*nods* I did understand that you were just talking about degrees of using body language to tell a story and what I meant was - I have noticed the visual storytelling in FFVIII, but not so much in those other games and I was just thinking it would be interesting to play them again and focus on that.

You're probably right about everything having a lot of different genres. :) I just thought the difference was marked in an interesting way when it comes
to video games. But I do agree with you and I understood you were focussing more on RPG-type games, although isn't Half-Life an FPS - that's why I found it interesting, because I would have thought of FPS games as pretty plot-less, but when you mentioned that one I was interested and then I realized that a lot of them have more plot than I think of (my bf just played a few alien-type FPS games - Gears of War and Prey, both of which have quite compelling stories to tell) and they're not all just vaguely realized war scenarios (again nothing wrong with those - I just realized I was making assumptions and I was wrong).

I mean Prey is interesting for the way in which the story is told in one way, actually. There are various points in the giant alien space craft you get sucked into where you can hear earth radio broadcasts being transmitted. I think you can avoid even listening to these. The rest of the storytelling probably falls under cutscenes/exposition though.

I think World of Warcraft mostly tells a story by quests, which obviously involves exposition of the quest you have to go on - and the rest of the storytelling is implied (it assumes you've played the non MMO Warcraft games and you remember the stories) and I always feel so disconnected from any kind of story and I actually find it unsatisfying.

This makes me wonder what a game without those ways of storytelling would be like.