"I’ve been thinking about this a little bit lately with respect to RPGs. In particular, the linear dungeons of Skyrim come to mind (since that’s the RPG I’m playing right now), which are extremely linear. The comparison becomes pretty stark when you realize the Elder Scrolls games were directly inspired by Ultima Underworld, way back in the early 1990′s.  The dungeons of The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall could get insane in their procedurally-generated three-dimensional complexity.  To illustrate some differences in dungeon design in CRPGs over the last couple of decades:" - Amit Patel from Bookmarklet

Sadly, I think most players (not you and me, but the beer-swilling masses) prefer simple. And to be honest, if it's just some trivial side quest, I appreciate not having to expend a lot of mental energy remembering which passages I've explored already. - Stephen Mack

I'm actually enjoying Skyrim quite a bit, even the dungeons. The linear nature hasn't bothered me at all. It's the world outside the dungeons that's so non-linear that I don't need dungeons to be linear. - Amit Patel

The Skyrim dungeons remind me of text compression. When you compress ZZZZZZZZZXZZZZZZZXZZ you end up shrinking the Zs and keeping the Xs. The dungeons have removed most of the uninteresting parts but keep all the interesting/cool rooms. - Amit Patel

Yeah, I had thought of this, and realized that "exploring a dungeon" is way less fun than "exploring the world". So, l'm glad I don't have to remember a maze of twisty passages, all alike, but that I do get to free-roam around finding fun stuff. - Steve and 3 other people

I liked the balance they had in Dragon Age: Origins; you could go straight through some, while offshoots were often more twisty, and optional to the overall plot, but usually had a couple of extra quests that helped with world-building. - Jennifer Dittrich

Mazes never made sense to me. Nobody designs buildings like that, except IKEA :) - Private Sanjeev

It matters which dungeons you encounter. Any of the ones that have to do with the main plot or some of the bigger side quests, they're pretty diverse and interesting. It's the random 'hole in the roadside' that tends to be kind of boring. They're far better than the cookie-cutter dungeons from Oblivion. - Akiva