Well, nowadays progress in video games is a very hot, heavily discussed, and even controversial, polarizing, and divisive.
Some people prefer linear progress, while others prefer non linear and even branching storylines. People disagree on which should be the proper way to make games, this is often more evident with RPGs, where choices and story matter a lot more than in for example a competitive shooter.

As such I think we should have a healthy discussion regarding the matter of which is the most ideal and optimal format for stories in different genres.

If you ask me I personally prefer games to be rather linear, with optional non linear elements. In general I find heavily non linear games with many "story changing" choices and extremely large open world maps rather tedious. Open world maps are enjoyable, but when they get too large it gets annoying, and when the game has many choices which will change how the story will progress it also gets tedious. It feels almost like a chore. The only exceptions in which branching storylines are actually fun are fighting games and visual novels in my opinion

That doesn't mean developers should make games the way I say or that I can't enjoy a non linear game. I found Dragon Age Origins rather enjoyable. And that game is in fact a great example. I enjoyed the game a lot, but in the end the whole story changing multiple choices and the fact that they actually carry on to the sequel making a large tapestry of branching paths, and the fact that you may complete most of the main quest in whichever way you want, made the game rather overwhelming to me, and often I found myself lost and confused not knowing where to head.
The same happened with other rather non linear games such as Risen and Two Worlds, in which I often did not know what to do to make the story progress.

A game which in my opinion balances elegantly elements of linear and non linear storylines would be The Witcher and its sequels. Some choices will affect the main story, but in general most of it will be the same, and you always know what to do next.

I would like to hear what is your position regarding that.

I think the best approach is for companies to pick a particular game style to target a specific audience knowing full well that people who like that particular style will hopefully love it and stick with that appraoch. When companies try to make games trying to please everyone out there they will generally fall flat on their face because they end up with situations like this:

Person A: I only love the colour black, I hate the colour white.
Person B: I only love the colour white, I hate the colour black.

Company: Lets make everything grey in order to find the perfect balance between what everyone likes.

Grey is not black, and so Person A hates the game. Grey is not white, so person B hates the game too.

This abstraction can be applied to a great many game elements which players either love very much or hate very much to which compromise ends up with everyone agreeing almost universally that the game sucks. It's a twist on the cliche of "You can please some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time and if you try to do so you'll end up pleasing none of the people every time."

I'd rather games that focus on being great at what they do for the target audience the game is intended for who like the particular style of game rather than games that try to increasingly appeal to all consumers and get dumbed down and genericized over time via endless sequels that cater to the lowest common denominator.

For example, take the game TIS-100. This is a game designed for a very specific audience of me, and people like me. It is for computer engineering geeks. It isn't for casual gamers, MMOers, MOBAers, FPS fragfesters, etc. It is strictly designed for computer engineers and software developers as a programming oriented logic puzzle challenge type game. It may be very niche, but it does what it does extremely well and totally hits the target market with a home run.

Someone who is not a computer programmer and not inclined to potentially become one in the future will probably hate this game if they're even able to comprehend it at all. But it wasn't made for the non-programmer crowd so they can exercise certain liberties that they know their target audience can appreciate.

For RPGs, I love open world games but linear RPGs can be good too depending on the story and other elements. I don't think there is one magic formula that works better than another for all people. Even the best games out there end up having people who dislike them. Look at The Witcher 3 for example, it's one of the largest open world RPGs ever made and it gets extremely high ratings out there having won over 350 game of the year awards, and IIRC over 800 total awards. It has a 97% approval rating on Steam based on 83,000+ ratings to date which is something few games ever achieve. This says they got a lot right with this game for sure.

And yet, 3% of people did not like it. Perhaps they just hate open world games period, or perhaps they thought it was too long and they like RPGs they can finish in 4 hours instead of 200 hours. Who knows why they didn't like it, but there will always be people who like something and those who don't, where pleasing both groups is literally impossible because of them very strongly favouring things that are polar opposites like my abstraction above.

In the end I think game companies should focus on just making a great game product for the love of the game, and not try to target specific market demographics and other bean counter buzzwords. Design by what is fun, not by a board room spreadsheet in other words. Some of the best games ever made were put together by developers designing the game that they themselves wanted to play, often without knowing if anyone else would like it or whether it would flop and fail horribly.

I'm enjoying the post game of Torneko: The Last Hope, in which progress is a strange thing.

The thing is, there are 5 big dungeons to explore, each with different rules, as well as 3 different classes to play with. At this point, progress mainly consists of finding rare items and gaining new warrior skills (which make the warrior class more useful). You can actually do the post-game dungeons in any order, although the Ordeal Mansion will kill you if you are not prepared.

There are a few quirks which make things interesting:

The sword that works best for learning warrior skills is at the end of the Mage dungeon, which you can only enter as a mage. In other words, to be the best warrior, you have to spend time as a mage. (The item at the end of the Sword dungeon is useful for a mage, but not necessary.)

As helpful as items are, they aren't always an option. While the Ordeal Mansion requires that you come prepared, not all the dungeons let you bring items with you. In particular, there's the More Magical Dungeon, which doesn't let you bring any items or money in, doesn't let you Disperse past the first floor of the dungeon (so you always start from 1F), doesn't let you in if you've used the Magic Shop to raise your level (which resets when you go back to town), and feels most like playing a traditional roguelike, complete with unidentified herbs and scrolls. (Unidentified pots are fun!)

Incidentally, I can also think of Disgaea's post-game, which doesn't have any areas where your preparation doesn't help, but does share the same aspect of many ways to get stronger. You can level up, reincarnate, level up your equipment in the Item World, hunt for better equipment or innocents in the Item World, or do numerous things to become more powerful. At this point, the question becomes "what method of getting stronger do you want to focus on first?". This becomes even more fun when you realize that you can now tackle stronger enemies, allowing you to get more powerful even faster.

For the most part, I like linear and goal-specific gameplay.

Games like Super Mario, Donkey Kong Country, most platformers, shmups and RPGs in a more traditional or JRPG sense.

Games that are just huge wastes of space or don;t offer much in goal advancement are just tedious and tiring. Running around aimlessly for 10 minutes is frustrating. On the other hand, thoughtful open-world games can be excellent.

I really dislike the GTA series.The city is 25 square kilometers of dead space. 1,000 buildings - but only 10 you can go into, half of which are Chicken Clucks. Do this mission, but you can't because you are stuck on a toll bridge in traffic - because this is so much fun in real life. No exploration or discovery of things and what does the map size matter when the only "freedom" I have is to carjack, assault or murder inconsequential cannon fodder? So many reasons the GTA series is so bad.

I find the same with the Elder Scroll series. All the games can be beaten in under two hours because they don't really have any story line, and most of the world is dead space that doesn't have anything to offer, nor required, to advance or succeed.

However, I like open-worlrl games when they are done right. A couple of examples are Zelda Breath of the Wild and Dragon Quest VIII.

BOTW: Once you leave the opening area of the Great Plateau you are free to go anywhere and do things in any order, but the game guides you. It tells you were to go next, how to get there. Also, if you follow the road you will always end up at a village, stable or other safe encampment.

But you are most free to go off the beaten path and exploring to find, shrines, treasures, korok seeds, gear, people in trouble and gain rewards that help.

DQVIII: The game does roads the same way (But 10 years before BOTW), follow the road and you get to were you need to be to advance the story. If you are ever lost or confused, just follow a road or talk to your party members. But you can't get everywhere right from the start. It takes about 40 hours to get the boat to travel by sea to other continents, but the game is so large and open and the story is always driving you forward that you don't notice it.

The game does a brilliant job of keeping you on track of advancing the story and does so within the context of the story. But leaving the roads and exploring is highly rewarded with treasure, monsters to catch for your monster team, mini medals to trade for rare loot and gear, interesting characters, Casino games to play and the *Puff* *Puff* - can't be forgotten.

I find it difficult to answer that question in general. It depends heavily on the game, but even in a single game it's not as clear cut. It's funny that you should mention Dragon Age Origins, because I recently played through it myself, and similar to you, I realized that I don't really seem to enjoy the type of choices it offered me at various points.

There were several instances in the game when I looked up a walkthrough in order to see what the outcome of the choices would be, before being able to pick one I felt most comfortable with. I'm not quite sure if that means that the choices were too uncomfortable, or whether it means the information on them was too vague or the options were too restricted. I do remember that there were some situations in which I didn't like either of the choices and would have chosen something entirely different if given that freedom (e.g. kill a guilty person or set them free - why can't I send them to court or put them in jail instead? I could have lived with that if there had been a convincing explanation why this wasn't an option, but there wasn't). I guess I also felt that the outcome of some choices would obviously be better and more rewarding than that of others, and I didn't want to screw up my only completionist playthrough (as I won't ever replay RPGs of this length).

On the other hand, I sometimes felt a bit too restricted in my choice of companions. The composition of my party was often determined less by who I thought most interesting as a character, but by who was most useful to the group. Whenever I would leave the rogue characters at home, for example, I would soon regret not taking them with me, because they're the only ones who can open locked chests and disarm traps. Pretty typical of D&D inspired RPGs, but I never really liked that. And sometimes I would leave companions I liked in camp when I was going to do things I knew they would disapprove of, because the game has this dating sim like mini game that rewards you for gaining popularity with your companions, so you don't want to piss them off.

I liked that the world was open and allowed me to choose the order in which I did things myself, with some optional quests thrown in and the freedom to take breaks from one quest or dungeons halfway through and go somewhere else first. I disliked that you often had to explore the various city hubs first before you were allowed to explore the connected dungeon and wilderness areas.

I guess as someone not interested in replays, the choices I like best aren't those that actually change significant parts of the games but those that allow me to play my characters in the way I like best, to roleplay them as nice or cynical or grumpy or funny, to make choices that I think would fit their attitude and/or that I can live with myself, without having to worry about which of the choices the game designers would reward better and for which they would punish me.

Btw, checking the walkthrough about best choices from time to time still couldn't prevent that I stumbled into a relationship I had never seriously considered. I didn't want to romance anyone in the game, but apparantly the game thought otherwise. Silly dating sim, give me the freedom to stay single, dammit. :P

I agree with you on the less priority given to outcome when you're asked to make choices without full knowledge.

This is what like about linearity in games and RPGs that are open-world like Zelda and Dragon Quest VIII.

In BOTW Link can never tell Impa or side characters F-U die! I am always going to have to take down Ganon. The player never has the option to let Princess Zelda die, kill Ganon and rule by himself. It's not just that I think it is great that the game tells me the history of Hyrule, but it has well-defined characters and I never can make a wrong choice. How many side quests I choose to do, who and how often I decide to interact with are all up to me though.

In DQ VIII, my party is set and the story is laid out. I can't change it, I can't change the personalities of the characters, I can't slaughter and betray the two companions that travel and guide the party to take command of the kingdom, but It leads to a detailed story and world with depth.

When you have to leave so many options open you can;t build a deep story or deep characters.

I guess some people prefer a lake that is 10,000 square acres of surface space, but only a 3 deep everywhere. I prefer the 1,000 square foot lake, that is 100 feet deep.

That sums it up perfectly. I hate it when they do that because of two reasons:

The developers pay way too much attention to what people supposedly want, instead of focusing on a game they themselves want to create or had envisioned. It stiffles innovation and the experimental, risk-defying thinking of which I believe that it is part of the human nature. It limits game development to an exercise in recreating what already was instead of exploring truly new areas.

Second reason is, aiming for the middle ground often tends to make a game worse, especially if it's the decision between complex or simplified gameplay. If a developer seeks a seemingly risky approach while development I can still admire him for his boldness, even if I don't like a specific decision that lessens my personal gameplay experience. However, if they prefer to go the safe route instead, the game can still end up in a non-enjoyable state, but this way I have absolutely nothing to respect them for at all.

If all they're doing is trying to impress the potential playerbase and they fail, they achieved nothing.
If they have a vision, a plan of something they want to exist badly even if no one else shares their idea, they may be not getting a financial success out of it, but they achieved something for their own good. It shows integrity to make decisions against all odds, even if you don't necessarily succeed in the long run.

I don't want anybody to risk their livelyhood so I can get more interesting games, I would love to see big companies take care of said risk for them, so they can go exploring(and with that, everyone else, as well).

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Edited a minute later: Formatting.