That couple sat on the sofa in Half Life 2?

Bully?

The Darkness - Sitting on the settee to watch To Kill A Mockingbird with your missus. Its a touching moment before the bleakness of later.

I'm the anti-Yoss, I don't pay enough attention to systems and mechanics to notice

In orig DX you input your name which becomes a name used in the parts when you get sacked from your job (and your code name is irrelevant).

I think braid is a really good example. It plays the original story in reverse to tell you something else.

Syph79 wrote:

Not sure I'm understanding this fully, but there's been a massive rise in story-based graffiti in games as a way to tell the story. That and audio recordings.

Graffiti a shit way to tell a story. It worked in BioShock, but why the cunts in Alien Iso are taking time out to daub cryptic, insane shit on the walls is beyond me.

They've got murderous androids running amok and a xenomorph to worry about, but instead they're scribbling crap about looting and fuck the police type stuff. Nonsense.

Dynamite Headdy.

There's a thing in Earthworm Jim where you launch a cow and it lands at the end of the game. Does that count?

That Call of Duty game where the story is hackneyed bullshit about shooting everything. Manhunt an all?
Was there some indie game where you didn't have to kill any enemies at all or some hippy business like that?

Just Cause 3 - cos of that bit in the story where the thing explodes.

Sexiles?

There wasn't much of a story in Portal 1, TBH.

Tempy, I thought I understood your premise until I read your examples, so apologies if these don't fit your idea.

Potential spoilers below, so if you see the name of a game you are yet to play and plan to, skip the paragraph.

Journey: IIRC, most of the parts that involve any sort of challenge involve moving upwards, and there's the section where you actually grind to a halt. It's a fairly basic 'life is an uphill struggle' metaphor, which is then subverted in the final section, which is literally uplifting. So, by doing the same thing, in slightly different ways, the game is telling contrasting elements of its story. Still a shit game, mind you.

Proteus: Doesn't explicitly give you any story, but is another life metaphor, and also hints that the game world has its own history, for the player to interpret themselves.

Ico: The holding hands mechanic reinforces the emotional bond, and infuses the moments of separation with anxiety.

Spec Ops: The Line: I've listened to some critiques saying that they thought the white phosphorus section was a bit of ham-fisted story-telling but, from the perspective of someone who knew absolutely nothing about the plot, it worked brilliantly, imho.  See also; the loading screen hints and incidental in-play dialogue as the story progresses.

Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor: The nemesis system is a finely tuned emergent narrative engine. On the face of it, generic, enemies generated from a finite pool of characteristics, but exceptional scripting and voice-acting make it feel very personal to the player, and create genuine nemeses.

Bushido Blade: Your character collecting bandages specific to the injuries sustained in losses en route is a nice bit of minor story-telling. Also very basic compared to what should be possible now, but games haven't really run with the idea, which is a pity.

Tomb Raider (2013): Kinda does run with the idea, to almost comedic effect.

Wolfenstein: The New Order: Gives the player a Sophie's choice early doors, which I gather has reasonable effect on how the rest of the game plays.

Everybody's Gone Up a their Own Arsehole: The gameplay tells the player the story of how desperately slow, pointless, dull and irredeemably shit the end of the world will be, and how little you will care about the people who die.

Again, apologies if these don't fit what you're driving at.

Dunno what you're talking about mate