A Story...If told well and that's a big if, can completely dominate a game, more so that he gameplay, more so than the features. A solid story backed up with a fitting soundtrack can completely drive a narrative into making a game more than it is.
Take the Ace Combat Series for example (My favorite series so a little biased here) Take out everything that Ace Combat has been knownf for narrative why and simply replace it with a watered down grab assery of what the narrative used to be. What you're left with is a functional game, but one that doesn't really wow you if you've been playing the series since the days of 'Air Combat' as I have. It's a bunch of planes flying around shooting each other down. Many simulators do it better, many arcade games could be argued to be more fun, but blend the two with a in depth, decently thought out interlocking story across all the games and it becomes much more than just a copy paste off the cuff story it becomes apart of the game itself.
The key here is this, if they made a more mature themed story, full of maturity, decent acting or art and a riviting story that went deeper than just "I WANNA BE THE BEST LIKE NO ONE EVER WAS" They'd probably get somewhere and I would actually give a flying pickle about not just cars and driving but my next race, my next adventure, my next opponent or Rival and that's the thing about 2015
I didn't feel like I was racing for anything substantial I didn't have an obvious Rival to drive me forward, it just felt like I was running from one task to another showing my face and then leaving, being rewarded for whether I did well or utterly bombed it.
That doesn't compell me or keep me interested, I feel babied and treated as such.
TL;DR I thought the initial teaser trailer was hinting at a story that involved much more than just racers and icons but a community or night life that brought spectators, rival crews, very skilled challenging icons and a means to feel like I was achieving something. It boiled down to none of this in my opinion and it left me wanting and also acted as a gateway to not just ridicule the game but the mechanics that weren't in place, missing and/or broken
Basically, if NFS could come up with a great story or narrative, it would be much more memorable and fun to replay over and over inspite of any bugs or issues that would otherwise just add on to the frustration of a bare bones story and empty content.
(I'd much rather say "The gameplay wasn't amazing but man it had a great story" Than the other way around, MGS V is a prime example of an excellent game from a gameplay mechanics aspect but for me a game that compared to other games in the series had a very weak and unsatisfying story...Bad stories linger on with a gamer, Bugs and such as we've seen can at least be fixed.)