A Case for Linearity

A growing trend I keep finding as I converse with other gamers is a belief that linearity in games is inherently bad – that being linear is automatically worse than being nonlinear. It’s particularly frustrating, particularly because I can’t have a reasonable argument about it. Whenever someone begins talking about linearity, they immediately jump to the conclusion that the developers are trying to dictate the way they play.

I’ve never been a big fan of nonlinear games; whenever a new sandbox game launches, I think that I haven’t given them a fair shake, I try it, and I end up disappointed. I can’t help but feel that I’m missing something, as the rest of the world goes absolutely nuts over the latest Grand Theft Auto, or Red Dead Redemption, or whatever it is this month. I really want to enjoy them as much as everyone else seems to, but I just don’t get the appeal. After some thought, I managed to pull together exactly why I dislike them.

When someone praises a game for being “nonlinear”, they mean that the game is a wide-open world that lets the player do anything they could possibly want! Huzzah! No restrictions, no obnoxious rules getting in the way. Just run around, shoot people, run them over, and go wild! Unfortunately, that seems to be the entire appeal. And while I can get behind that for a short time, it gets dull after about an hour. At that point, I start asking, “Okay, so now what?” And there usually isn’t a very good answer.

Nonlinearity also cripples the ability to tell a good story. When the player can decide to drop the plot to screw around for a few hours, the pacing gets thrown out the window. Giving the player so much control over the protagonist’s actions creates a massive mood dissonance. Niko Bellic of GTA IV talks in almost every cutscene about how he hates being forced to kill, and how the war was a terrible slaughterhouse, and then as soon as the player gets control, they can kick a guy out of his car and run over pedestrians like bowling pins.

Admittedly, part of my complaint comes from my emphasis on story and characterization. I adore games as a storytelling medium, so giving the player the ability to destroy the story being told rubs me the wrong way. But I’d rather the developers take away some of my options in order to tell a good story than give me complete freedom and nothing to do with it.