I disagree. Look at Nintendo franchises- Mario and Zelda have been coasting with 'save the princess' since the NES, and Metroid is all about the solitary exploration with 'aliens bad' as a backing.
Call of Duty is all about clicking on the men until they die with a military movie in the background to facilitate it. Gears, as I mentioned before, is the same. You buy it for the shooting and get a reasonably entertaining ride to go along with it.
And character action games like DMC and Bayonetta have stories that are actually half decent, but ultimately secondary to the cool stuff the player does between cutscenes.
I mean where TLoU is concerned, I'd take the first game's shooting mechanics as my prime example. They're purposefully floaty and hard to use because that makes sense for a character trying to fight off hordes of fungal zombies and hostile survivors: It's a high-pressure situation that would cause someone's hands to shake.
But floaty aiming isn't particularly fun as a game mechanic. It's a concession for the sake of story and immersion, which attempts to create fun by putting you in the character's shoes rather than by making the shooting feel really good to do on a gamepad. It's that school of design which I would characterize as focusing on story over gameplay.
Take RE2 Remake as a counterexample- the game shares some elements with TLoU in its undead enemies, limited resources and ammo crafting mechanic, and it uses a campaign to drive the story.
But unlike TLoU, the gameplay in RE2 never takes a backseat to the storytelling. Characters aim and shoot with pinpoint accuracy given enough time for the reticle to focus, so the game balances that with erratic enemy movement and tight level design. The focus is less on fighting your character's nerves, and more about fighting your own nerves while being good at aiming and spacing in a cramped environment. Wasted bullets and lost health happen because you fucked up, not because the aiming mechanic itself is trying to make you miss for the sake of added tension.
So where TLoU represents its themes by designing core mechanics that serve immersion and ground you in its world, RE2 does that by building a tight gameplay core and designing encounters that test it in specific ways. Story on one side, gameplay on the other.
Ultimately the interactive movie / walking simulator thing is a meme, but much like a stereotype or caricature it's not without some kind of basis. Sony have gone big on games that put their storytelling first this gen, so folks are having fun with the idea.
Seems like fair game if people are intent on continuing the ever-farcical console war tbh
Did you mean to quote a different post?