But that’s a far cry for, say, Valve’s masterful design, where although you’re guided down a very specific path, the construction of the world means you’d never want to venture anywhere else, because it provides a *reason* you’re going the way you’re going, and a *reason* to not even try going anywhere else. I mean, you really don’t wanna get shot by the Combine, do you?

There is a good reason for linearity. It ensure each player will have a very similar experience, and so more resources can be focussed on the one and only path. This means better graphics, cut-scenes etc. It also allows designers to avoid awkward pauses in the pace of the game and generally control the experience. But within a level, or map, I really don’t want linearity. I don’t want knee high fences (Brothers in Arms) or enemy immune to long range sniping (BiA again). I hate tightly scripted game triggers, with enemy appearing as if from thin air at deliberately inconvenient locations (CoD), and infinite spawning forcing you to advance from perfectly decent cover into open ground (CoD). I could go on.

This is not to say that I like the current crop of sand-box games. They are, let’s face it, often quite boring and repetitive (Far Cry) for large periods. They pretend to offer non-linearity but don’t, as your actions have no long term consequences (GTA). It is these consequences that non-linearity is all about. Wihout them it is a sham, and that is where we currently are. We have a choice between flawed open games and over-linear cinematic experiences. Just for the record I do not consider bi-linear (or multi-linear) games to be non-linear. Simply scripting mutliple story arcs does not make the game complex. It just offers multiple, linear, sub-games.

Personally I think, given current processing restrictions, the two best compromises are MMO’s and open levels in linear stories. I don’t like MMO’s but they are truly open, and your actions do have consequences in terms of relationships with other people. The other option is a linear game in which the individual levels are open to many different approaches (or at least play differently each time). The best example of this I can think of is Operation Flashpoint, although Ghost Recon is making decent strides in this direction. Surprisingly this is also something I have always liked about Halo, which although highly linear, plays differently each time due to the mobile nature of the enemy and the (sometimes) open maps.

Roger Ebert would agree. Probably.

I think it’s ultimately diverged in both directions as differing answers to the problem of immersion, of believablity. Look at a black and white movie and not only is it a different colour from real life, but any special effects (like the original Jekyll and Hyde transformation sequence) break immersion. You can bust out better effects, or change the story.

Maps in Half Life 2 are sets; no-clipping to the other side of that impassable wall, you can see there aren’t any textures there, and it might as well be made of cardboard like the fake town in blazing saddles. Early games frustrated with the impassable knee-high wall; modern linear shooters terrify with armed soldiers photographing a corpse, interrogating a crying witness. Open world games let you sneak past them, or shoot them at least; two utterly different approaches to the same dillema, both infinitely better than knee-high walls.

A linear game is still trying to sell you on its solidity; an open-world game is still trying to hook you with its story. So I agree utterly; they are different sides to the same limited edition Tamrielic Drake.