Do Gacha games have a storytelling problem?

There's a very specific moment that every gacha player has experienced, even if they don't realize it. You're there, following the story, starting to get involved with the characters, understanding the world, trying to piece together that universe… And then, suddenly, the mission ends, the "Mission Completed" sign appears, and you're left there, not knowing what will happen. Often this happens in version X.02 or X.03 of that X update, and you have to wait until the next big patch, which sometimes only comes after a year, for the next major story arc.

Instead, an event appears. A festival, a side mission, a story that seems important at that moment, but which, in the end, is just a side story that may or may not reveal something relevant about the main story.

This raises a question: do gacha games have difficulty telling actual stories, or is this just a natural consequence of the type of game they are? The answer isn't simple, but it's not difficult to understand either. We're going to discuss gacha games and storytelling, and if you have any questions, leave a comment.

To understand what's happening, you need to start with the basics. Gacha games aren't exactly like other games on your Steam store. Most of them are designed to last a very, very long time. At launch, HoyoVerse said that Genshin Impact had at least ten years of planned storylines. Honkai Impact 3rd, another Hoyo game, was released in 2016, and its 'main story' (or the first part of it) only ended in 2022 or 2023, but several side and supplementary storylines continue to this day.

This completely changes how a story can be constructed. In a traditional RPG, for example, there's a very clear path: you start weak, understand the world, meet characters, face greater challenges, and eventually reach an end. There's an arc, growth, closure. Even if the game leaves loose ends, there's a sense of a completed journey.

In gacha games, this simply may not happen. At least, not anytime soon. Gacha games depend on updates to keep players active; the narrative needs to be extended almost indefinitely. This means it can never really advance very quickly, nor reach a definitive resolution point anytime soon.

And this is where the first major problem begins: the gacha game has to maintain the story to continue existing. It has to keep releasing new characters. It has to be constant, regular, and creative to keep players in the game.

One of the most visible consequences of this is how the stories are structured. Instead of a continuous narrative, what we have is a sequence of chapters. Small blocks of story that appear in updates, events, or episodes spaced out over time. This doesn't happen by chance. It's a game design choice and a necessity.

Because the game needs to constantly release content, the story ends up being divided into smaller, often independent parts, so that new players don't get frustrated by picking up a "story that's already started". Each nation, mythology, chapter, or piece adds to the game's lore, includes a new character, and keeps the game attractive to the audience that will continue or join the world. The result is a narrative that always seems to be in motion, but at the same time, never really goes anywhere.

This is something that has already been observed in analyses of the genre, where the story ends up functioning almost as "filler" between update cycles, being consumed quickly and replaced by periods of repetitive gameplay.

And here's an important detail. It's not that there's a lack of content. On the contrary. Many gacha games have absurd amounts of text, dialogue, and lore. The problem is how this content is distributed.

When a new chapter of the story is released, it's usually long, dense, and full of information. You spend hours reading, following dialogues, understanding what's happening. In some cases, this can easily amount to several hours of narrative content.

The Fontaine arc in Genshin Impact took approximately 15 to 20 hours to complete just the main Archon Quests (Acts I to V). But that doesn't last. In a few days, all that content is consumed. And after that, comes the void. Not a complete void, of course. There are still daily quests, grinding to level up a character, minor events. But the main story, the one that really matters, simply disappears for a long time.

This cycle creates a very strange rhythm. The narrative doesn't flow continuously. It comes all at once with 20 hours of gameplay (practically the time it takes to complete the story of a AAA game like Resident Evil) and then you're left with nothing for months, until the next version update comes, a big event like Chinese New Year (since a good portion of gacha games are Chinese and huge events usually happen on that date) or a major patch.

This type of fragmentation is often considered one of the biggest problems with storytelling in gacha games, precisely because it breaks immersion. You don't follow a story continuously. You consume pieces of it from time to time. And when it returns, you're no longer in the same state of immersion.

Another point is the role of the characters within these games. In theory, characters should exist to serve the story. They’re narrative tools, pieces within a larger world. In gacha games, this logic is reversed. The story exists to serve the characters.

This happens because the main element of these games isn't the world or the plot, but rather the characters you try to acquire through the gacha system, which is where the game's money comes from. Each new banner needs a reason to exist, and that reason is usually accompanied by a story.

The problem is that these stories are rarely built for the long term. They're designed to introduce the character, create a connection with the player, and encourage you to want to acquire them. After that, the character often loses relevance within the main narrative. Or the character's power level in that story isn't reflected in the game, leaving you frustrated. If we were to base it on the story, Ningguang would be a six-star character and the Archon Geo, thanks to her power and influence in the Liyue arc.

This creates a curious situation. You meet dozens, hundreds of characters, each with their own story, cool powers, and world-defining moments, but few truly matter to the main story.

In some cases, this even affects the protagonist. There are games where the main character is intentionally generic, without a defined personality or voice, precisely so as not to interfere with the player's relationship with the gacha characters. In the story, they’re super powerful; in the game, rarely does anyone use the protagonist in their gameplay.

And this raises another question: If the protagonist doesn't have a strong identity, who drives the story?

With so many characters and events, the world of gacha games is usually extremely rich in detail. There's lore, there are conflicts, there are organizations, regions, side stories, a million books and scrolls. In terms of world-building, many of these games are impressive. But world-richness isn’t the same thing as good storytelling.

A good story needs focus. It needs direction. It needs a connecting thread that links everything. And that's precisely what gacha games often lack. Because the narrative constantly needs to accommodate new characters and new events, it ends up spreading in several directions at the same time.

Instead of a clear path, the player encounters multiple stories happening simultaneously, many of them without a direct connection to each other. This doesn't mean the story is bad. In many cases, it's interesting, well-written, and full of memorable moments. The problem is that it's not cohesive. It's like reading several chapters of different books at the same time, without knowing exactly which one is the main one.

There’s also a disconnect between story and gameplay. In a traditional game, these two things generally go hand in hand. What you do in the game reflects what’s happening in the story, and vice versa. In gacha games, this connection is more fragile.

You can spend an hour reading intense dialogues, with dramatic moments and important decisions, and then immediately return to repetitive activities that have no relation to that.

Of course, sometimes what you do greatly changes the world. A city ceases to exist, NPCs change their dialogue, craters open up in the middle of the map. Often, a quest can lead to a much larger, global event that even changes the geography of the place. But not always. This contrast breaks immersion and makes the story seem disconnected from the overall experience.

This happens because the game needs to balance two things that don't always work well together: narrative and retention. While the story advances at specific moments, the rest of the time is filled with systems that keep the player active, but don't contribute to the narrative development.

The result is a fragmented experience, where the story seems separate from the game, and not part of it.

If keeping your existing player base interested in a fragmented story with months-long waits between chapters is difficult, attracting new players is even more complicated. Imagine how complex it is to get a new player into a game whose story has been unfolding for over six years, as is the case with Genshin Impact.

It's no wonder that the player will be overwhelmed with information and stories that appear with every step they take in that new world. Each new city comes with an endless list of side quests, parallel missions, characters trying to get your attention, and material farming that you need to strengthen your characters and continue the game.

In the midst of all this, how do you get someone interested in the game's story when all they want is to open the dungeon door or the boss room that will drop materials to upgrade that character that came in the last update, because without the material, the character doesn't strengthen and you're stuck in an insurmountable barrier?

You don't progress in the story because the character isn't strong enough, and you can't strengthen them because you're playing content from four years ago and haven't yet reached the region where their strengthening materials can be acquired.

At that point, the last thing you'll want to do is read about how the world was formed or how the war of the gods left a black hole in the middle of the mountain that you'll have to explore to retrieve the sword of power that will kill the monster that has been dormant for thousands of years and has an excellent backstory and incredible motivation for doing what it does.

That well-constructed story and cinematic cutscenes take a backseat because you have to race to match the power level of the enemies you simply can't kill because you're too far behind.

With all that said, it's easy to say that the problem is the monetization of the gacha system. But the issue might be a bit more complex. And even so, there are some games that manage to stand out.

The need for constant updates, the continuous introduction of characters, the reliance on temporary events—all of this creates an environment where storytelling becomes extremely difficult, but inevitable for the game to continue monetizing.

There are titles that attempt to maintain a more cohesive narrative line, that better develop characters, and that seek to better integrate events with the main story. This shows that it's not impossible to create good storytelling within this model.

For example, Love and Deepspace. The main events and new collectible characters, the "Myths", are stories that tell about the past lives of the MC and the boys, filling in gaps in the main story; and even smaller events reference events from the main quest, creating small connections.

But it is, without a doubt, more difficult. A story that needs to learn to exist, and ultimately, what gacha games face isn't exactly a writing problem, but a structural problem. They try to tell stories within a format that wasn't designed for it.

And yet, they keep trying. You start a story. You get involved. You’re interested. And then, suddenly, it just stops.

Perhaps the biggest challenge with these games is precisely finding a balance. Managing to tell engaging stories without losing the flexibility the model demands. Creating narratives that make sense even when they’re interrupted, expanded, and retconned.

Because, ultimately, the potential is there. These worlds are rich. The characters are interesting. The ideas are good. What's often lacking is a way to connect all of this consistently. And until that balance is found, the feeling remains the same.