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A Game Being Linear Is Bad
I disagree. Look, I love big open adventures, I love Fallout 3 and Oblivion, and stuff like that. But sometimes, I just don't have the time or the energy to put into a game like that. Sometimes, I just want some simple mindless fun where I can easily get from start to finish without much thinking.
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That said, they also prevent the game from fully taking advantage of its medium. Games have no need to be presented like books or film, so I do think linear games being the "default" is sort of annoying.
There's also various levels of in-between. The Elder Scrolls and Fallout games are probably the most like this when you take the main quest plot into account, given that while you progress towards a conclusion, you also have the opportunity to explore freely and partake of other events.
Plug for Dark Souls, as usual, goes here. It's an interesting case because the basic plot, such as it is, is pretty much downright cliche. What's interesting is the world building, and how one discovers the nature of the world. While the basic premise is explained outright in the opening cinematic and some early dialogue describes your objectives, many of the details that explain the world are disconnected in item descriptions or within observable elements of the world.
For instance, in one section of the game, you find some stone boxes with iron bars on the front. Some of these grates have been removed, burst through or dented quite badly. The game never explains what was in the boxes, for what purpose they were in there or why the boxes were there to begin with. But it's enough to know that something was in those boxes and someone put them there.
Furthermore, one section of the same level has you on a snowly cliff where you find three corpses. On each corpse you find a Soul of a Proud Knight, a consumable item that provides you with extra currency. There are a lot of those stone boxes around. Via implication, we can put together a bit of a story. Three knights had a final stand on those snowy cliffs against whatever was in those boxes.
It's pretty cool. I love that method of storytelling.
taken as a bad trait, I think "it's easier for the developers" should
not be a consideration in game quality.
It absolutely should. The less man-hours developers have to spend putting together a massive, complex sandbox with all kinds of unforeseen interdependencies and game-breaking potential just because their publisher wants to shoehorn in rudimentary sandbox behavior (or any other needlessly complex superfluous mechanic they have a hardon for), the more man-hours the developers have to polish the core of the game.
Hell, this is why I rail against Kinect compatibility. It's a bitch and a half to do anything with, rarely adds anything respectable, and siphons development time away from important things.