> there’ll be a narrative payoff
Fromsoft is perfectly happy for you to miss all of the direct exposition. It's as they intended and most people do.
The intentionality of their world still draws people in and gives the world a sense of groundedness that keeps people coming back and separates it from the pale imitations.
It's more than them being good at 'Vibes'.
The environment is built on the bones of a greater ongoing narrative that is intentionally obscured, even from the player who reads everything.
Dark Souls is a world in a constant cycle of Rebirth, Decay, the struggle against Entropy. All civilizations, at the end of the series, are stacked one upon another in an endless expanse of ash and dust as you bear witness to an permanent eclipse, a fading star, as time itself dissolves and the last fire fades.
Before that heavy handed stuff though, the simple matter of the direction your character travels reinforces these motifs. Down to the deepest depths and you'll witness what remains of the first civilizations. Climb up and you see the desperate attempts by the powerful to impose a false order that they hoped could forestall the inevitable.
You can even shatter the illusion of a golden order in the first game if you find the extremely missable secret boss. It couldn't be any more clearly 'said' if you were interested in paying attention.
Adding an AI model to explain or 'improv' the story of the world would destroy the whole purpose.