That said, people theorising that expanded content = less interesting story is also true. But this is not the fault of the genre, or even the mechanics of the game. It is purely a conceptual mistake, with dev teams thinking that maximum freedom with a large range of toys is enough work done, without giving us meaningful things to do with them.
A perfect example from another Genre is Battlefield 3- it's got jets, and choppers and tanks and jeeps, but how many singleplayer missions took place entirely within any of those vehicles? Battlefield has all the tools and kit at it's disposal to create the most varied, wide reaching kind of singleplayer gameplay this side of ARMA II- and they utterly blew it because their creative team are, like many creative teams, just programmers at heart. This is why Crysis games always look so good but utterly waste the potential of any plot they have, as do most other games that shoot for cutting edge graphics above all else.
Oh and by the way:
Cues, and a restriction of choice, often lead to the player's greatest enjoyment of a videogame
I find the complete opposite is true. Walking into a courtyard in Call of Duty and seeing a skyscraper fall over or whatever doesn't interest me at all, because I know it's scripted, and will happen that way every single time. Sometimes the game even forces your view towards it. Getting lost in the wilderness in GTA and finally stumbling across a road, and seeing a dirt bike pull up at some lights only to have a 4WD brake too late and shunt the rider right off his bike? Unscripted? Completely random?
Now
that's enjoyment