Don't take this personally, but people like you are shitty for videogames. Watch movies for stories.
You are mistaken, I wouldn't personally enjoy a game like that. I don't consider a narrative to be important or even necessary in the ingredients for a great video game.
What I'm saying is that it seems to be a popular choice among AAA game developers to fancy telling a story over building an experience around game mechanics. There is a thread on the first page about this very thing. I don't find it as offensive as Ruzbeh does that games are doing this, just dishonest, as I said before.
If your game is about a story, don't let me play it. Gameplay and story have conflicting goals. A story wants to move forward, a game wants to create adversity. I'm happy that a game like Dear Esther exists, because it shows the further side of the spectrum of what is possible in interactive entertainment. It's like the inverse of Tetris. Tetris is all game, no story. Dear Esther is all story, no game. Both are great for different reasons.
The problem is your taking your personal opinion and then sort of grafting it onto the public which doesn't really work without some data to back it up. What you described might work for you but I have a feeling it would not work for the masses.
There are cinematic games that lower the gameplay quotient to achieve a better story element. Heavy Rain whatever somebody thinks about it I believe does a good job of this. I could add games like the Walking Dead or Journey and some others to the list. But there is no current evidence to suggest that the people who play Call of Duty, Gears of War, Halo, Uncharted, etc are looking for this. They like the action mixed with setpieces and linearity. Because forum types may not like it doesn't mean the masses don't.
I also wouldn't necessarily use that thread made by Ruzbeh to denote anything other than nostalgia and an inability to accept that the world changes and things aren't always going to be what you want them to be.
In full disclosure never played Esther although I've heard it described enough from the types who love game as art.