So, your pretty much saying. The "best" way to learn about the game, is not playing the game?
You see, a lot of games are plagued by the fact that if they try to insert all of their lore directly into the gameplay, there's players that will complain about it or just tab through it all without really absorbing it *COUGH* because then suddenly they have too much to read, it's more like picking up a book, it doesn't feel like a game anymore, yadda yadda.

Therefore they put a good chunk of the lore in supplemental materials so that people who actually care about that stuff have to go seek it out.