I liked how they pulled this off in Deus Ex, where you see newspapers scattered around, you can use news terminals, read into books, etc. to get an idea what's happening while you're doing your job.
I also like how they did it in Morrowind or, better yet, Oblivion, where, for instance, the lockpicking training book tells you that if you hold a torch to the lock, the tumblers will behave more predictably thanks to the heat. This should compel the player to actually read the books that are lying around him, making it seem more like a real RPG.
That's what I'm talking about. Great games must
be great stories, not only have them.
When you play a game like Half Life or Gunman Chronicles, you not only understand the story, you also see that you actually are the center of the plot. You feel guilty when you push a bottom and an elevator falls to destruction with some people inside. You feel terrorized when you see your heavily armed friends being crushed by an enemy tank, leaving you with a pistol almost out of ammo. That's what we want when we give 10 to 50 bucks for a game.
But, when you, like me, buy a game like Heavy Gear, you feel cheated. The game is an inferior clone of Mech Warrior 2, with poor graphics and gameplay. The game had only one good thing: the story. It is a very very large plot, and it was almost entirely written in the manual. I mean, there were the detailed biographies of every character that appears in the game, with pictures. I found out that
after I had done with the game. And it is not even a sequel. Man, if I wanted a novel, I'd buy one.
One can say: "What do you want? If the story is that large, they couldn't show it in the game". That's their problem, not ours. They tried to explain us what was going on by showing us some short movies in the beginning of half of the levels. Again: If I wanted to watch a movie, I wouldn't buy a game.
And I'm pretty sure every single one of you guys has been in a similar situation some time.