Regarding the "dynamic" vs "storyline" campaign, we have yet to do a game without half the community claiming the other type is better ...
I would suggest, as heretical as it may sound, that this is an area where you need to actually
ignore the community, take a step back, and figure out what's best for the game based on what
other games do in order to become successful.
Single-player campaigns of very successful games RTS games tend to focus on one of two things - either they exist to teach players basic game mechanics and ease them into the multiplayer scene, or they are a standalone experience distinct from multiplayer with a very strong narrative - with the narrative being either a very compelling fixed narrative or a very engaging dynamic one.
The original Starcraft (pre-Brood War) for instance was very much a "training" campaign for multiplayer. Each mission gradually introduced new units, and there was very minimal "scripting" or use of units / mechanics that weren't applicable to multiplayer. There was a very memorable storyline of course, but the core of the campaign was really all about introducing new units to ease you into playing the three different races.
Brood War, by contrast, was much less a "teaching" campaign (it
expected you to know how to play each race) and much more of a narrative campaign, and despite its fixed and linear nature it was very compelling because it explored the campaign from the perspective of the "bad guy" (Kerrigan) which was at the time pretty ground-breaking for an RTS and videogames in general.
Starcraft 2 - but most especially
Wings of Liberty - was meanwhile a great example of a dynamic campaign with many branching decisions and paths; even though much of the stuff you can use in the campaign aren't even available in multiplayer (albeit one could argue that's one reason why it didn't do quite as well as Blizzard was expecting which is why they're now going back to make Starcraft Remastered).
In the case of Eugen, I frankly feel that the problem is that the single-player experience always tended to feel as more of an afterthought.
The dynamic campaigns in Wargame for instance frankly tended to be just a series of skirmish battles stringed together. It is
not really trying to be either a teaching tool for multiplayer; as it tends to drop you off the deep end similar to skirmishes against the AI. The narrative also tends to be weak, especially in the dynamic campaign, as it's a bit too focused on equipment and unit designations similar to the later (and increasingly sterile) tech thrillers and Tom Clancy novels. People tend to
not be excited by names like 3rd Shock Army. What they want is people with names, motivations, and fears; like say Bannon from
World in Conflict who brought that game's truly strong emotional note.
Steel Division's single-player campaign unfortunately borrows much more from its Wargame ancestry than other RTSs with strong narratives. Commanding scattered units of 101st while the rest of the map simulates the breakout of the forces which landed at Utah is
interesting and at first exciting, especially for those who are already familiar with the subject and are big fans of Normandy games. Side-missions help lessen the monotony of killing waves of enemy AI units.
But it's not just a
compelling single-player experience. It doesn't hold and grab you - and the need to keep playing to push the story forward consequently isn't there.
And while I've mentioned AI issues (which leads to rather boring skirmish games that don't translate well into teaching people how to do multiplayer), I have to say that the much bigger problem of the campaign is that it was simply too
sterile. It wasn't a narrative at all, just a series of places and combat units that moved and fought through them.
Which was something of a shame because Normandy had always been one of the better-documented campaigns of the war and extensive narratives have been written about its participants. From the young soldiers of Hitlerjugend to the paratroopers of the 101st, the Normandy campaign was full of stories about the
people who experienced the war and participated in one of its most important and in many ways most epic of campaigns. It was the failure to capture this human essence of the campaign - far more than any debate about dynamic versus fixed campaigns - that was the core issue of the single player experience.
