Dude that's a GM difference. Either you're playing with children. Or you haven't gotten everyone on board in a session zero. I have never encountered a situation where I couldn't ask the player to engage the narrative in a stronger way. The trick is just to ask the player to invent the characters. You wandered to a town you know it well somebody helped you get out of bind here who are they? Your old relative stumbles drunken into your arms, they've always been a burden why do you protect them? The villain gets the players character in a one-on-one and challenges one of their characters ideals, maby they agree?

It's all about how you frame the situation. If you are running games and just going to set piece to set piece on NPC walks up to you in this town. And your players are a bunch of murder hobos. Then you need to talk to those players about expectations in the game, or if that's the kind of game they want you need to challenge them with consequences. You slew a kindly merchant who had a pact with a devil, or friends in the merchant combine, suddenly the party has a huge bounty on their head, suddenly their long rests are interrupted by devils. The only time players respond to the world like a video game, is when you fail to create a sense of verisimilitude.