Originally Posted by
Endus
Well, to be fair, the story mission is "linear', but it's less than 5% of the missions. The main missions can be done in pretty much any order (some require a specific prior mission to "unlock" them, but that's it, there's no larger progression), and as you said, side missions are everywhere and usually have no requirements at all.
I wouldn't say TSW is totally UNlinear, but it's not totally linear, either. To use a completely different genre, shooters, something like Max Payne is "linear", to me; there's one path, and you follow it. Something like Deus Ex isn't; there's side missions you can skip or miss, multiple paths, etc.