[lmm]

If you're not going to have choices matter, why make the story in an interactive medium at all? Branching paths require a lot of compromises, but there are still things you can do much better with handwritten stories than in a sandbox style.

[chii]

> why make the story in an interactive medium at all?

have you not seen the success of the COD Modern Warfare franchise? Their single player game is essentially an on-rails shooter, with pivotal story points completely scripted (you "press the buttons"). There's no choice, there's no branching (of the story).

But people like to shoot, like to run around, etc. It feels like they have control, and it feels like the heroics in the story is their contribution.

[mnky9800n]

Halo is the same. It is essentially a very long hallway with enemies to take care of before you can move to the next hallway. Also, I recently played through the first Halo again and it was still quite fun.

[lmm]

I thought we were talking about a story-focused game, which that is not.

[watwut]

You skip through the "pivotal story points" and ignore them.

[zelos]

Isn't that dismissing 90% of games? The story can exist purely to give emotional context to the action of the game.

[lmm]

I meant in the context of a story-focused game, which is indeed less than 10% of games in general.

[zelos]

Oh, in that case I agree then: linear story-focused games feel like the developers misunderstood the concept of 'game'.

[spencerflem]

They're good too! See: the 'walking sim' genre (<3 beginner's guide) or interactive fiction like Turnadot (once rated #49 of all time)

https://thebeginnersgui.de/

https://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2019/T...