Something of a shallow analysis, but touches on most of the significant factors. In the end, linearity is more relevant to a game's narrative than its mechanics.
| AZWification said:
Then we have Final Fantasy XIII which is called by a lot of people " Final Hallway XIII". Some people even said that it created a new genre " On-rails RPG".. That game was almost on-rails for pretty much no reason. The last FF game before that which was XII, was pretty open, so there was no reason for XIII to be that linear. It didn't help the story at all since the story was a confusing mess. This is when linearity is a bad thing. When it is introduced in a franchise that wasn't known for linear level design ( * cough Metroid Other M * cough*) and when it does nothing good to said franchise. |
Final Fantasy XIII is definitely an example of linear design, but it was the lack of significant freedom in the mechanics that was more to the game's detriment. A non-linear game with similar mechanics would likely have been just as insufferable.
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