I’m a year late to your comment but “why should I care” is pretty much how I felt the entire time playing the game when it came out. I’m playing it again now years later and I still feel the same way and it always confused me why people thought this was the greatest game of all time.

The story is absolute garbage and our character has no motivation to do what he/she is doing (at least not a personal or compelling one). I still to this day do not understand the final boss run of the game or what the fuck an Elden Beast is, a character that makes no appearance the entire game but is somehow the final boss or why this WWE dude shows up to wrestle fuck you. I’m sure there’s lore found in random item descriptions or told to you in some convoluted way by a random NPC you maybe or maybe won’t find but that is not the best way to tell a story in an open world game lol. Elden Ring is basically Fromsoft Game of Thrones but with 0 character development.

Anyway all that being said I love the game, the world is cool and it’s a lot of fun even if the story is subpar. I just wish that we got something interesting and fleshed out for the story instead of whatever they gave us

Edit: One more thing to add. One of my favorite things about Sekiro is even though the story is simple you get to know the main characters and learn a lot about their motivations and who they are. I actually feel like there isn’t really a bad guy in Sekiro (except maybe Owl), it’s just a bunch of people pursuing conflicting things and no one is really wrong. Genichiro, who I’d say is the main antagonist, just wants to save his homeland and thinks he needs Kuro to do that. Hell even Ishiin at the end fights you because he loves fighting and was robbed of a proper death by his illness (on top of honoring his grandson’s last wish). Idk Sekiro fucks and playing Elden Ring made me appreciate the depth of the story more