Quite often, an indie game throws together some common gameplay, like roguelike shooter patterns, with little to explain it. eg, “You’re here to explore for treasure!” Other times, even AAA games go this route, assuming most players won’t care about the base story premise.
But there seems to be a significant contrast to well-developed worlds; like seeing the progressive cruelty of the Nazis in Wolfenstein before you start stabbing them, or seeing the Gommage in Expedition 33 before heading out to fight nevrons. Even more eldritch action-oriented games like DOOM benefited from establishing a “mood” of the Slayer being angry at demons and anyone who ignored warnings of them using just a few quick cutscenes.
This can be a bit of divergence from a game being “story-focused” or building up detailed lore. Some such games are often bad at motivation because the “story” is so confusing to players, most would just admit “I’m just going wherever bosses are to advance the story.” Some very dialogue-heavy games don’t necessarily captivate players on this level, since motivation can often be very simple. It goes back to the age-old strategy of arcade Donkey Kong; having 10 seconds at the beginning of the game where DK captures a princess who calls for help. The early version of the game likely didn’t even have that, and the designer felt motivation was missing. (That decision spawned its own issue, the Damsel in Distress trope, but that’s another topic)
As more conceptual ideas, and especially more perpetual live-service games, become more popular, I see this element of gaming going missing at all ranks of game development - which is a shame, because I think when written creatively, there are ways to set up player motivation through relatively few voice lines and short cutscenes; something going beyond “You are an amnesiac! This voice is telling you where to go. Don’t die to The Corporation!!”
To drive discussion: What are some games you bounced off of, that you think may have been because they were missing motivation? What games found you putting up with a mediocre gameplay experience because you were invested in the given story turnout?
Motivation from a character often pushes me to prioritize one game when I have many in my backlog. A key example of this is the Ace Attorney games, especially when compared to another mystery game like Return of the Obra Dinn.
In both games you’re solving a mystery, figuring out what happened. In Obra Dinn, you see the “happen” and fill out forms for which person was who, and how they died. But you’re not going to stop anything terrible from happening - that part’s done.
However, in Ace Attorney, every case has the same premise: Some poor fellow has been accused by an overeager justice system of murder. Worse, circumstantially it does seem likely they did it - and no one believes their story. As their defense, you prove them innocent AND drag out the evil miser who landed them in that situation, solving the mystery as you go.
In one of my favorite cases of the trilogy, the defendant was photographed in the act of stabbing the victim by a witness who was behind a fence. The accused was the only person at the scene, arrested on the spot, bears a cut on her hand from using the knife. When questioned, she willingly admits to killing him. Only reason you take the case is that she has no apparent motive, and her sister begs you to do it, feeling she couldn’t ever do such a thing. And yes: She’s innocent. Unraveling that mystery is one thing, but unraveling the motives to figure out how to help these people is another.