I still remember the exact moment everything clicked for me. I was playing a narrative-driven game where my character confronted a village elder about a missing artifact. But instead of cycling through pre-written dialogue options, the conversation unfolded naturally. The elder remembered something I’d said hours earlier, a throwaway comment I’d almost forgotten, and wove […]

There’s a moment in every open-world game that hooks you completely. For me, it was watching a deer drink from a stream in Red Dead Redemption 2 while a predator stalked through nearby brush. Nobody scripted that encounter for my benefit. The world was alive, running its own complex ecosystem whether I watched or not. […]