Game Design: Openness and Player Choice

[Koh]

Here are my thoughts on this subject.

I agree with him for the most part; this kind of game design is the way to go for games that attempt to tout exploration as one of their selling points. Why? Exploration requires free will. If you remove the free will factor from exploration, what you get is a theme park tour. "First, we're going to check out the Fire Area, then we'll see the Ice Area, and finally, we'll wrap things up with the Space Area." Such handholding cannot be classified as exploration, as the player isn't willingly examining areas on their own accord, but is being forced to.

In the case of games that wish to tell a deep and ongoing narrative, a more linear approach is fine as long as they don't attempt to use exploration as a selling point, because that wouldn't actually be true. Only when the world is actually open, and the player has a choice on what areas they want to check out and when, does that become a viable selling point. If they can't get the player to meet the cutscenes under this direction, then they should have the cutscenes meet the player. If X event is supposed to happen after player completed Y amount of areas, then have them happen after keeping a tally of how many areas they've actually completed, and program the cutscenes to play out right after they finish that area.

This concept boils down to branching paths and converging points. If we were to use a well known game as an example, A Link to the Past could've done this well, by approaching the key points as converging points. In the beginning, Link is tasked with collecting 3 pendants. While the world is certainly very open and the player can see much at once on their own accord, the goals are still accomplished in a linear fashion when they did not have to be. Let us observe the key plot points.

-Get 3 pendants.
-Get the Master Sword and free Hyrule Castle.
-Get 7 crystals.
-Defeat Ganon.

With these plotpoints in mind, the world and dungeons could be designed with the idea that the player eventually has to converge at these points. So the world could've been designed as follows:

-All the dungeons containing the 3 pendants are accessible right away.
-Directly after the final pendant is obtained, a converging point is reached: Play a cutscene to alert the player that the Master Sword must be obtained, and Hyrule Castle is in danger.
-All the dungeons containing the 7 crystals are accessible right away.
-Directly after the final crystal is obtained, a converging point is reached: Play a cutscene to alert the player that, with the 7 crystals in hand, they can now open Ganon's Tower and defeat him.

It's much easier to tailor a game, that intends to tout exploration as a selling point, to actually adhere to free will than many believe. The developers just have to make note of the points of convergence, and design the game accordingly so the cutscenes and such play out at the proper times, in the correct areas. Bonus points if the cutscenes are literally brought to the player, where the same events can occur in multiple locations, depending on where the player is at when they reach the point of convergence.