The thing that pisses me off about it, is that the promise could not have been true, and was never walked back. The way the architecture of the game is set up, we will never get a open-world sandbox. The private corridors and public commons are brilliant design, but they require chokepoints as transition zones. This is fundamentally incompatible with open-world exploration. But here's the thing, with an open-world sandbox, we're busy exploring and making our own stories. I was expecting an open-world sandbox, so I didn't expect a whole lot in the way of story. If we're confined to running through a maze (no matter how pretty) there needs to be a driving story. And there isn't.