You know ultimately one thing doesn't have to get in the way of another, why couldn't you make a skill based game with nice story? God of War is gonna open the floodgate for a new breed of skilled based narrative genre might I say.
All games aren't for all people. God of War (2018) was fantastic, certainly. I played through it with a friend of mine. I did the boss fights and he mostly did the exploration (I did a little of it) and other fights. I have absolutely Zero desire to play it again. More games will be like it, but I doubt it'll open a floodgate.
I like story, but for some of those "games" (questionable to call some of them games), I can just get the story by watching someone else play it on Twitch or YouTube. I did this with Detroit. Zero desire to play it, but the story was somewhat interesting.
OTOH, games with fantastic gameplay, I'll sometimes play over and over. They are Billions (man this game can be brutal), for example. No interest in it, saw someone playing it. Gameplay immediately made me go out and buy it.
This is likely why I can't stand 30 FPS games. Gameplay is king, IMO. And 30 FPS is anathema to gameplay, IMO. I don't want to feel like I'm fighting the controls everytime I'm playing the game. God of War (2018) while a fantastic game was also extremely frustrating because of the unresponsive (to me) and sometimes erratic (due to frame drops) controls due to being 30 FPS with occasional dips in frame rate. Almost every second I was playing the game, I was wishing it was 60 FPS. It speaks volumes that even with that handicap, I still thought it was a fantastic game.
But that's me. For someone else, they might prefer games that are light on gameplay and more focused on story.
I think the first 3 Halo games had a nice balance between gameplay and story. What story there was, was very interesting, but they didn't spend too much time on it. Gameplay was the focus.
In many ways I hated Halo 4, because it focused too much on story. And a story that was at odds with the story presented in the first 3 games. The gameplay also took a bit of a back seat to the story, IMO. Another bad knock against the game.
I completely avoided Halo 5 because it just went more into story versus gameplay. And a story that was just plain horrible.
It's also why I love the Souls games (PC versions for the superior controls). There's a story there, but it's not in your face, and it doesn't take the place of gameplay. It's all gameplay, all the time. And if you want story, you have to go looking for it.
Regards,
SB