A Brief Opinionated History Of Story-Driven Gay-mes
Deus Ex gameplay follows a traditional level-driven structure like early FPS and arcade games. Because the level progression is driven by a story, it's mostly linear (with a few alternate paths) and that's one of its few shortcomings. It's a great FPS/ImSim/Action-Adventure game but it's not what we call the king of video games around here: an RPG. You only "play a role" in the story. Mercifully, it does not tell the whole (back)story in cutscenes and lore dumps like Decline Era "story-driven RPGs".
Bloodlines is more open-world, with new maps opened up as your progress through the story-driven main quest. It's an RPG - barely - and whatever you want to call it, it's great except for all the bugs. Gameplay isn't the strong point but this is one video game that actually stands out for its artwork and writing.
Jade Empire came out a year later and follows the old formula like Deus Ex. Not really an RPG but it's kinda good for what it is, by Bioware standards. Not a good story, but gameplay is decent for an action-RPG, and it's a notable influence on the Witcher sequels.
Braid comes out in 2008. I'm not picking on Braid, but it was often held up as an example by game journos, professors, indie devs, writers, artists, and other such hivemind trash who had developed a collective obsession with transforming video games from crass sexist violent male power fantasies into a high art storytelling medium...
A few years later we see the fruits of this movement in big-budget blockbusters like The Last Of Us and Witcher 2+3, hailed as breakthroughs in "interactive storytelling" or some such shit. These games jarringly interrupt gameplay with long cutscenes in which the player is frequently and ham-handedly forced into a retarded nonsensical course of action preordained by some fucking writer, even in the full open-world Witcher 3. They're hardly the first video games to do this - it was common in the 90's, died out for good reason, and should have stayed dead. But they're still crass sexist violent male power fantasies, so at least the have some decent gameplay.
Around 2015 we see the first actual RPGs infected with this "story-driven" shit, like Pillars of Eternity. In fairness, the 90's games that inspired committed similar sins; that's already been beaten to death in this thread.
And the decline continues with the demise of decent gameplay, and shit like Disco Elysium.