In reality, people just need to be more sincere and honest about discussions so we can know where their opinion holds value, like just ask politely what their experience was to see if it holds value to remotely what you're talking about
I feel like watching a game to understand its story is 2x harder. You have to pay attention to it because you aren't engaged in the proper way, characters can have moments a play-through might not catch, dig through wikis for secrets etc.
For this to be an efficient way of getting knowledge to discussing these stories, walkthroughs would need to be more thorough at going through the games.