Are you kidding me i hope ;D
@achilles: obviously you've never played the games i mentioned before or Ultima 7.
PoE2 is open world, but still suffers from the “too many distractions” problem that *all* open world game have. Currently on my 4th playthrough and finally have a good idea of what needs to be ignored in order to keep a consistent narrative.You can never have too much to do. To each his own an all but having more to do than you could possibly want to complete gives a layer of immersion linear experiences simply do not have. Being able to come back to a game time and time again and always having something new to be discovered is what keeps bringing me back to games like Skyrim, Witcher 3, or any recent fallout title for example. You can say its a problem (and some agree) but that element is a huge draw for a lot of people also.Yeah. Some people really like that. Some people really like games for the story. Thank you for repeating it again.Yeah not mutually exclusive lol...Except that they are. Your options are 1) play in the sandbox and throw narrative to wind or 2) chase the narrative and ignore the sandbox. There is no middle ground.
The point that I (and others) have tried to make is that while option 2 is available for narrative-focused players, it usually involves multiple (sometimes frustrating) playthroughs.
There is middle ground, and many games prove that. If you want a straight narrative, from A to B, ok, it's awful for a crpg unless you're playing a beat em up or a fps but ot each its own i guess, there are people who eat pizza with pineapple.
Even a pnp rpg camoaign is not devoid of freedom given to the players unless you're a bad master.