HEREISNOWHY'S PROFILE

I think, ideally, a game should be good at both. But I can accept games with bad storytelling if they have phenomenal gameplay, and vice versa.

Hey all.
I've been working on my game Helmsreach quite a bit lately, and I've already got the basic plot figured out. The premise is that you were once a world famous hero on the cusp of defeating the big bad villain who is threatening to destroy the world, but he drained you of all your power and left you for dead in some remote cave.

I tend to favor games where you can go anywhere and do anything from the start, even if that results in getting your ass kicked because you are a noob. The problem is, in the world of Helmsreach, just about everyone knows who you are, and if they saw you they'd be seriously astonished to know you were alive. This makes it difficult for me to make the game be open from the start and the beginning section of the game will probably end up being fairly linear with a few minor sidequests and hidden areas.

So, basically; what are your opinions on linearity in RPGs? Is it something to be avoided, not bad at all, or even good?

Yup, that's the plan!

Welp, I tend to solve this problem by not thinking of dungeon designs that would be a pain to create, haha. My mapping skills have only been serviceable at best up until recently, so I've never really had a map that was causing me a lot of stress.

A screenshot from my upcoming mystery project, muhahahaha.