I tend to agree with some of the comments that design should not be too linear, but should not be free-form. Granted, this depends on the game--the original Civilization, for example, is a nonlinear game all the way. To defend my point, I am going to use two Squaresoft RPGs: Final Fantasy VI (released in US as FF3 for SNES) and Saga Frontier. Saga Frontier is an example of a game that is too linear. It gets off to a nice start: after the title screen, you can choose one of six characters. Shortly afterwards, all things go to hell. Your character is placed in a city with little or no direction, making the game player (at least I was) confused and fed-up with the game after a couple of fruitless hours of playing. Was it because of my impatience, a bad translation to English from the original Japanese, or something else entirely? Who knows! On the other example, a game with decent balance is FF6. For the first half of the game, the gameplay is pretty linear, standard RPG stuff. The music is probably the best in the series, as is the plot, but I digress. After an earthquake occurs halfway through the game, you are thrown on a new world map with one character and no specific objectives, other than the obvious one of killing the main bad guy. A game that is too linear is Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest for the SNES. You can't walk into a town, forest, dungeon, without hearing something like "If you find the DAGGER in the CAVE OF ICE, then FIREWORLD will be free again!" These are just my opinions, feel free to reply.
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I tend to agree with some of the comments that design should not be too linear, but should not be free-form. Granted, this depends on the game--the original Civilization, for example, is a nonlinear game all the way. To defend my point, I am going to use two Squaresoft RPGs: Final Fantasy VI (released in US as FF3 for SNES) and Saga Frontier. Saga Frontier is an example of a game that is too linear. It gets off to a nice start: after the title screen, you can choose one of six characters. Shortly afterwards, all things go to hell. Your character is placed in a city with little or no direction, making the game player (at least I was) confused and fed-up with the game after a couple of fruitless hours of playing. Was it because of my impatience, a bad translation to English from the original Japanese, or something else entirely? Who knows! On the other example, a game with decent balance is FF6. For the first half of the game, the gameplay is pretty linear, standard RPG stuff. The music is probably the best in the series, as is the plot, but I digress. After an earthquake occurs halfway through the game, you are thrown on a new world map with one character and no specific objectives, other than the obvious one of killing the main bad guy. A game that is too linear is Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest for the SNES. You can't walk into a town, forest, dungeon, without hearing something like "If you find the DAGGER in the CAVE OF ICE, then FIREWORLD will be free again!" These are just my opinions, feel free to reply.