The Era of Storyline Gaming

Many of my comments on the problems with modern MMO's has to do with linearality, hand-holding, and forced storylines.  It seems this has seeped into (or emanated from) strategy and RPG games as well.

Recently, I played "Order of War" and "Blazing Angels 2".  The first game is a an operational WW2 game where you play either an American or German Army-like force with objectives.  The problem is they tell you how you MUST play out a fight.  Instead giving you a situation and some objectives (such as hold/capture these towns), the game tells you how you must fight out the battle step-by-step (i.e., brace for attack on left, then counterattack in center).  This leaves little imagination and freedom to the player.

"Blazing Angels 2", a flight sim, is just as bad, in that you are given a linear chain of scenarios laced with drama that they expect you to play out as they intend.  Again, it would have been much easier to  let you go up into the sky on a mission and fight it out your way, but no, you have to execute the mission per choreographed script.

Forced storyline gaming is killing the industry.  All the hard work in AI, graphics coding, and map layout is wasted if the player ends up with a linear experience much like sitting and watching a movie.

I hope gaming gets back to "scenario + objectives", instead of the forced tightly orchestrated gameplay we see today.  Give the player the situation, but allow the player to use his or her ingenuity to fight it out. 



Example, give the player a battle in which they must capture a certain town, but allow them to decide if they are going to send their troops straight down the road, or through the woods in a roundabout way, or some combination.  Let the player think, decide, and execute.