But I can just as easily say that linear games are nothing but a series of hallways leading the player by hand. It might have some truth to it, but it's a reductive analysis.
Games that do open world structures right, like metal gear 5, Witcher 3, or BOTW, succeed because their open world designs are incredibly focused and create an immersion for the player that they wouldn't get in a linear game. At least a much more realized version.
That isn't to say that most open world games have become lazy and superficial, but that is a fault of the design strategy, not simply because they are open world games to begin with.
A reductive analysis is exactly the scope of the point that I'm making though. It is meant to be an argument about the inherent truth behind what the two are fundamentally focused on, NOT a blanket statement about how every open world game in existence is doomed to be without merit or can't have other strengths (I would agree that THAT would be unreasonably reductive, but I'm not making that point). I'm saying that I find the unique purpose behind the genre uninteresting and not particularly valuable.
The strength of making something completely open is that it allows a level of immersion that isn't otherwise possible (the extreme being just a simulation), and the strength of making something completely linear is that it allows a level of creative control and direction that isn't otherwise possible (the extreme being just a movie or board game). I'm arguing that the former is a superficial novelty (immersion/escapism isn't actually that valuable, in my opinion), whereas I would argue that the latter isn't.
I would also argue that the relative simplicity and minimalism of the latter makes it more possible to balance out its weaknesses (you can very reasonably make a linear game orders of magnitude more open or use tricks to sufficiently create that illusion), whereas the former is such a gargantuan (in my opinion, wasteful) effort to pull off that the most practical thing to do is go all-in on immersion alone (resulting in what I think often gets miscategorized as lazy, but actually involves just as much if not more effort and man-hours, only to usually underwhelming results).
Obviously, your mileage may vary, but personally, I view open-world games as essentially a pointlessly showy, unnecessarily complex, brute-force way of solving a much simpler problem. You can get to an answer that's just as accurate and useful, I guess, but I would question the methodology anyways.
