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{{quote|'''[[Mr. Exposition|Deckard Cain]]''': Come! [[Catch Phrase|Stay a while and]]--<br />
'''Barbarian''': It is time for shedding our enemies' blood, not idle talk.<br />
'''Deckard Cain''': [[Mythology Gag|No one ever listens!]]|''[[
Some games are sprawling epics centered about a cast of compelling characters and emotional twists and turns. Some paint pictures of entire new worlds with [[All There in the Manual|considerable background material]] and long and involved histories. The amount of detail that goes into some games' storylines can rival a big-budget movie or television series. Other games are made with [[No Plot, No Problem|no plot at all]] - the players just want to [[Rule of Fun|have fun]]. Others may have a [[Excuse Plot|bare minimum]] of one.
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== Fighting Game ==
* ''[[
** Pirated versions of this game usually cut out the ''Subspace Emissary'' cutscenes (among other things), so the game can fit on a single-layer disc. And since it's one of the most popular games for [[Wii|the most pirated seventh generation console]]...
* Arguably, almost every single tournament [[Fighting Game]] in existence. There are detailed backstories, different endings per character, and even events in sequels that tie in to past story elements. But with the exception of some hardcore fans who care about such things and compile vast [[Universe Compendium|Universe Compendiums]] trying to figure out what's [[Canon]], almost everyone just picks their character and joins the fight.
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** People cared about the stories long before that since SNK constantly pulls out fan favorites for arbitrary reasons, like Joe in XI. It's the reason the Dream Match games, 98 and 2002, where the story is ignored in favor of who would make a fun fighter, are the most popular.
* And ''[[Mortal Kombat]]'', obviously. It has a convoluted and (probably deliberately) ludicrous backstory incorporating numerous gods, planar beings, rivaling clans of robot ninjas, etc. Most of the players probably don't realize which characters are the good guys, not least because [[Face Heel Revolving Door|many of them swap allegiances constantly.]]
** The beat-'em-up [[Spin-Off]] ''[[
** ... until [[Mortal Kombat 9]] turned things around with a long, detailed, and very popular story mode.
* In ''[[Street Fighter]]'' all characters do have their motivations, but most of them are pretty simple. "This evil dude, Bison, killed your friend/father/classmate/whatever, and you want revenge".
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** It doesn't help that there are [[Canon Foreigner]] characters, such as [[Star Wars|Yoda, Darth Vader, and Galen Marek]] in ''IV''.
** When the story was being paid attention to, it was a good story... until ''Soul Calibur V'', where there is a short 20 episode story mode (with less fights than chapters), and half the cast only appears briefly, or worse, not at all. It seems the devs just gave up and decided to enforce this trope.
* Notably ''averted'' in ''[[
** Its [[Spiritual Successor]] ''[[Blaz Blue]]'' obviously follows the suit. Even the Story Mode feels like a [[Visual Novel]] game with fighting matches in between.
* The problem started when it became standard practice for [[Cutting Off the Branches|one character's ending per game to be]] "[[Canon]]". That means that all but two or three characters' stories are ''completely irrelevant''. It's tough to care about Julia Chang's environmental crusades or E.Honda's attempts to popularize sumo when there's zippo chance of seeing any resolution. The best way to make players care is to present each character's story as a ''part'' of the big picture, something ''[[Blaz Blue]]'' has done (and ''Mortal Kombat'', too, though not as successfully).
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== First Person Shooter ==
* ''[[Doom]] 3'' has a story created by a novelist. Which may lead people to say, "It has a story?" The [[Big Bad]] was passed up for the title of [[Mad Scientist]] Who Makes A [[Deal
* In ''[[Halo]]'', there's two groups of players: those who deeply care about the story, and the ones that are indifferent to it altogether. The former wants to shoot people ''and'' immerse themselves in the [[Backstory]], the mythology, and characters and all. The latter see the former as dorks for being so enthralled in the story, while the former hold them in equal disdain as low-brow fools who spam Xbox Live. Thankfully for the former group, the [[Expanded Universe]] exists for them.
** Its predecessor, ''[[Marathon
* ''[[Brothers in Arms]]'' is a good example of this trope, since while they obviously put effort into the cutscenes, there's a lot of [[Continuity Lock Out]], iffy voiceacting, and difficulty in distinguishing between characters. The games are just too short to support a cast that big. The end result is confusion.
* ''[[Modern Warfare]]'': The storyline and political messages in the game are fairly interesting and make a pretty good plot; too bad most people jump straight to the multiplayer, or play the single-player with the mind set of "shoot whoever shoots back, pick up/bomb the objective, etc."
** Singleplayer does make some efforts to make the storyline interesting. You have bouts of [[Controllable Helplessness]] where some major plotline event happens and you die. In the first game, {{spoiler|it serves to cement your hate against Ultranationalists using nukes, and in the second, against the general who burns you alive.}}
* Believe it or not, ''[[
* The first [[System Shock]] game had this as an option: if players wanted, they could turn off all plot elements, meaning that the original audio logs would still be there but stripped down to game-related info only.
== Four X ==
* ''[[
** Of course, the only part that conceivably even could still matter is the empire the Antarans at the height of their power were ''afraid of'', and even the remnant in the game will ruin your shit when they come out of their capital. If they showed up everyone on the map would be dead in a few turns.
* Averted with ''[[Sword of the Stars]]'', the richness of the lore for which seems to be one of the key reasons for fans' enjoyment of the game.
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* Every MMORPG with a team mechanic falls prey to this. "Hey guys, wait up, I want to read the history of Doomy McEvilton and why he wants the [[MacGuffin]] of Glory to...ah nuts to this, where's my XP?"
** ''[[Guild Wars]]'' also has this happen. Most people who engage in the [[PvP]] aspect of the game probably have never seen any of the cutscenes in the game. On the plus side, though, it's possible to play through the story campaign yourself, where you don't have a message saying 7/8 members of the group want to skip the scene and getting yelled at by everyone else for making them sit through it. (Often justified with runners, who've probably seen the cutscene [[Memetic Mutation|over nine thousand]] times and don't wanna hear it ''again''.)
** The same thing can happen in ''[[
** ''[[World of Warcraft]]''. The quest writers intentionally try to keep the quest descriptions brief because people will just ignore them anyways. Even in Cataclysm, which made all the zones have their own unique story arcs, many of which even tie into later zones or even end-game content, a lot of quests are just ignored since people level up alts with heirlooms and barnstorm through the zones. Unless they're Thousand Needles, which people stopped and enjoyed their ride through.
* ''[[
* ''[[Maple Story]]'' has a story long and detailed enough for an [[Archive Panic]]. Problem? Almost ''all'' of the players who can actually do the quests to find out the storyline are a ton of [[Munchkin|Munchkins]]. The game's [[Backstory]] is so easily ignored that there are some players who ''don't even know it exists.''
* ''[[Air Rivals|Ace Online]]'' has a relatively long and interesting plot spanning all 3 episodes, from the colonists starting Bygeniou City (BCU) in Episode One, to the machinations of the Shrines and Phillons and the defection of Arlington City (ANI) in Episode Two (which introduced the Nation Wars mechanic), to the new frontiers and the breaking of an uneasy truce between ANI and BCU in Episode Three. Most players just pick a nation with their friends and go warring/mobhunting, ignoring walls and walls of political cloak-and-dagger text in the mission briefings.
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== Real Time Strategy ==
* [[Blizzard Entertainment]]. All their modern franchises (''[[Diablo]]'', ''[[Starcraft]]'' and ''[[
** On ''[[Diablo]] II'', multiplayer mode ''skips'' cutscenes, which doesn't help.
*** Only if you do not have them installed. You can skip them at will or watch.
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** For that matter, ''[[Skyrim]]'' has a ''lot'' of different texts and loads of small story arcs that people pretty much ignore.
* ''[[Too Human]]'' suffers from this trope when playing co-op, as it automatically skips every [[Cutscene]].
* ''[[
* This was part of ''[[Hellgate London]]''. Although part of the unfortunate reasons the game died, the more unfortunate reason was that the company went bankrupt before most everyone got a chance to beat it.
** ''[[
* This was predicted to happen with ''[[
* Whenever ''[[Pokémon]]'' attempts a plot, it's pretty much treated as this, with only some fans even paying attention to things like [[Pokémon Colosseum
* ''[[
== Shoot Em Up ==
* [[Shoot'Em Up|Shmups]] can fall prey to this as well. [[Sin and Punishment|Some of them]] [[Radiant Silvergun|have detailed]], [[Ikaruga|intricate backstories]] [[E Xceed|and stories]] [[Do Don Pachi|which go]] [[
== Third Person Shooter ==
* ''[[Dirge of Cerberus]]'' is filled with [[Cutscene|cutscenes]], but being a Action Game, they only break down the flow. This becomes even worse later in the game as the cutscenes are even longer and filled with [[Deus Ex Machina|Deus Ex Machinas]].
* Surprisingly averted most of the time in the original ''[[Operation Flashpoint]]'' series, especially its expansion pack ''Resistance''. Though the game would at first seem as a no-thrills no-nonsense military sim, the story and characters are compelling on their own and heavily intertwined with what's generally going on, which lends the whole affair a very personal and immersive feel about ''being a soldier'', instead of "playing as a soldier who just shoots everything that remotely moves". Note that the main plot of ''Cold War Crisis'' is about the eruption of a short war between two small garrisons of NATO and Warsaw pact soldiers stationed in a Ruritania nobody cares about... which could get out of hand and lead to [[World War Three]] and [[The End of the World
* ''[[Bullet Witch]]'' actually has quite a complex plot, regarding a guy who summoned the demons to bring back his dead daughter and how [[Dark Action Girl|Alicia]] got her powers. Too bad the players only wanted to shoot stuff.
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