@BitterlyIndifferent btw my favorite proposed solution would be to have no scripting at all. kinda like games like rimworld or dwarf fortress where you write the story yourself by interacting with the game's systems.

I guess dishonored does this a bit too; you get a "general goal" (kill some person maybe) but how you reach that goal is up to you, and most times, there's various ways to do it.

but I understand it's hard to combine having stuff like lore and pre-written stories with character speech and all that, with having more procedural, systems based gameplay. personally I prefer the latter

@bazkie @BitterlyIndifferent Dishonored is an interesting choice as most of the games referenced in the article are what I'm going to call 'single contigious games' ie not games like Dishonored that are broken down into much more discrete levels.

It's much easier for Dishonored to put you back to an agreed place so you can scrub it and start again (which is really the article's "Let it happen but inform the player", but with extra steps) than it is for Bethesda's other games- even with their Autosave.

The game's structure and length ("don't say anything" changes wildly when you swap the word 'hour' for 'minute') can make a big difference to how one answers this question.