What's wrong with linearity?

[Stupid Clown]

I feel as if YouTubers popularized this notion that a game being linear is automatically bad. It makes 0 sense. What makes a game good is the moment to moment gameplay. These people act as if being open is automatically better because FREEDOM. They'd rather have an open walking sim with occasional copy and pasted content that you can do in any order, over a focused and fine tuned experience with 0 filler.

It's utterly absurd and a mentality that didn't really develop untill the 2010s because fore mentioned YouTubers claimed linearity was outdated in their shitty essays.

Imagine Resident Evil 4, but instead of constant thrilling action scene after action scene, the game is a large open world where you can interact with three or four original sections and a ton of copy pasted mediocre content. Guarantee it would be praised as superior. Just like how people prefer Castlevania with backtracking, to Castlevania when it's pure action.

 

[bruhwtf]

cuz they think it's repetitive and monotonous

 

[Stupid Clown]

cuz they think it's repetitive and monotonous

LOL

As if walking sims are better

 

[BlueCore]

Yeah I never understood it either

 

[Razielcel]

Just like how people prefer Castlevania with backtracking, to Castlevania when it's pure action.

I love both metroidvania and classic approach tbh. Do people really shit on 'linear' platformers/beatemups? I might be out of loop but I didn't see it.

 

[Hoppipolla]

Years back I played Prototype and that's when I decided that I prefer linear games.

I was mostly comparing the awesome (mostly scripted) experience of FEAR 2 with the messier and less honed experience of Prototype.

Not that I think Prototype or any open world game is necessarily bad and I do think they can have very good areas and even potentially scripted ones, but yeah open world games generally lean into quantity over quality.

Freedom in a game is nice but it's not everything and it can even take away from the experience.

 

[starystulejarz]

Both can be good but since nowadays 90% of the games are open world i now prefer to play more of the linear games or at least semi-open world which is a perfect middle ground (Deus Ex, Bioshock, Dark Souls/Bloodborne and old NFS games)

 

[starystulejarz]

Years back I played Prototype and that's when I decided that I prefer linear games.

I was mostly comparing the awesome (mostly scripted) experience of FEAR 2 with the messier and less honed experience of Prototype.

Not that I think Prototype or any open world game is necessarily bad and I do think they can have very good areas and even potentially scripted ones, but yeah open world games generally lean into quantity over quality.

Freedom in a game is nice but it's not everything and it can even take away from the experience.

I liked combat of Prototype, however this type of game wouldn't work in closed environments

 

[Thugs-5-Less]

Linearity isn't bad, but predictable cliches that come with it often are.

 

[Wolnir]

It depends if it fits with the game or not. Hitman Absolution was garbage imo because hitman games aren't supposed to be linear, the freedom of being able to do a hit in multiple different ways is what makes the games great.

 

[Acorn]

I actually prefer linear games

 

[DreamCoper]

Late but I think Still Wakes the Deep is an example of pulling of a linear structure by just getting everything else right without bullshitting