I think outright orthogonal to the medium might be slightly too extreme a position for my taste in 2025 AD, because some subgenres of games absolutely rely on a strong story as part of their package of what makes them work, but certainly there always have been and still are games and even RPGs which have little in the way of story by the more traditional definitions of story. But it would also be fair to say story has played a role since the dawn era of games (cf Colossal Cave Adventure etc) and seems to be becoming increasingly important to games (as a rule).
There is also of course the dreaded Visual Novel which challenges the divide between games and novels and has been with us since what, the early 1980s?
