Playing in the Sandbox vs. Linearity

Do you prefer open-ended games where you can roam around the world, accept missions at your own pace and even do things that aren't related to the main story of the game? Or do you find that kind of overwhelming sometimes, and like it more when there are clear objectives pointing you towards progression in the game?

What are some of your favourite games of each style?

If you mean by overwhelming you are referring to lack of clear direction then I would have to agree. Otherwise, I would say sandbox gaming environments taken to the extreme seem to be more of the phenomenon of spreading itself thin; thus generating a mediocre experience.

That said, I am not a fan of linear gameplay taken to the extreme either, especially if all the other elements leave room to be desired to ease the extreme constraints imposed on your experience.

I suppose a balance of the two would be ideal: where you play a character (that is not a silent protagonist) that has characterization & development, and a main plot that allows sidequests that help expand certain aspects of the plot & characters (as opposed to having merely so-called fetch quests) that also serve to provide breathing room from the constraints of the linear experience.

I think sandbox games that are entirely sandbox can be fun, where the focus is building and exploration, often in randomly generated worlds. A lot of games that present you with a large world to explore on your own feel a little empty after a while to me (or spread too thin, like you said) - they are overwhelming at first when you see the size of the map, but then you realize it's just more of the same everywhere else.

That said, I think I still do prefer having sandbox elements in games, although I don't mind linearity at all when the story the game wants to tell you is good, Final Fantasy being a good example of solid linear gameplay.

I remember all of my playthroughs of Fallout new Vegas and I realized how short the game really is if you just do all of the quests that lead to the final story quests. Getting lost with all of the side quests and not minding the main story at least helped with gearing my character(s) and all.

So yeah, I love having a sandbox element in a single player game since it helps give a little bit of variety in the next few playthroughs.

Playing in a sandbox with no goal in mind is usually too overwhelming for me, so for games that offer a linear path (Fallout 3 is the most recent game I've played that comes to mind) I tend to follow that linear path while doing a few side quests on the way. I find that this helps me build my characters better, since I will probably end up unsatisfied with my character if I only do the main story exclusively.

Sandbox gets boring and repetitive sometimes, i.e. BotW, Skyrim w/ no mods, etc. In some cases like Fallout 4, it's boring from the start. It's boring when there's little depth to the world and a lot of things are rehashed, again for example from BotW, the too similar shrines, and from Skyrim, the same copy and pasted nordic ruins.

On the other hand, linear games can get boring and repetitive as well.

A balance between the two is ideal. Previous 3D Zelda's weren't too linear, you had to follow a certain path but the areas in them had things to explore and do. I don't know why people complained about the linearity of zelda games, and then we got BotW which was too open and lacked depth.

I like both for their own reasons

Sandbox is fun cause it sets ones creativity loose upon what the player wishes to do.

Linear games can be good too if the story itself is presented well enough.

Juno said:

I think sandbox games that are entirely sandbox can be fun, where the focus is building and exploration, often in randomly generated worlds. A lot of games that present you with a large world to explore on your own feel a little empty after a while to me (or spread too thin, like you said) - they are overwhelming at first when you see the size of the map, but then you realize it's just more of the same everywhere else.

That said, I think I still do prefer having sandbox elements in games, although I don't mind linearity at all when the story the game wants to tell you is good, Final Fantasy being a good example of solid linear gameplay.

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Entirely this. Me and my friends threw so so many hours into 7 days to die on rando maps.

I think games like GTA and RDR do it well. Fallouts 1, 2, NV and 3 done it well as well.

Then you get games that push a really linear and restricted story in an open world like MGSV and Fallout 4 that just end up feeling as wide as a river but as deep as a puddle

Sandboxes have always been very linear to me anyway... At least the ones with stories that I play.

Like you can't progress until you do the story or you just run around for awhile first. And there's always a select few at a time, etc.
I guess that's just where I'm at now mentally that even that is pretty linear to me. But I play these a lot. I wouldn't favor them, I feel, if they weren't on the linear side. That's my general preference.

Ones with no story goal at all, that's literally just exploring, yeah, I don't play at all. That would be extremely boring. I've always liked the feeling of progression.