Skip to main content
GamesRadar+ GamesRadar+ GamesRadar+ The Games, Movies, TV & Comics You Love
Sign in
  • View Profile
  • Sign out
flag of UK
UK
flag of US
US
flag of Canada
Canada
flag of Australia
Australia
  • Games
  • TV
  • Movies
  • Hardware
  • Video
  • News
  • Reviews
  • Guides
  • Deals
  • More
    • PS5
    • Xbox Series X
    • Nintendo Switch
    • Nintendo Switch 2
    • PC
    • Platforms
    • Tabletop Gaming
    • Comics
    • Toys & Collectibles
    • SFX
    • Newsarama
    • Retro Gamer
    • Newsletters
    • About us
    • Features
Total Film
Gaming Magazines
Gaming Magazines
Why subscribe?
  • Subscribe from just £3
  • Takes you closer to the games, movies and TV you love
  • Try a single issue or save on a subscription
  • Issues delivered straight to your door or device
From$12
View
Trending
  • Summer Game Fest
  • New games for 2025
  • Upcoming Switch 2 games
  • Switch 2 stock

Recommended reading

Death Stranding 2 PS5 screenshot
Action Games Death Stranding 2 isn't weird enough: Hideo Kojima has an idea for a game where your character forgets everything if you stop playing
A header image for the GamesRadar+ Best Games of 2025 list, showing Mario Kart World, Blue Prince, The Alters, and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Games The best games to play in 2025, so far
A crop of the MindsEye key art for a review header
Third Person Shooters MindsEye review: "An uninspired and forgettable sci-fi action adventure that feels like a Netflix movie you watch while on your phone"
Mass Effect 2 - Garrus
Adventure Games The 25 best video game stories to play right now
A crop of the box art for Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb, showing Indiana Jones in front of the game's cast of characters mimicking the style of the movie posters - image sourced from Games Press
Games "Fate Of Atlantis felt like the movie we never got," says Indiana Jones and The Great Circle producer as devs reflect on the series' gaming legacy: "It really captured the spirit of the movies that came before it"
Neil leads his squad in front of fireworks in front of a church on fire in Death Stranding 2: On The Beach
Open World Games Death Stranding 2 hands-on: An emphasis on combat and vehicles feels like an evolution of Metal Gear Solid 5, while continuing to push the first game's in-depth hiking physicality
The Outer Worlds 2 Earth agent with rifle
RPGs The Outer Worlds 2 devs have already shown the background I'll be using in this RPG: the Roustabout, a talentless loser who is "not quite sure what happened" to get them here
  1. Games
  2. Action

Games with ultimately pointless backstories

Features
By Maxwell McGee published 10 October 2014

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

The pen is NOT mightier than the sword

The pen is NOT mightier than the sword

Video games have told some amazing stories. Some are heroic epics with dozens of colorful characters. Others provide just enough detail to excite your imagination and let you fill in the blanks. When these stories work well, they can cement a games place in our minds for years after the credits roll. Some may even inspire you to take up the pen and try your hand at writing fiction--maybe even find your lifes calling.

Other games should just stop it already. They dont all need some big, epic backstory to justify or strengthen the action. Sometimes a bald space marine is just a bald space marine, and thats good enough. Here are eight games that made us stop and scratch our noggins thinking, "Whats the point? Does anyone actually read this stuff?" Theyre the kind of games where, when you reach the end, you had no idea what actually happened, but you had a blast getting there.

Page 1 of 10
Page 1 of 10
Destiny

Destiny

Destiny is a fun game with such an ambiguous story I thought its key narrator--poor old Peter Dinklage--was going to nod off before it was all over. Since the games release, hoards of fans from across the internet have gone out in search of the "real" story hidden between the lines. Rumors of cut plot points and heavily revised sections have been making the rounds, painting a very different picture of what could have been the games backstory.

What plot points remain arent exactly IN the game, per se. Instead, theyre collected within special Grimoire cards, which you unlock by completing in-game achievements. Then you have to bounce over to Bungies website to actually view the cards and digest that sweet, sweet lore. It a tad cumbersome, especially when you consider the internet thrives on distracting you with goofy cat pictures. The end result is a player population thats having a blast shooting each other, even if they dont understand why, and a...oh, oh wow, this one is really cute.

Page 2 of 10
Page 2 of 10
Titanfall

Titanfall

Titanfalls campaign--and Im using that term "campaign" loosely here--left me feeling dazed and confused. Whether I was playing as the IMC or Militia, I was never sure what I was fighting for, or why. There also didnt seem to be any real resolution to anything, so what did I even do? Did it matter? Is shooting a bunch of giant robots from inside of another giant robot some sort of commentary on the human condition? Somehow, I doubt it.

I guess this is what happens when all your exposition is relegated to a bunch of talking heads and random commanders screaming in your ear. The game is filled with massive, explosive mech battles, but its plot is regulated to a nonsensical radio drama that plays out in the loading screens and mission briefing between matches. This is in stark contrast to the regular matches where all the drama is angry teenagers yelling at each other.

Page 3 of 10
Page 3 of 10
League of Legends

League of Legends

League of Legends doesnt need more than a Team Fortress 2-style framework to get its message across. You have two teams, they hate each other, and chaos ensues. Simple, right? Now compare that with League, which has woven together a Tolkien-esque tapestry of people, places, and events that have shaped the lives of its champions--and the Summoners who control them--giving them reason to do battle day after day with one another.

Apparently not, since developer Riot Games has decided to nuke the current backstory and return to the drawing board, essentially pulling a New 52 on the entire LoL universe. Now theyll have to come up with a whole new set of reasons why a scarecrow and a werewolf and a strange tree monster want to whoop the tar out of each other. Perhaps they should take a page out of Twilights book and play up the supernatural soap opera angle. I can see it now: Soraka and Gragas are star-crossed lovers whose wedding day is shattered when Mordekaiser, Sorakas amnesiac lover from the future, finally awakens from his coma. This stuff writes itself.

Page 4 of 10
Page 4 of 10
Diablo III

Diablo III

Diablo III revels in cutting down massive swarms of enemies with flashy spells and abilities, but its colorful backstory ultimately contributes little to my tried-and-true "kill everything, everywhere, really fast" strategy. Its hard not to recall a fight in which Deckard Cains gravelly old-man voice wasnt delivering some treatise on carrion bat mating rituals as Im hucking fireballs across the screen. Oh, really, these bats like to nest inside their mutated brethren? Thats fascinating Uncle Deckard, but how about you discuss their weaknesses? Dislikes? Foods they dont particularly enjoy?

Meanwhile, every threat the bad guys lob my way ends up ringing hollow. Its like every five minutes some demon calls me up on its demonic cell phone, ranting about how this time I was totally going to die. "HAHA," they bellow, "YOU WILL NEVER DEFEAT MY BEST GENERAL, oh wait you just killed him. WELL, NEVERMIND THAT BECAUSE YOU WILL NEVER DEFEAT ME--oh wait now Im dead." I can only hear Azmodan cry wolf so many times before I start tuning it out.

Page 5 of 10
Page 5 of 10
Street Fighter IV

Street Fighter IV

The Street Fighter franchise has an insane amount of backstory, but if you were to ask the average player he or she likely wont know more than: Ryu throws hadoukens, Ken wears the red outfit, and everyone who plays online is better than you (or maybe thats just me). Even so, this hasnt stopped developer Capcom from trying, though weaving a compelling narrative around a cast that includes a Turkish oil wrestler, psycho-charged dictator, and green monster man is a tall order.

And lets not kid ourselves--no one is picking up the next Street Fighter to learn if Chun-Li finally shuts down Shadaloo and avenges her father, or to see if Ryu overcomes the baleful influence of the Satsui no Hado. No, theyre buying these games in order to trick their less-experienced friends into playing big money matches, and then winning all their dough (again, maybe thats just me).

Page 6 of 10
Page 6 of 10
Almost every Sonic the Hedgehog game ever

Almost every Sonic the Hedgehog game ever

Sonic the Hedgehog should never have evolved beyond the Super Mario Bros. school of storytelling. In brief, villain (Dr. Eggman) steals thing (Chaos Emeralds) and hero (Sonic) rescues said thing. Its a simple formula, one that carried the blue blur through numerous games in the 16-bit era. Then the Dreamcast dropped and everything flew off the rails. Before you knew it, the gaming community was elbows deep in Big the Cat and Rogue the Bat and whatever the heck an Omochao is, and eventually a whole generation of players lost touch with the focused purity that made Sonic great in the first place.

Sonic is at its best when it hits that perfect balance of speed and exploration (and chili dogs). 2011s Sonic Generations nailed that balance well enough, but someone at SEGA still felt it needed a weird birthday/parallel universes plot stapled on top. Before that we had the scandalous human-on-hedgehog relations in 2006s Sonic the Hedgehog. Then Bioware jumped into the mix with a Sonic the Hedgehog role-playing game on the Nintendo DS. And Ive got no idea where that werehog fits into all this. Point is: keep Sonic simple (and his friends to a minimum).

Page 7 of 10
Page 7 of 10
Super Mario Bros. 2

Super Mario Bros. 2

The year is 1988. You love playing Super Mario Bros. on your Nintendo Entertainment System. The sequel--Super Mario Bros. 2--finally comes out. You buy it, boot it up, and BAM, its all totally different from what you expected. Theres a heart gauge now and you can pull vegetables out of the ground and you can play as Peach. You can play as Peach and she can fly. What the heck is going on here?

If you took the time to crack open the manual, you wouldve learned theres this whole kingdom called Subcon and its being taken over by some dude named Wart, but who really has time for that? Nintendo couldve left it as one big confusing mystery. Im sure our collective, adolescent brains couldve come up with a better explanation for this madness than--and this is a spoiler alert for a 26-year old game--it was just a dream all along. I'd call this a twist, but it's literally so uninteresting that I completely forgot what I was talking about just now.

Page 8 of 10
Page 8 of 10
Motorstorm Apocalypse

Motorstorm Apocalypse

Most racing games have some sort of basic premise that explains why all these competitors have gathered in one place. MotorStorm Pacific Rim--precursor to Apocalypse--did this, and it worked just fine. Theres a bunch of anarchist-types on a tropical island, and theyre having a crazy driving festival. Sure, why not? Its a goofy premise to be sure, but its also simple enough that you can just focus on the racing.

Apparently, that wasnt good enough for MotorStorm Apocalypse. This game cobbled together a fully-fledged, cringe-inducing story about a bunch of anarchist-types taking over a (mostly) abandoned city. There might have also been an evil corporation and a goofy homeless guy at some point, but who knows for sure? Basically, it reads like someone threw a bunch of action movie cliches in a box and then kicked it down the stairs. The resulting carnage then became the "plot," and it is sheer pain. I mean, for Petes sake, the first character you meet is a video reporter named "Cutter." Get it? Because he cuts videos. Genius!

Page 9 of 10
Page 9 of 10
Why cant I skip this cutscene?

Why cant I skip this cutscene?

Thats it, storytime's over, boys and girls. Can you think of any games that would've been better served by leaving its story in the dust? Bonus points are awarded if your game also includes unskippable cinematics. Leave your selections in the comments below.

And if you're looking for more, check out 8 games that forgot to have endings (then tried to fix it later) and The most difficult weapons to unlock (and how to get them).

Page 10 of 10
Page 10 of 10
CATEGORIES
PC Gaming Wii-u PlayStation PS4 Xbox Xbox One Platforms Nintendo
PRODUCTS
Ultra Street Fighter IV Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric Destiny Diablo III Titanfall League of Legends Motorstorm: Apocalypse Super Mario Bros 2
Maxwell McGee
Maxwell McGee
Maxwell grew up on a sleepy creekbank deep in the South. His love for video games has taken him all the way to the West Coast and beyond.
See more PC Gaming Features
Read more
Death Stranding 2 PS5 screenshot
Death Stranding 2 isn't weird enough: Hideo Kojima has an idea for a game where your character forgets everything if you stop playing
A header image for the GamesRadar+ Best Games of 2025 list, showing Mario Kart World, Blue Prince, The Alters, and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
The best games to play in 2025, so far
A crop of the MindsEye key art for a review header
MindsEye review: "An uninspired and forgettable sci-fi action adventure that feels like a Netflix movie you watch while on your phone"
Mass Effect 2 - Garrus
The 25 best video game stories to play right now
A crop of the box art for Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb, showing Indiana Jones in front of the game's cast of characters mimicking the style of the movie posters - image sourced from Games Press
"Fate Of Atlantis felt like the movie we never got," says Indiana Jones and The Great Circle producer as devs reflect on the series' gaming legacy: "It really captured the spirit of the movies that came before it"
Neil leads his squad in front of fireworks in front of a church on fire in Death Stranding 2: On The Beach
Death Stranding 2 hands-on: An emphasis on combat and vehicles feels like an evolution of Metal Gear Solid 5, while continuing to push the first game's in-depth hiking physicality
Latest in Action
Death Stranding 2 best unlocks
All the best unlocks in Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
lea seydoux as fragile smoking a cigarette
Hideo Kojima altered certain Death Stranding 2 characters to better match their actors, which is why why Cliff and Fragile smoke and Higgs plays guitar
Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag artwork showing Kenway with a group of pirates
Assassin's Creed: Black Flag remake takes a step closer to reality as lead voice actor tells fans "you may have to beat it again"
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
Link wanted for counterfeit as The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom's Switch 2 edition adds a new item duplication glitch for infinite rare materials
Death Stranding 2 Sam touching Lou and Fragile
Full Death Stranding 2 cast and cameos list
A living puppet sits on Fragile's shoulder in a Death Stranding 2 PS5 screenshot
Death Stranding 2 players discover that they're being penalized for efficiency, as bulk-delivering items rewards you less than handing them in one at a time
Latest in Features
Toothless, Miles Morales' Mask, Battle Droid with STAP, and Nike Dunk sets divided from each other by white lines, with a 'GamesRadar+ New Lego' badge in the middle
New Lego sets for July 2025, including the perfect gift I think fans will go nuts for
Jan sadly presses a hand on a screen that says 'deceased' in The Alters
The Alters has changed the way I play games for the better, and after 18 years I can finally finish Mass Effect
Sam balances across a ladder high up in the mountains in Death Stranding 2
Death Stranding 2 is my favorite online game this year, even though you never directly see any other players
Lee Jung-jae as Gi-hun in Squid Game season 3
The Squid Game season 3 finale is a crushing but ultimately hopeful conclusion – and I wouldn't have it any other way
Resident Evil Requiem
I don't care what Capcom says, Leon not being in Resident Evil Requiem makes no sense
One-Punch Man season 3: Saitama punching while in mid-air during the anime One-Punch Man.
Anime Expo 2025: dates, announcements, and why One-Punch Man fans should be excited
  1. Sam fires at the ghost mech squid boss in Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
    1
    Death Stranding 2: On the Beach review: "This tarpunk delivery epic is more Metal Gear Solid than ever, for better and worse"
  2. 2
    Rematch review: "As with Rocket League, the just-one-more-game pull is magnetic"
  3. 3
    Tron: Catalyst review: "Disc slinging is a thrill in this gorgeous rendition of the series, but I'm let down by a time-loop story that falls flat"
  4. 4
    FBC: Firebreak review: "A disappointingly bland multiplayer FPS that's missing far too much of what made Control special"
  5. 5
    Dune: Awakening review: "Both extremely compelling and extraordinarily boring, sometimes at the same time – yet still a true Dune love letter"
  1. M3GAN doll in M3GAN 2.0
    1
    M3GAN 2.0 review: "A bold sequel with a slightly underwhelming conclusion"
  2. 2
    28 Years Later Review: "Enough terror, splatter and suspense to satisfy”
  3. 3
    Predator: Killer of Killers review: "Great characters, thrilling action, and gorgeous Arcane-esque animation"
  4. 4
    From the World of John Wick: Ballerina review: "Brilliant action, even if the plot gives you a sense of déjà vu"
  5. 5
    Karate Kid: Legends review: "Better than Karate Kid (2010), nothing on Karate Kid (1984)"
  1. Lee Jung-jae as Gi-hun in Squid Game season 3
    1
    Squid Game season 3 review: "A staggeringly excellent final season wraps up one of the greatest Netflix shows ever"
  2. 2
    Ironheart review: "A relic of Marvel's content-at-all-costs era"
  3. 3
    Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3 review: "The show's most assured run of episodes to date"
  4. 4
    Doctor Who season 2, episode 8 spoiler review: 'The Reality War' is "a mix of the good, the bad, and the truly baffling"
  5. 5
    Doctor Who season 2, episode 7 spoiler review: 'Wish World' is "an exciting and ambitious" start to the season finale, with hints of WandaVision

GamesRadar+ is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site.

  • About Us
  • Contact Future's experts
  • Terms and conditions
  • Privacy policy
  • Cookies policy
  • Advertise with us
  • Review guidelines
  • Write for us
  • Accessibility Statement
  • Careers

© Future US, Inc. Full 7th Floor, 130 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036.

Please login or signup to comment

Please wait...