I love games that are littered with Shandified hints about the lore, the world, and the story. so that if/when my curiosity is piqued, I can go looking for them and learn more at my own pace, and in whatever order I want. this is especially satisfying if those hints also give me some kind of reward for paying attention (like notes that tell me the combination to a safe, for example). Resident Evil 2 Remake has a lot of great examples of this

overall I really like when a game’s lore and story is something that I’m actively participating in and engaging with. games are an interactive medium and I think video game storytelling is at its best when it’s as interactive and responsive to the player as possible

survival games are arguably an even better example of what I’m talking about because scarcity and exploration lead to personalized stories that come directly from the mechanics themselves - like the player’s desperate search for warmth that goes wrong when they nearly fall into a chasm, which they cautiously explore and make into a temporary shelter to wait out the night. that’s not a story that the player passively sat through - that’s a story that they lived through, which is so much more engaging and impactful

contrast that with the approach that a lot of games take, of forcing a predetermined story on the player, which is told through non-interactive cutscenes and dialog boxes and maybe the occasional dialog choice. this approach often forcibly takes away control of the game to make the player passively absorb some new information instead of letting them continue interacting with the ostensibly interactive experience. it doesn’t feel like I’m an active participant in the story, but instead like I’m being sat down so that someone can tell me about a story that is happening around me

and I think that that storytelling style is totally fine in other media, like movies or books. but when I play a game it’s because I want to do things. I don’t want to be a passive observer - I want to live through the events of the game. and I just can’t get that feeling from a game that’s a series of levels punctuated with cutscenes and canned voicelines

I should’ve used Outer Wilds as an example instead of Resident Evil 2 Remake, since RE2Re still has a fair bit of passive storytelling. oh well

overall what I think this boils down to is:

• I should have control of my character taken away as little as possible. ideally never
• story and lore should be things that I choose to seek out - not things that are forced on me unexpectedly
• bonus points if I feel rewarded for engaging with the story/lore, or if there are puzzles that are solved by engaging with the story/lore
• if you make me watch a cutscene that’s longer than 3 minutes I will fill your computer with beans