AusGamers has published an extensive feature looking at the need to focus stories more in games, or allow players to freely discover them, themselves.
From the article:
"...But therein lies the rub. How long can a player be asked to play what is essentially a five-hour prologue? That’s precious time when the player should be connecting with the protagonist, but then whatever connection you have with Kenway is stripped when it’s time for Connor to take the reins. It’s not as though Assassin’s Creed III falls into the category of one of those games that takes on the risky (from a narrative perspective) task of repeatedly juggling protagonists. The opening hour or so of a game is the most important time for characterisation. If the player does not connect with the main character, how are we supposed to care about his or her plight? The short answer is we don’t..."
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The whole point of that in AC3 was to get the player to connect with the VILLAIN. You know, to paint the Templars as genuine, three-dimensional characters instead of the cardboard cut-out "we are soooo evil, lololol" things they were in prior games.
It was not a bad thing at all. And it's not like you can argue AC3 skipped over that necessary introductory characterization for Connor, either. The begining of Connor's story is the most fleshed out in the franchise.
It's the last part of Connor's story where everything sort of falls apart.
the reason why i personally am losing the plot in every second game is simple: the plot isn't very well done in most of the cases. i will admit that there are subjects in games that attract me more and others that attract me less. the whole plot of the AC-franchinse for example i could not care less. but then it's the game's task to make me want to play the game anyway by implementing a narrative that everyone CAN and more important IS WILLING to follow. here the AC franchise fails horribly.
also ff13 and -2 .. why the hell did it have to be a kind of narration and plot that no one understood? would it have been too hard to give the player something that makes remotely sense? instead with every chapter it has to get more and more confusing. and when you do not like the whole setting in the first place such a narration does kill the game.
to me, the solution to the situation we are living in (as in "everything already has been said and done what there was to say and do") is not to make the narrative character of games incomprehensible but the opposite. way too many people are mistaking lack of talent with genious when they do not get the point of a story. at least this is my conception why people are praising games like AC and the latest FF installments as "brilliant" or similar.
Developers Are Lazy!
I think MGS Ground Zeroes will help a bit on how storyline can be told in videogames.