Games seem so hand-holding now. Even something like Dishonored, which is the New Messiah of Open-World Mission-Based Stealth Gaming, has its own signposts that cause anxiety in my freedom-loving self.
The exploration and triggered conversations remind me a lot of the Thief games, but there is something subtly different about them in Dishonored. Hanging over my shoulder like a spectre while I play is the constant thought of, "Ultimately, I have to move towards either the 'Good' or 'Bad' ending."
The Thief games weren't like that. There was a realer sense of freedom, even if it was probably imposed by a lack of logic in the game itself. You weren't really tracked on things like kills or optionals between missions, and as far as I can remember, the endings were all standard, and part of a much more concrete fiction.
I enjoy game stories that are much more literary and unidirectional. Maybe because of my roots in JRPGs. But even so, I never felt like I was ruining my future statistics by killing a few people in Thief. There was always the appeal in being stealthy, but settling things when they got out of hand. It was easier to not rely on quick saves. Dishonored feels to me like they borrowed the level structures and ambient stealth from Thief, but took the binary story structure of 'open-world' games that really just let you choose between outcomes. It reminds me of the end to Deus Ex: Human Revolution; so very disappointing in a profound way.
I've seen interviews and videos that talk about how much freedom Dishonored gives the player, and it does feel like that when solving the inter-level problems. When it comes to the larger scale, however, it really just ends up being Paragon or Renegade; Lawful or Chaotic; Nuke the Planet or Let Robots Eat Our Babies.
The ironic thing about it is that completely forced story structures have a different kind of freedom that is much more impacting. It seems to me that one of the largest deciding factors for a weak storyline is a focus on keeping it too choice-oriented. But, when created as a self-contained fiction, much more focus can be given to the real message of the story. This is something I don't see in games much anymore.
Maybe that's why I think open-world game stories are so ridiculous. I take in a game like a book or movie, in the sense that I expect a sort of arc that is specifically crafted by the author, not to make me feel like I'm creating it all by myself, but that I'm empowering it to happen so that I can experience it.
JRPGs have a long history of keeping gameplay and storyline separate in that way. You played the game, you reached a checkpoint, and then you experienced a chunk of the story. I don't think that's an artifact or anachronism of limited design, when it's done well. It's a perfectly acceptable and even preferable mode of digestion for my taste in games. Something about my choices changing the story doesn't make me feel like I'm weaving a fiction. Instead, I feel like I'm creating ripples in something that is almost always wishy-washy in the first place. I don't like that such types of choice are touted at the forefront of a game's promotion.
It sounds hypocritical to accuse choice as being limiting. But it's just guided choice, down two or more narrow paths, with no real consequence other than trying to force me to play the game again.
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