How Much Story Is Too Much Story In Games?

Most people who know anything about my gaming preferences know that I love good storytelling. A good majority of the games I choose to play, I choose simply because the story seems interesting. If it’s done well enough – although it doesn’t have to be perfect – it will keep me coming back because I want to know what happens next.

I’m also the kind of person who enjoys knowing all the little details. I’ll do the side content that may or may not add much to the main story but offers all that little flavor stuff and adds more life to the game’s world.

That said, the last two days, I spent time playing through the latest update in Honkai: Star Rail and, as I was working my way through the last area to the update’s boss, I realized that with this update, I spent so much more time in cutscenes – or running from one cutscene to the next without much of anything happening in between. In some instances, I just stayed locked in cutscenes as the game moved me from one character’s point of view to another.

I didn’t really make note of this on the first day of playing this content, but yesterday, it became really apparent – partially because, at one point, I was looking for a spot to stop and go grab dinner, only to get moved to another character’s POV repeatedly rather than exiting cutscenes. What really hit me, however, was that as I was making my way through the final area on my way to the boss of this update, there was very little in the way of the random battles that I’d usually expect. I did see mobs lurking off to the side, but they typically took no notice of me, and there was really no reason for me to go to them at the moment. (Although, it’s likely I will end up dealing with them later if and when I go back to track down treasure chests and solve puzzles.)

The overall result was that I experienced less in the way of gameplay this time. Even the number of puzzles required to make my way through an area felt reduced compared to previous entries. For those who haven’t played Star Rail, it features a lot of puzzles. Many are simply scattered about and reward the player with items upon completion, but a lot of them are necessary to complete the game’s main story.

I will give some caveats here. First, the current story content in the game focuses on several characters, all of whom are leads in this round of content. There are mixed allegiances, and the story has quite a bit going on politically speaking – all of which your character has managed to get themselves wrapped up in. So, it stands to reason that there would be a lot of weight on the story.

Second, I’ll concede that the area of the game I’m talking about above – the one lacking in battle content – is intended to be a more quiet area. It does belong to the dead, after all.

Those things aside, Honkai: Star Rail is an action game at heart. When the majority of an update seems lacking in that, it’s noticeable. It’s not something I’m complaining about. As I’ve said before, I play games for the story. But it has left me wondering, how much story is too much when it comes to games? Where do developers find a balance on these things?

It seems to me that with games like Honkai: Star Rail or Genshin Impact, the devs have some wiggle room to make up for the lack of actual gameplay in the main story. Typically, updates on these games include a few in-game events, all of which feature they’re own bit of gameplay. Many of them aren’t combat-focused. Sometimes, you’ll end up playing a board game within the game, or you’ll do a series of puzzles and the like. Others will be completely combat-focused, having players complete various trials to earn rewards. (And then, of course, there’s the weekly busy work I discussed in a previous post.)

These aren’t the only games in which devs have to make these decisions. When I mentioned the flow of Honkai: Star Rail’s latest update to Mike, the first thing he said was, “That’s basically all FFXIV patches these days, with a dungeon and trial in the middle.” And, well, he’s not wrong. But his comment got me thinking about how players have been making jokes about Final Fantasy games – or JRPGs in general – being increasingly cutscenes since the PlayStation 2 days. (I remember commenting on one JRPG I was playing years ago, making me spend a half an hour or more in cutscenes before ever letting me press a button.)

It’s also worth considering that not every player has time to go looking for this side content to get their actual gameplay in. Some may only really have time for the main story content and maybe enough grinding to get select characters leveled to the point that they can handle the combat thrown at them. So, again, the question becomes, how do the devs balance that? How do you weigh the importance of the narrative against the gameplay components and ensure that players enjoy both?

Because at the end of the day, if the main story in a video game consists more of cutscenes than actual gameplay, it seems like that content could have just as easily been consumed as a TV show or movie, right?