Vault Dweller said:
You have a location that can only be accessed in one, very specific way. That's linearity. That means that if I'm replaying the game and want to visit this place I must do EXACTLY the same thing. Hence, the bad design comment.
Alright, so let's compare to the recent Witcher example that I think we both agree is pretty good. In that case you either get quests/goodies/help from guy A or guy B, depending on your choice. If you want to get access to guy A, you must make EXACTLY the same choice every time you play through. Good or bad design? I say that it's not 1choice->1consequence chain that's good or bad, it's always like that (well, very often, anyway). In the Witcher case, it could even be worse because you don't have any foreshadowing or knowledge of the consequences, so it's like "surprise!" For me, though, that's what makes it cool because you're not making the choice as a min/max metagamer, you're making the choice based on philosophy (hopefully that of the role you're trying to play), so it's a good example of a moral choice that later has an effect on the game world.
Still, there's no escaping that it's every bit as restrictive as "do something, get some options and close off others", just like the Megaton example. Making that SAME CHOICE is the ONLY WAY to get guy A (or B), EVERY TIME YOU PLAY. So to repeat, it's not the direct causal link that matters, it's lots of other stuff, which is where your bias (aka previously justified expectations of Bethesda's incompetence) comes in and makes you immediately see their example as uniformly horrible and bad in all respects, even though it's exactly the same in structure as other examples you like.
Vault Dweller said:
Why can't I access it in different ways? Will they shoot me on sight? It can't be a secret hideout place, not with the word "tower" in its name, so it must be visible and thus accessible. Why can't I talk my way in? Shoot my way in? Sneak my way in? Why the only way to access it is to nuke a town? Is it an "epic mass murderers" private club?
Can't say, don't know.
Vault Dweller said:
Like I said, first, it doesn't make sense, second, it's bad and linear design.
Now again you're attacking the particular details of this choice->consequence, which may very well be bad design, but it's not bad just because the choice leads to an inevitable consequence.
Vault Dweller said:
You keep ignoring my Oblivion example. Please reread it.
I didn't mean to so much ignore it as grant it by not challenging it. But I'll take a slightly less over-the-top example that you've argued for yourself in the past:
If a fighter's guild quest required you to kill a higher-up in the mage's guild, and doing so locked off forever your chance of entering the mage's guild, while opening up the dark Brotherhood "guild", would that be better or worse than having other ways to get to the top of every guild?
You see, again it's not that every outome needs multiple ways to be achieved, only the high-level goals and plot developments need that for non-linearity and good design. Such a game would still be full of things that can only be accomplished by doing one specific thing and no others.
EDIT: If you HAD to get to "teh eval towaz" to progress in the game, and therefore HAD to detonate the nuke every time through the game, that would definitely be bad, linear design. But that's obviously not the case here, you can or you can't and the world you experiences changes some as a result.
