While the space opera style of science fiction has been around for the better part of the past century, the genre has always been more closely tied to big-budget live-action franchises like Star Wars, or most recently with the blockbuster success of the Dune trilogy. You’ll find plenty of movies, comics, or TV shows like Star Trek to fill the same niche, but the sheer scale of the space opera genre has been much harder to unearth in the world of video games.
Even if some of the most iconic space opera stories are found in film, there are still several games that not only provide the epic scale of a universal adventure with a focus on melodrama, but create an even more immersive experience by letting you experience it firsthand for yourself, or even influence the outcome of its various factions, characters, or even the main narrative itself.
10
The Outer Worlds Mixes Cyberpunk And Steampunk Surprisingly Well
While it might not have been as universally well received as Obsidian’s previous sci-fi RPGs like Fallout: New Vegas, The Outer Worlds far more closely resembles what you would expect from a grand space opera. Offering a satirical take on a galaxy consumed by planet-colonizing corporations, each location scattered across The Outer Worlds has plenty of unique factions, characters, and their own conflicts to help resolve.
Alongside several memorable companions to journey with as you progress through the story of The Outer Worlds, the locations themselves do a great job of recreating a lived-in frontier world that has gone completely sideways in its morality, with no shortage of drama and morally grey decision-making to get involved with.
9
Elite Dangerous Lets You Create Your Own Spacefaring Epic
The multiplayer-focused Elite Dangerous doesn’t have a traditional scripted narrative for players to get immersed in, which veers quite far from the hero’s journey formula of Star Wars. Even so, the sheer scale of its 1:1 recreation of the Milky Way and the open-ended gameplay loop allow you to chart your own path into whatever story you want to experience in its evolving player-driven narrative.
Rather than quest lines or NPCs, the bulk of Elite Dangerous‘s spacefaring drama and galactic battles come from interactions with other players or from the world reacting to the community’s collective contributions. With groups organizing their own fleets and working together to participate in real-time events, Elite Dangerous takes full advantage of its ambitious flight mechanics and seamless exploration to let you fulfill practically any role in its massive world, whether sticking to yourself as a lone bounty hunter, trader, pirate, or sharing your story with other players.
8
Destiny 2 Has A Surprisingly Good Story For An FPS MMO
While the Destiny franchise might seem like a generic sci-fi shooter from the outside, the 12-year-long spacefaring storyline spanning two games and dozens of DLC is absolutely jam-packed with all the melodrama and galactic action that you would expect from a classic entry in the space opera genre, all experienced through a rare first-person perspective. Even though the story of Destiny is coming to a close with its final update, the ride is still well worth the price of admission for sci-fi fans.
Pushing past the raid bosses and loot frenzy the series is known for, the story of Destiny 2 especially has a massive amount of lore surrounding its sci-fi universe and numerous factions, each with their own goals and motivations that tend to clash in spectacular and tragic ways. With a constantly evolving story filled with incredibly memorable characters and shifting perspectives, the story of Destiny 2 is easily one of its most underrated elements.
7
The Homeworld Remastered Collection Is A Genre-Defining Sci-Fi Franchise
Aside from offering some of the most acclaimed real-time strategy games of all time, the Homeworld Remastered Collection takes the emotional story of persevering against insurmountable odds to even greater heights thanks to its next-generation upgrades. Allowing you to build and command an entire fleet of your own, the galaxy-spanning space opera allows you to grasp the full scale of both its massive space battles and the emotional weight behind each and every one as you use the last of your civilization’s resources to survive.
With a cinematic flair that is even further enhanced by the sheer tactical chaos of its real-time strategy gameplay, the Homeworld Remastered Collection is one of the few games that puts you in full control of the emotional decision-making and war effort of a galactic crusade.
6
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 Is More Than Just Killing Aliens
You might not expect a guns-blazing action game like the Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine games to offer a story on par with the outings you would expect from the genre. Surprisingly, however, both games in the series do an excellent job at establishing not only their universe-scale warfare, but also the character drama bubbling beneath the surface that serves as the driving force behind its overarching plot and fan-favorite protagonist.
With the stories of both games being filled with a wide variety of enemies to face, from Orks and Chaos Marines to Tyranids and a different flavor of the Chaos Gods in the next, each game offers just as much conflict between its primary cast as the aliens they’re trying so hard to defeat. Topping off the dramatized personalities of its cast with some of the most brutally satisfying combat you can find, the Space Marine games perfectly capture the space opera themes seeping throughout the 40K universe.
5
Stellaris Is Just As Much A Drama As It Is A Strategy Game
Although Stellaris has even less of a distinct story focus than some other real-time strategy games like Homeworld, few other franchises in the genre can capture the immersive grand-strategy experience on such a massive galactic scale. Starting with the daunting task of rebuilding civilization from the ground up, the procedural galaxy generation of Stellaris and incredibly deep diplomacy and warfare mechanics easily compete with some of the best narratives in the genre.
Allowing you full control over whether you want to be a pacifist, a benevolent government, or a genocidal maniac, to name a few playstyles, each of Stellaris‘s mechanically rich gameplay mechanics work together to create not only an incredibly engaging storyline that you have near full control over, but also allows you to customize your experience to play as virtually any science fiction civilization you can think of.
4
Rogue Trader Is Well Worth Checking Out For Fans Of The Genre
While it feels like cheating to put two games from the Warhammer franchise on this list when others only get one slot each, Owlcat’s CRPG Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader is a completely different game from its hack-and-slash cousin. Putting you in the driver’s seat of commanding a ragtag group of companions from drastically different backgrounds across the world of 40K, Rogue Trader does an excellent job not only adapting the series, but also of telling a deep character-driven sci-fi story.
Offering an unprecedented level of freedom in how you interact with the various worlds you’ll visit and characters you’ll find along the way, the branching storyline and choices with clear consequences make every decision feel like a meaningful contribution to its incredibly expansive sci-fi narrative. Commanding your own spacefaring vessel and even developing your very own colonies across the stars, few games create an equally immersive and expansive RPG experience as Rogue Trader.
3
KOTOR Perfectly Adapts The Character-Driven Scale Of Star Wars
It would be criminal to talk about grand space operas without mentioning a Star Wars game, but out of every game in the franchise to take a crack at truly adapting the genre, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic is easily the best the series has to offer. Even if the visual experience hasn’t aged too well, the storyline and incredibly iconic cast make for one of the most expansive character-driven RPG experiences you can get your hands on.
Taking place thousands of years before the films we know and love, KOTOR has all the plot twists and character drama that make the genre so iconic, with no shortage of incredible companions to fight alongside or antagonists to face off against in the galaxy-spanning adventure. While there’s no telling when we’ll get to revisit the iconic space opera-inspired spin-off for ourselves once more, KOTOR has plenty of underrated sequel material that takes the series to an even grander scale.
2
The Original Halo Trilogy Is One Of The Best To Ever Do It
Despite most Halo games being focused on the legendary, albeit relatively localized exploits of Master Chief alone, the glimpses we do see throughout the galaxy-spanning war for survival against the Covenant absolutely fit the criteria for an excellent space opera narrative. Offering several of the most iconic characters in gaming history, the massive scale that the Halo franchise operates on is on an entirely different level than most sci-fi shooters.
Putting humanity’s own struggles aside, the unique political tensions and internal strife within the Covenant during the early Halo games make for some of the series’ most interesting plotlines, ultimately unravelingfrom within rather than being outright destroyed by the UNSC. With more remakes on the horizon and countless spin-off material to choose from, Halo has a practically endless stream of content that further fleshes out its sprawling space opera narrative in ways most other franchises could only dream of.
1
The Mass Effect Trilogy Practically Pioneered The Genre
Out of every spacefaring sci-fi game out there, no franchise comes close to topping the Mass Effect Trilogy and its impact on the genre as one of the best, if not the best, space opera stories in fiction. With each of your decisions carrying over between each game and a protagonist that lets you mold their actions without taking away their entire personality, the Mass Effect games do an excellent job of creating a rich, believable sci-fi world that you can’t help but get invested in.
Combined with countless characters and unique companions that make each playthrough of the series as memorable as the last, the Mass Effect Trilogy, which combines all three games into one, is an absolute steal of an experience for three massive games. Perfectly balancing RPG mechanics, exploration, and cinematic storytelling, Mass Effect gives you full control of a narrative that, much like Star Wars, remains compelling even with its somewhat disappointing conclusion.
- Released
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November 6, 2012
- ESRB
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t
- Developer(s)
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BioWare
- Publisher(s)
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Microsoft
- Engine
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Unreal Engine 3