Is a overall experience more important to you than a protagonists personal story?

[dope_danny]

So i was shooting the shit with friends over games and the MHW event had one interested in Horizon. I told him it was fun but the characters story is super lame compared to the worlds story. He asked what i meant and instantly two examples come to mind:

Horizon Zero Dawn story: An ancient war lead to the total collapse of society and something has restarted some warmachines that may finish the job and wipe out all life.
Aloy's story: You wipe out camps of bandits and farm herbs like every open world busywork meme game and on the way to fight an ancient evil she stops at various places to watch holographic flashbacks before going to a city to fight the boss.

Halo ODST: In the middle of an alien attack on the african city of New Mombasa you are part of a group of special forces agents, dropped in not to help in the events of Halo 3 but to undergro a covert operation to find a key asset that may help stop the war and save the earth.
Rookies story: You are blown off course and drop in a city then wake up hours later alone. You visit 5 locations, pick up a piece of gear then put it down and then the final fight occurs. Everything else is 'flashbacks' of rookie making educated guesses about what happened to the characters.

These are two popular examples of the idea of the 'passive protagonist' that have a huge impact in the end but their personal story is a vector for gameplay and on reflection is pretty much cases of 'these far more interesting events had to line up to make my walking trek happen'.
While its often easy to say 'the story is lame but the gameplay and minute to minute experience is so good i dont care' and in cases like MGSV its certainly true it still makes me wonder if there are people that don't just notice this on reflection and mid game will go "hang on I'M not actually doing anything!" and drop the game.
Its a complaint i've heard about both games but ODST far more since people are used to the intentional power fantasy of Master Cheif in the mainline Halo games. Has it ever happened to you?
Personally i never associated myself with none create a characaters and they are just a vector for the overall experience. Doesn't mean that applies to everyone of course.

[Wrecktangle]

I can deal with an average at best story if I care about the characters (a la Tales of Series). However a story would have to be stunningly ridiculously good for me to like it if the characters weren't good.

[StrawberryZebra]

While its often easy to say 'the story is lame but the gameplay and minute to minute experience is so good i dont care' and in cases like MGSV its certainly true it still makes me wonder if there are people that don't just notice this on reflection and mid game will go "hang on I'M not actually doing anything!" and drop the game.

Moment to moment gameplay tends to carry most games. Ones that lean heavilly on their story tend to have skimped in the gameplay department in order to make it happen. Do we really care why Bowser has kidnapped the Princess this time, or do we care more about beating the level in front of us? I would argue that it is the latter far more often than the former. Lots of successful franchises have been built on a minimalist story and work because their game play is solid.

As for the actual protagonists of the game, its perfectly viable for a video game to have a protagonist that doesn't need much in the way of character development to fill the role. Like the Master Chief, since you brought him up, he's a character that right from the beginning of the Halo franchise was capable of single-handedly defeating armies of Covenant. If you boil his story down, it too consists of a checklist of "Go here, do that" type events. Does it make him a rather flat protagonist? Perhaps. Do I love driving a Warthog at break neck speed during the Finale of Halo 1 and 3? Hell yes!

That doesn't diminish him as a gaming icon, it just means that the main Halo series was based more around being a power fantasy. Which is cool, it absolutely worked. If you're having fun actually playing the game, then whatever story there is only serves as window dressing for that experience. I have, genuinely, never known anyone put down a game because they felt their role in the story was too small. I've seen them put a game down because they don't enjoy the mechanics, the art style, the theming and disliking the protagonist. But never because that protagonist was too passive.

[lawow74]

Some games are fun because they tell a story about an interesting world and/or characters. Others are fun because they keep your monkey-brain happy mashing buttons. A truly great game is either innovative in unforeseen and positive ways or an exceptional iteration of existing components.

But it doesn't matter how great a story is if the delivery device is too clumsy, frustrating or otherwise time-consuming to keep people engaged. Sure, some people would still play a game if it took ten times as long as it does now to complete because of less convenient systems. Others would quickly go 'eff this' and go play something that appeals more to their sense of satisfaction.

Ultimately it's the gameplay, IMO, that makes or breaks the game across the most metrics.