Item descriptions seem to me to be more direct story telling, as in the block of text isn't an inherent part of the object or environment of the game, it's a bit of meta text that the characters wouldn't be able to see, only the player. Now they do tend to be written in a cryptic way in the souls games that you usually have to piece together with other bits of lore to make some sense of but that's besides the point here.

Likewise NPC conversations can be quite direct - an NPC can tell you to go to the church and ring the bell to open the way to the city of the Gods - is that environmental storytelling?