[Blood-Pigggy]

HA HA HA! Coming from someone who has an ULTIMA game's cover as his avatar!

Seriously, the first three Ultimas practically had no story. The early Wizardry games practically had no story. In fact, I can go ahead and say that the entire Wizardry series had really generic stories. The original Baldur's Gate had a shallow story at best, Fallout's plot line was only redeemed by the Master's unique motivations, and for god's sake people, since when did anyone consider the Might & Magic series to have good stories?

Face it, the majority of the most influential, venerable, respected and well known RPGs ever made are transparent when it comes to the storyline.

It is one of the least important elements in an RPG. A singeplayer FPS needs a story to move forward the chain of events, a la Half-Life and its cinematic twist. An adventure game needs a story because that's all an adventure game is. A freaking professional strategy game needs at least a trace of a story to make the conflict make sense.

An RPG? All you need to know is that there's a fantasy/steampunk/modern/whatever setting, and there's a bunch of dangerous things in them and if you kill them you get stronger. Hell, along the way there will be some people you can exploit!

Dialog is incredibly important to the majority of RPGs. Story? Story is a throwaway.

I don't understand the infatuation with it.

Let me make this clear.

I WILL NEVER PLAY A GAME THAT ATTEMPTS TO REPLACE GAMEPLAY, READ "GAME-PLAY" THE PRIMARY WORD BEING GAME - WITH A STORY, NO MATTER HOW GOOD. I WANT TO PLAY A GAME, NOT A BOOK.