Can you have a great single player only game without story/lore?

It seems like a lot of games today compensate for not having multiplayer by having an emphasis on story and characters. It's not just Sony games. Games like Doom, Wolfenstein, Bioshock, and even RPG's like Skyrim and Zelda all feature some kind of story/lore. Are there any good single player only games that don't?

Bayonetta 3 will be the next goat with throw away story

"Good" story is by no means a requirement for a good game

Tetris.

Well said Pedro

Bloodborne if you don't read the items.

We have a winner.

He said without lore tho.

@Gamerno6666:Full house tournament fighter.

WTF is this? lol.

@SolidGame_basic: no. And I wouldn't want that. Story and lore exist to make us invested and care about the story and to give us motivation to keep playing

That said, you can play soulsborne without caring about both as I do.

@Gamerno6666:

@Gamerno6666: soulsborne lore is utter irrelevant

@SolidGame_basic: oh, Zelda isn't an RPG.

Of course. As long as you have a challenge/objective to complete and fun gameplay, then it will be a good game to play.

It's not uncommon for games to splash a bit of character to contextualize them, but games like Super Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong are fun for their gameplay, not their narratives or lore. Other users mentioned arcade games and puzzle games like Tetris and Pac-Man but there are also games like Cities: Skyline, Sim City, Spacechem and TIS-100.

@jumpaction: true, on sim games you, like, make your own lore

Yeah I youtubed it and saw it. lol. nice music tho.

@Ant_17 said:

@Gamerno6666:

@recloud: All kinds of them too. Flight sims, driving sims, life sims, building cities or theme parks; all of them are often played in a single player context and have no actual narrative or lore.

Shadow of th Colossus was very minimal, it worked quite well.

Any game can have great gameplay with throwaway story. Truth is, story doesn't have to matter much.

Quake 1

The Souls games. Honestly I never paid attention to or understood the premise of the games.

^ the thread should have stopped there. And Tetris is just one of many examples

Thrill Kill

probably the most stupid thread title I've seen in quite a while.

The fact that you named a 34 year old game I think proves the point. What's next, pong?

@SolidGame_basic: Super Mario Odyssey came out last year. Would you say people bought that for the gameplay or the story and lore? :P

In fact the whole series was successful because of its (single-player) gameplay, not its barely-there narrative.

Immersion, immersion, immersion. Many of us want it all for a game to be great. Gameplay, story, graphics, sound are all factors in making a great game that draws you into its world.

If you want multiplayer games, knock yourself out, but I'm done with them. In today's gaming world, other people ruin the gaming experience and immersion.

No Man's Sky?

@todddow:This has become kind of a hot topic and the butt of a few jokes among some of the gamers I talk to online. ;)

Immersion is more than engrossing aesthetics. The word just means 'deep mental involvement' which can absolutely include intense multiplayer games like Street Fighter, Overwatch or Star Craft. This idea that gameplay cannot be the sole trigger of immersion, but that it all has to surround the virtual world is not adhering to the full definition of the word.

Many, many competitive gamers, sportsmen and hobbyist experience immersion when playing multiplayer games or sports. Deep concentration and immersion is not exclusive to aesthetics and virtual worlds. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi coined the term flow to described a subset of immersion associated with high skill activities, and this is something that can be directly attributed to intense, competitive multiplayer games. Check it out here.

@jumpaction: if multiplayer works for you, cool. I've played enough of them that I have come to hate the experience.

@todddow: That's alright, but also not really what my reply was about. I was more specifically referring to the misunderstanding of the word immersion and how it can absolutely apply to gameplay experience both singleplayer and multiplayer. Immersion isn't exclusive to singleplayer aesthetics and narrative.

Multiplayer experiences can absolutely vary, but nothing quite beats a board game with some friends or playing Divinity: Original Sin 2 in cooperative play. Shared experiences with people I like is fun. Online multiplayer sadly doesn't always give you this experience because anonymity and playing with disrespectful strangers can often sour the experience. Finding good partners and friends to play with though and they can be lots of fun.

Maybe you need a lot of limitations in your thread if the age of a game is suddenly a problem. Okay, let's go with FarmVille and CandyCrush. Both hugely popular games with no story. No causual games? Okay. Hearthstone, PubG, LoL, Dota, the whole Civilization series, Lumines, a lot of rhytm games, Counter Strike, Team Fortress 2, ...

I'll look forward to all the reason all those games don't count.

(oh and this is ignoring all the game most players ignore the story like the Warriors games for example. How many who love DBZ Fighter Z enjoyed the story?)

Yes. In fact some of the best games of all time have either no story or a very minimal story.

DOOM 2016 is probably the best game of this generation, and you could blink and miss its story. It is a completely gameplay focused FPS.

LOL, I've played the game 3 times now and still don't really know the story. Something like "some people on Mars are harvesting hell for.. some resources, or some power.. to do.. something. One woman took it far enough to open hellportals.. I think.. Robotguy was in on it in the beginning, but now wants to fix the problems with DOOM guy's help.. and DOOM guy has to kill demons and close the portals.

Did I get it right?

Yes.

ABSOLUTLY!

Space Engineers, Medieval Engineers, Empyrion - Galactic Survival just to start a small list of examples.

to me its like many gamers are living in a different universe then I am

The Super Mario games did not need a good story and are above-average games.

The simulation genre has you covered.

People seem to love the Train and Truck sims. Cities: Skylines is a good example too.

You can argue RimWorld and Dwarf Fortress have no lore or story until you create it.

Factorio....

Wow. Yeah I can think of a lot.

yup.

in fact, I have been gaming a lot this past 4 weeks (like 20 hours a week) and not a single one of my single player games has a story

Also, this thread is kinda pointless.... as single or multiplayer games have plot, lore and story in a way or another. The last time we had a game without story was probably Tetris, as mentioned, as even most puzzler games have some sort of concept to explain what's happening onscreen.

Pong: It's a table tennis game, there is your "story"

Pitfall: It's the adventure of a treasure hunter

Asteroids: You're the pilot of a spaceship trying to survive a barrage of... asteroids.

Etc.

For the game to not have a plot it would have to be COMPLETELY abstract, like Tetris, with no correlation to something that resembles a narrative. We probably have less than 10 games that have no lore/story/plos since the inception of gaming.

I would agree. Feels like a lot of the Nintendo and Sega games (of yesteryear) fit this niche. A game can be great without story. A great game can also be better because of story.