What is Story?
“Story” is a term that’s often used in video game discussions, but rarely is clearly defined. What one person thinks of as “story” often only partially overlaps with another person thinks that “story” is. Some people apply the term to exclsively the main narrative or plot of a game - while others take it to include also the lore, history and backstory of the game world.
I often see misunderstandings happening beause of that. Story as “main plot” is quite different from story as “all the lore and everything”. When I talk about story, I like to think about it as the sum of three big main pillars:
The Setting
The game world everything takes place in, including it’s history, lore, backstory, far and recent past. Politics, religions, factions, languages, myths, geography, traditions and so on, and so forth - basically all the world-bilding elements belong into here.
Even more recent events - up to as recent as right before the start of the game, can belong into this category. The game world and it’s entire past and all the structures and prevailing conditions that results in are part of the setting.
For video games, this might be the biggest and single most important of all the story pillars. Because even things like regional architecture, clothing design and available technology belong in here.
The Characters
All the people who appear during the game and have a role to play in the events that unfold. That includes the protagonist(s) and antagonist(s), player characters and non-player characters, but also everyone else from uninvolved bystander to plot-driving personage of highest import.
Characters aren’t necessarily limited to humans or people - but could also be other sentient creatures, other forms or existence, or even certain animals, if they have to play a role in the events.
In video games, it’s often the companions of the player character, which get the most dialogue, writing, personal backstory and character development. Such well-written companion characters can be the key to good stories in video games. Having other people to connect with, to support and build virtual relationships with, can create long lasting fondness in the player - and many such companion characters end up fan-favorites.
The Narrative
The actual events that happen during the game. The kingdom is attacked, the player saves the princess, defeats evil, etc. The plot or storyline of the game, including it’s premise, all various subplots (if any), main-storyline and side-storylines, but also all relevant things that might happen outside the influence of the player, or in parallel to it.
Sometimes this is also called just “story” - but that’s only short for “storyline”, and thus can lead to confusion and misunderstandings. It’s probably less ambigious to call it storyline, plot or narrative, rather than just story.
The narrative itself is of greatly varying importance in games. Often nothing but a flimsy excuse to get the player going - it can sometimes achieve actually fairly good story telling. But achieving that is highly dependent on both the setting and the characters - because even the best written story isn’t worth anything, if it happens to people you don’t care about, in a place you don’t connect with. Some games allow the player to drive the narrative to varying degrees.
In Summary
To me “story” is the umbrella term that encompasses all of setting, characters and plot of a video game. Setting being the most, and plot being the least important ingredient in the case of most video games.
To my best knowledge, these three pillars cover all the important elements for a discussion about story in games, but there might be other, smaller elements, that I haven’t mentioned, which you might see as sub-elements as one of the pillars, or as indepenent extra elements besides those three pillars.