factual opinions

I’ve heard it argued how linearity is bad, that developers should always aim for open ended sandbox games rather than the linearity displayed in titles such as Half-Life 2. But that’s a gross oversimplification.

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The point of linearity is that it’s not actually a problem at all, there’s no “solving” it by making every game a certain way. Instead think of linearity as something we can map to a curve. On the far left is, say, Oblivion, Dwarf Fortress and that new Farcry 2. A little bit further down sits Stalker. And so it continues ’till we hit Medal of Honor: Airborne, and after that sits Halo 3. At the extreme right we find HL2 and its ilk.

In this context I agree that the extreme linearity of HL2 is problematic. It’s completely on rails, you have no impact on conversations or anything, surely a product for an interactive medium can do better than that? But that doesn’t mean every game should move to the other extreme! There’s a whole spectrum available, anywhere on that curve has merit because it offers certain advantages and disadvantages. There’s no Holy Grail magic bullet solution, and so arguments on linearity shouldn’t be about where the right spot is

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Have you tried Minerva? It’s a kickass HL2 single-player mod. It’s difficult to explain, but I feel it took the problematic linearity of HL2 and opened it up a lot. It’s not free roaming at all, on the Linearity Curve it’s maybe somewhere around Halo 3 or Airborne, it’s really just a small shift to the left from HL2, but everything became so much better for it.