>>136951601Typical video game player mentality
You guys care so much about the illusion of choice even though every game in existence undoubtedly funnels the player down a predetermined path no matter how much "freedom" it seems like you have
sometimes there is more than one path yes
but every player who wants to see all the content a game has to offer eventually ends up going down all of the paths regardless
and if a game were to only ever allow you to choose 1 path and prevent you from seeing any of the other paths similar to how in life you can also only take one path everybody would hate it and complain to no end that the game was preventing them from accessing all the content
tl;dr saying that freedom in platformers is necessary for them to be considered good is incredibly stupid