Add small comic-style animated vignettes in a corner of the screen for events, specific moments or a story that lasts from a few seconds or even more than a minute that portrays the moment lived. Even some interactive vignette where the player can interact in a simple way to find an object hidden in the vignette when inspecting a closet, a shelf, the trunk of a car, a glove box or inspecting a specific object such as a photograph, an ID card, or a safe.
Some examples:
-When the character is scared by seeing a zombie when turning and the alert sound sounds.
-When we kill another player or NPC.
-When dawn and dusk.
-Change of season (winter, spring, winter...)
-When we see a patrol of military vehicles go by.
-When we arrive for the first time at the entrance of a new town or city.
-When the character meets a sudden horde.
-When you hear a near or distant noise from a shot, scream, helicopter etc...
-When an Npc tells you a little story.
-When the character sits at a bonfire.
-When the character cooks some new recipte.
-When another player or NPC gives you a hold while he is pointing a weapon at you.
-When the character finds the keys hidden to a vehicle.
-When the character reads someone's book or journal and imagines in his mind some that the book tells or find some secret code for example for a hidden safe.
-When the character hears the voice of someone asking for help close to us.
-Opening a fridge and finding the head or other human parts inside or rotten food inside and displeasing the mood our character.
-When we are inside a house looking through the window and a nearby zombie appears suddenly.
-A radio that sounds when we suddenly enter a house and transmits a message.
-When the character meets other survivors.
-When the character finds a good loot.
-When we see a zombie eating or biting another human.
-When we find many corpses together.
Also, allow you to choose in settings whether to activate or deactivate these small comic-style animated vignettes. Something also necessary would be to add the frequency with which these vignette appear so as not to become very repetitive or overwhelming or give priority to one vignette over others depending on the importance of the event. Also the duration of how many seconds each vignette remains on the screen according to the type of event. For example, the vignette of a stealthy or macabre death could only last 2 seconds.
I also accompany some visual examples to better understand it in games where they applied something similar such as XIII, The Witcher 3, The walking dead telltale games...
https://imgur.com/EKNTN
https://thumbs.gfycat.com/WelltodoEmbarrassedAmericangoldfinch-max-1mb.gif