Actually, you can show the narrative possibility to the player and let him choose if he's interested in it or not.
Unless you intend to make every story mandatory I don't see the problem actually.
Well, yes and no, depending on whether I'm dealing with the
main arc or a
side arc at the time. The "main arc" (i.e. the main questline)
must have all of its pieces in place or things just won't make sense. It would be like arguing that, in TW3, I could choose never to go to Novigrad, never pusue Ciri, never to meet with Yennifer or Triss...then somehow explore the game's story, meet and watch characters evolve, and resolve the main narrative in an emotionally driven way. Getting there would simply not make any logical sense and/or would carry no dramatic action as Geralt would have no motivation to be in that position at the end.
So --
if I want to create an exciting, driving
narrative, I must create a story arc (introduction --> rising action --> climax --> falling action --> resolution) that carefully explores and evolves my characters and plot in meaningful, impactful ways. That, in turn requires certain scenes to occur at certain points so that things are paced in a way that the audience can digest. I can make optional side-quests that add flavor and energy to the world or expand the story arcs of more minor characters, but I can't "skip steps" along the main, narrative arc. All those pieces must be in place or one of two things will happen:
1.) The audience will not have the critical information or context they need at key junctions, resulting in either scenes falling flat or seemingly coming out of nowhere (deus ex machina).
2.) There will be no dramatic action driving my character's motivations. The
player may have some sort of motivation
in their mind, but there's no way for the
game's engine to recognize or respond to it. Therefore, there can be no, cinematic "scene" when the player decides to do this or that. There is no limit to what any player may choose to do at any given instant. There are, however, extremely limited options to how the game's engine can interpret the player's actions. (Hence, the game must now be filled with either stilted, cookie-cutter interactions [ala Mount and Blade] or no interactive scenes or dialogue whatsoever [ala most roguelikes or Minecraft].)
What can be done is a
branching narrative. But even narratives that have an insane number of branches (like Detroit: Become Human) are still predetermined, narrative arcs that give the player choices between only a.), b.), or c.) at any moment. It's not possible for the player to come up with their own, creative ideas on-the-fly.
TL; DR:
In the end, it's down to preference, like anything else. I may prefer strong narratives and crave those regular, cinematic scenes. I may prefer more player agency and am willing to forego the cinematics and narratives to maximize it. But I can't have both. On one extreme is a non-interactive movie. On the other extreme is a board game. An RPG must land somewhere in the middle.
That's the 'problem' with 'open world' games. Since the devs have no clue what background, skills, equipment, etc. the character/player will have at any given point in the game (even the very beginning) they have no way to create a tight narrative relevant to your character.
Maybe someday we'll have real-life AIs that will fit in a console (I wouldn't bet on it) and dialog can be dynamically generated.
Exactly. Actually, I'm totally game for 100% sandbox stuff. I think a very popular "game mode" would be playing with the main questline disabled. Just all of the mechanics there, the whole of Night City to explore, and a mess of independent missions and secrets to discover.
Alternatively, it may be cool to have a game mode that offers a series of events that will happen without the player's involvement. Like, perhaps, a massive power-shift between the megacorps. It takes place over 400 game days, and there will be key events that happen on key days...but the player has no idea when or where everything will go down. The goal? Find a way to survive. Whether the player joins one of the factions, pursues their own goals, joins with a team of edgerunners, or keeps their head down to simply
observe...the world just keeps ticking around them.
Say a huge battle happens between two factions on day 253. Depending on their choices, players may find themselves in all sorts of interesting positions when the battle breaks out. Maybe they've joined one of the armies and are on the front lines. Maybe they work for one of the corps and will watch that same battle play out from the windows of a high-rise office. Maybe they're a ganger, and they'll run for their lives when the streets around them suddenly erupt into gunfire. (Maybe they're a bunch of edgerunners that were on a mission that
caused the battle.
)
I think an approach like this could work well, as it is inherently a
linear storyline. At the same time, it allows for near-complete player agency insofar as how they choose to fit in. It can also allow for in-game weeks of open, sandbox gameplay between key events. And there's no reason a player has to be directly involved in any one part of it. (Maybe they'll wind up simply
hearing about that battle on the news...)
