of War, gamers might best know Gaia as the voice that narrated the deaths of a dozen Olympians. Fiercely committed to the world on her back, she makes Kratos’s revenge on the Gods feel like one big, bloody bedtime story chronicling the last days of Mount Olympus up to its fall. Even as Kratos’s glorified stepping-stool, she speaks with a spooky omniscience that adds an epic proportion to her games well enough to make you feel sorry to see her go – almost.

8. Ron Perlman (Fallout)

"War never changes" and neither does the weight of Ron Perlman’s voice every time you step out into the Wasteland. Those three little words alone make up the most Fallout’s series’ winning slogan, but they don’t replace the wistful narration that’s accompanied us through every choice we’ve made, every wanderer we betrayed, every time we’ve died a senseless (if not entirely stupid) death.

9. The Narrator (Little Big Planet)

The chipper voice "The Narrator" is like that of a proud father’s welcoming you into the world as you open your eyes for the first time. It’s sweet, it’s charming and it’s wonderfully endearing even it can feel as silly as getting a big smiley face for cycling through the game’s tutorial. As a little sack person in a big world (at least the size of your living room), it’s good to know someone out there’s smiling down on you.

10. Rucks (Bastion)

There isn’t always a lot to say, but when something needs saying, you can count on Rucks to tell it like it is. A survivor of the post-apocalypse with impeccable mustache, Rucks talks like a hard-bitten man that’s travelled far and seen too much. All the same, he helps "The Kid" restore Caelondia to save the world all while providing a relatable quality to his world-weary narrative. How he manages to keep his impossible cool we’ll never know, but he’s probably the one guy you wouldn’t mind with a repeater at your back. But you know he’s seen the long road ahead.

[Stringerbell]

Bastion's narrator was a riot, I loved it.