The story is the painting and the characters are the brushes. You can come up with a decent picture by throwing paint randomly on a canvas but you need to be really lucky. Alternatively, a palette of colors is pretty to look at but without a picture they are pretty meaningless. A game needs both story and characters. I thought FFVI and VII did the best job combining story with character. It's rare that I'll like a game with good 'characters' but no good story. I'm not interested in looking spending 40 hours with a pile of paintbrushes.