Apparently one of the important ideas behind The Driver was that the missions were not just about gaining money, or something equally dull (such as experience points). Instead, the idea was that the missions were about creating a story (stories?). I thought that this sounded neat (not that I have played The Driver yet). And made me think of some RPGs where you do missions just because you want the bonus points. It would be interesting to see how far storytelling could be linked to the missions that you play, so that the more missions you complete the more the story is expanded upon. Ie. You start to learn more about the real reasons behind the missions you did earlier in the game. Ie. Why it happened. Furthermore, subsequent missions would build upon what has already happened.

In Final Fantasy 3, the entire second half of the game worked like that. You could take on überKefka any time after you got the airship, but by cruising the world you learned a great deal about the individual characters in your party, the world itself, and the NPC inhabitants of it, as well as scoring some badass gear. Cyan and Locke''s closure, Edward and Sabin''s reconciliation, and Terra and Celes'' absolution gave the story the epic scope and emotion immersion that made it great. That''s the sort of storytelling that is unique to video games. Not even a good novel can replicate it; it would take a series of novels, sequels and prequels for each character in order for so sophisticated and nuanced tale to be told properly.