I love my FromSoft games, but I seem to be the only fan who understands lore is not the same as a story. These games do not have stories.
The main story is what you experience in game, then you have your supplemental stories (usually quests), and you've got your item description lore.
You experience no story during the main game. There's an establishing opening cutscene, but during the course of the game you just wander from place to place doing loosely or not at all connected objectives until you reach the end. The purpose of these objectives is poorly explained outside of arguably DS1 where you have multiple expository NPCs in your hub.
Character sidequests are mostly self-contained and prior to Elden Ring, were completely irrelevant to the overall "story." Item description lore is not a story. It does not carry a narrative from point a to point b.
That's my whole argument, honestly. FromSoft games have all of this deep and complex worldbuilding but not only is that worldbuilding presented to the player in the most obtuse way possible, but it's NEVER paart of the point a to point b that comprises an actual narrative. It's creating a world and characters and then just sitting on it.
I disagree, each game has a story even if it's a little broad in the telling of it and even if they're not that complex. Hell, DS2 really interrogates the idea of the cycle of light and dark thanks to Aldia (most based NPC) and kind of carries on the ideas that Kaath brings up in DS1.
DS3 is similar to Demon's Souls in the simplicity of it: "hey shitass, do the thing" but then does the DS1 thing where it reveals the premise is kind of a lie/obfuscation of truth. You learn what everyone else has to say. Elden Ring also does this with the whole "grace of gold tarnished" bit until you learn that basically everyone is right and wrong at the same time 'cause no one has any fuckin' idea what's going on in the world.
Bloodborne is just a Lovecraft story straight up because you are British Manâą who gets told about something neat and digs deeper and deeper until you're being touched on by the Moon.
I think the better argument is how the story is presented rather than if there is one or not. I remember when Yahtzee reviewed DS1 and he said "Dark Souls has one of my favourite methods of story telling, which is to say: not telling it." and I don't think that's not having a story. It's certainly nonlinear and a bit wonky but there is a clear separation between the worldbuilding and what you, the player, are currently trying to do. The story of the battlefield you're running through is less important to what you do in the moment because the boss that needs beating is at the end of it. The world building adds context to the story, but they're serviceable without it.
