Without touching any item descriptions and only worrying about the main story in the base game, you get:

• The intro cutscene which explains the overview of the setting and how it got to be like it currently is
• Dialogue with characters like Miriel and Gideon, who are very knowledgeable about the world
• Melina, who helps you level up when you rest, tells you a relevant story when you reach many different locations
• Quite a lot of dialogue from Margit, one of the main bosses who you fight several times and who gets a couple of cutscenes, tells you about what’s going on
• Basically every NPC in the Roundtable Hold has some kind of significant involvement with either a possible ending or a major faction and can tell you about it if you progress through their story
• The finger reader crones give you prophecies
• Ranni, Blaidd, and Iji will all tell you a lot of stuff that turns out to be highly relevant to the main story if you help them
• Jerren tells you about Radahn and Malenia, two of the main players in how the setting got to be like it currently is and also significant factors in why it is still that way, before you fight Radahn

Like, it’s still a story told with very little direct storytelling compared to its peers, and there is still a lot of info in item descriptions. You don’t need the item descriptions though, you just need to be ready to piece things together from what disparate people with strong personal biases tell you and what you see