This thread is full of fail. It asks the wrong question (i'm surprised nobody picked that up).
The thread should ask: Do games get a free pass from gameplay because of story.
The assumption in the OP is, that games are developed around story, meaning that's their primary purpose, which is a false assumption as proven by history. Games have born around interaction, which leads us to the next problem around story; games are an interactive medium, you're supposed to interact the game by using your character, you can move objects, destroy them, kill enemies etc. and even the environments can be interacted too. This is one of things that fascinate people in GTA, is the freedom to interact.
But, there's one aspect you can't interact with in most of the games, which is story. What you do in games today, is follow a passive story and try to advance in it.
And when the keyword in games is interaction, the passive story is secondary. Until we have interactive storytelling, the story wil stay as secondary.
The reason why some games get point deduction about story, is because of their focus on it. If your game is clearly focused on one aspect and it sucks, it's going to cause deductions.
And as for the Zelda story, they are always somehow linked to the previous Zeldas. AOL was a direct sequel to LOZ (in similar fashion that MM to OOT), and LTTP was a prequel to LOZ. Seventh Harry Potter book didn't include the first six, it was only linked to the previous books, if you wanted to know what happened previously, you should have read the other six too. It's kind of the same thing with Zeldas, you need to play the games to get the full story.
Ei Kiinasti.
Eikä Japanisti.
Vaan pannaan jalalla koreasti.
Nintendo games sell only on Nintendo system.
