Cliff Bleszinski chats it up with Gamasutra about a variety of topics including improving Japanese games, saving the horror genre, random game ideas, and this bit on replayability via mini sandbox scenarios:
Obviously, the mini sandbox scenarios aren't great for every game. Sometimes storytelling is weakened when your attention isn't funneled in the right direction. Alan Wake does a nice job for the most part of giving you enough room to find a secret or two, but keeping things tight so the urgency of the storyline isn't lost. I'd love to see a sandbox Unreal, Cliff. Make it happen!
Yeah, well that's Halo's combat bowls, right? We tried to get more bowl-like in Gears 3, and in the future we'll continue to get more bowl-like and just overall less linear. This is my thing I've stuck to -- the more replayable your game is, the better of a game it is, even if you never replay it once.
And that's the big block that people often use with replayability. They say, "Nobody replays games; don't bother making it replayable!" No, you're frigging wrong. You're wrong because the player has more decisions, and more ways to play the game their way, and then it just drives conversations and YouTube videos, and all that stuff.
Obviously, the mini sandbox scenarios aren't great for every game. Sometimes storytelling is weakened when your attention isn't funneled in the right direction. Alan Wake does a nice job for the most part of giving you enough room to find a secret or two, but keeping things tight so the urgency of the storyline isn't lost. I'd love to see a sandbox Unreal, Cliff. Make it happen!