KMFJD
Lifer
- Aug 11, 2005
- 33,000
- 52,590
- 136
Actually, no, not really. A central story just happens to be the most efficient method of immersing the player. Putting out a game without a story simply shifts the onus of providing background onto the player which makes it more difficult for many adults to really "get into" a game. People play games to relax, and making up stories/backgrounds just seems like work to a lot of people.
The old tabletop RPG games lacked strong stories and only provided general background of the environment simply because they were formalized versions of the kind of roleplay children do. When funding got better and technology improved, games could ship with strong stories that still provided some freedom of character expression.
On the other end of the spectrum, some games provide almost little player interaction. They are called visual novels for a reason: aside from making a few choices on story flow, it's pretty much hours of flipping a book and reading.
That's the type of rpg i like, not so much action oriented as other suggest, but less cut-scenes, slower paced combat.
