[alt text: a semi-surreal meme image on a plain white background. Two characters from Dark Souls are saying, "My lord, we have absolutely ESSENTIAL lore information for the player. Should we make a cutscrene for it?". They are looking at Hidetaka Miyazaki, who has the From Software logo emblazoned over him, and he is replying, "NO...Put it in the description of a COOKBOOK". There are several cookbook item icons floating between the characters.]
Because of the lore I know why we fight Maliketh. But also because of the lore I don't know why we fight Maliketh instead of just asking for Destined Death.
As someone still playing through vanilla Elden Ring, none of that means anything to me. And if my first 80h are any indication, I'll finish the game and still have no idea.
That is the beauty of these games; you only get told the story if you go looking for it. You can still play the entire game and even all the extra content and not have a single thing straight told to you that's out of your control. Every time I go and play something else, the biggest frustration for me is that I'm just there for the game part, but it takes control away a lot just to give me half an hour of exposition to a story I'm not paying attention to.
I’m usually that person as well. BG3 was the first game in probably 8 years that hooked me on the story. If I sprinted through it, I would have probably saved like 80% of the time I spent playing it, but I enjoyed it. Maybe I’m simple, to me it felt like the decisions mattered.
The way I see it, if it's a rule of film to "show, don't tell", then it should be a rule of games to "engage, don't show and tell".