Nothing wrong with what you say but the how is in the storeys 'density' and pacing. Notice I said ‘little in the way of direction and weak push pulls’ implying weak story telling.
My experience of free roam play styles with little in the way of direction, and weak push pulls, tend to be only about connecting the dots between encounters with little to no consideration to how the story telling is paced. I don't know, it may be a cost that is seen as a given because of the medium. But if I was to take Fallout 2 as an example. I played all the expansions, completed some huge percentage of sub plots and put in over 130hrs worth and thought I loved every bit of it. Come Fallout Vegas I get all excited, drop a little extra cash on the limited release but something weird happens, I can’t get into it. I simply can’t be bothered because when I think back to fallout 2 I realise the story is almost forgotten in the grind between trigger based encounters and the priority of levelling to smash enemies easier. It far outweighed the why. Now maybe Vegas is better written but it’s just too familiar in every other way to convince me to try.
I know you could read my story and say “Well so what, Fallout 2 was still an obvious success” But I think not, ultimately the experience was bitter sweet and not memorable. I simply don’t want to experience something like that again.
I think what we are talking about here is a play style that is very player centric and tries to cater to people who feel entitled to do what they want, when they want. But when I think back to my PnP experiences that isn’t always the case because the ref’ would have a desire to keep their story moving forward as well. As I said before, dev’s with sandbox tools can still create corridors, so I’m looking more for a game with a little from column A, and a little from column B, and some really creative story telling with depth. Not some aimless (ok. exaggeration) wonder that eventually reveals.
I think we are pretty much polar opposites. For me the best moments in games are not from the story, they are from my actions and decisions as a player. In a tabletop game or in a video game, I love a good story, but the story isn;t really what I remember... what I remember are the MOMENTS.
In Fallout 3, there were some great story moments, hell some were downright tragic... particularly the events surrounding your father and vault 21. However those are never the moments that make me want to play more fallout. No, what makes me want to play more fallout is walking the lonely road, desperate for ammunition, around every corner death could be lurking. What kept me combing back was discovering something new, even just a shack in the wastelands... wondering who slept there, what they were doing, or being completely outnumbered and outgunned by raiders I accidentally stumbled across, and only surviving by the skin of my teeth.
My favorite memories of fallout are going into the school, and the grocery store... at the very start of the game, just aimlessly discovering them on my own... those were the moments that sold me on the game.
Story is great, I fucking love story... but story can be told in many many ways. In most games, the story is never really yours, you follow a path, you watch the cinematics, but the actual playing of the game you do never really matters. In Deus Ex, you were never telling your story... you were just kinda pushing the game along to tell someone elses, all the bits in between the cinematics were really pointless. To me that is just boring, no matter how well crafted the cgi, no matter how good the dialogue is... the choices are transparent.
In an open world sandbox game, you decide when to move on with the story, you decide how to progress it. And you can even choose to ignore the story altogether and go run around and do your own thing, tell you own story... then get back on the rails for another short jump, and make your decisions all over again.
In a game like Fallout, or GTA, or Sleeping Dogsyou don't remember the story as much because there is so much else to do... but the thing is, those games have tons of stories. The order you play out the stories may vary, but that's a good thing, because that makes it more your own story, and less theirs. It emulates the game of a good PNP Gamemaster well. The core storyline of each of these games was deep and emotional... but you space it out so it doesn't have that "movie" feel that more linear games have. Instead it feels more episodic, and more your own thing.
And that's what I want from this game. I don't want to ride along on someone elses story, only pushing buttons every now and then to move the plot along. Pushing through their levels just to keep me from getting bored with their drama. I want to tell my own story. I want to meet people, see things, and experience the world on my own terms... or at least as close as that can get.
Fallout 3 and New Vegas did this better than any other game. GTA4 and Sleeping dogs were a close second. Deus Ex doesn't even rank in the top 25, it was pretty, and had great atmosphere, but at the end of the day it was just a disappointing railroad.
And honestly, the only thing I remember about the stories of linear games, is that they always seemed contrived and cliche. An excuse to move you to the next "level" towards an end that leaves no reason to ever revisit the game again. It's forgettable to me... whereas I may not remember all the story bits of a game like Fallout or GTA, but I remember enough of them, and the impact they had on me at the given moment I decided to do them.... and that the whole of the story was satisfying to me...
Fallout and Sleeping Dogs are truly the best combination of openworld sandbox and RPG I have ever seen.... GTA san andreas came out how many years ago? And I still play it regularly, nearly ten years after its release. And if Cyberpunk 2077 can give me that experience, I may never stop playing it...And THAT is the sign of a great game, as well as the true definition of getting your moneys worth. That is what I am wanting.
