Thing is, stories are not gameplay. You praise "like a novel" but oppose "like a movie". I don't see much difference, and I don't want my game to be either of those things. I want it to have mechanisms, which I interact with tactically to bring out their emergent properties and exploit them. I want it to be a functioning, complex, living thing. So the mention of NPC behavior in Ultima is the right idea: you can understand how the NPCs work, and you can make use of your understanding for fun and profit.

Those mechanisms ideally also represent some fictional world, so there's something approximately similar to a story to be found there, but that's plenty enough story already. The rest is the player actually having adventures, spontaneously. There's some use for a story in providing a goal and an ending, but beyond that it's likely to put the game on rails, like a movie or a novel.

I mean, a linear game has a charm of its own. I also enjoy point-and-clicks. There are different genres of game. But I think an interactive organic open world is the true one.