I think this whole controversy is immaterial in the sense Codexers are looking at it from the perspective of the "best approach" instead of just conceding that there's room for more than one way of doing things and what matters in the end is if the result is good according to what it is supposed to be.
Yes
But the problem is this
1) while people like to compare games to movies since they're both visual mediums, the truth is games are actually closer to books in terms of plot density and story length, since even linear action games take far longer to complete than any movie, game writers aren't under the same constraints movie writers are
2) this one being the most important, is the fact that games due to their intrinsic qualities (i.e. interactivity and reactivity), games are a unique medium for storytelling, wildly different than any other medium and trying to structure it like the others can only come at the rejection of those qualities
Which is the irony here
Devs that try to model games to be more like movies/books, do it under the pretense that they trying to "legitimize" games as an artform
But in fact they are rejecting the very qualities that make games special to begin with, and could make their work possessing of actual artistic merit
And the problem here is that the industry and audiences at large have accepted this lie, and that's why year after year we have to gobble up shit like TLoU2 and Disco Elysium, but worls like Pathologic 2 are left in the dirt
If Vavra wants to make cinematic games, so be it
Like you said very well what matters is whetever or not the devs achieved their vision and the quality of said experience
And in fact as far as these cinematic experiences go KCD is actually good
So congratulations to the old chap and the team at Warhorse
But please, if you won't acknowledge that there is a better way to do things at least don't try to sell this as the "correct" and "artistic" method to non-linear storytelling in games
Which is what I think grated people here to his remarks