[timwiseman]

It seems there is a disagreement as to what constitutes depth. If you want a "Sandbox" then most old-school RPGs will feel very shallow. You have numerous choices, but exploration and interaction outside those choices is limited.

On the other hand, if you want control over the story, many sandbox style games will feel shallow. Batman: Arkham City gave you a great sandbox with tons of things to discover and the story was fantastic. But your control over the story was minimal, limited to pretty much whether to do a side mission or not. You had absolutely no choices that affected the core story at all. Infamous 2 was similar. You had a lot of area to explore and interesting side missions, but you had only about 3 real choices and they lead to only 2 endings. The story was deep, the sandbox was wide, but your control was minimal.

I think there are great games on both ends (and in the middle) of this spectrum, but "sandbox depth (or width)" is very different from "story control depth".