This fucking this.
Seriously. I've played them all. RDR, Vegas, Skyrim, GTA whatever. But this is always a fundamental issue I have with these games. Basic missions or quest wise, they're often not only linear, but far more basic than actual linear cinematic games. Cannot believe the number of times in Skyrim I've delved in to a dungeon and thought, damn I might get lost here, wonder which path to take, only to find the vast majority of the time, the path you weren't supposed to take is a dead end anyway, and there was only ever one path you could go down anyway. It happens at a shockingly common rate.
Open world games give you a good sense of freedom with traversal I suppose, being able to travel vast spans of terrain gives you a good sense of escape, but imo it is also relatively cumbersome, mundane, often boring and, definitely breaks away from narrative pace.
If the toss up is between gaining narrative poignancy, combat polish, cinematic set piece triggers and visual clarity in place of open environments, vs gaining freedom, being less structured, larger in scale and being more content heavy, I'd go with the former most often than not.
