So...

[A.M Team]

I would love it if FG made a game that was a bit more opened ended in terms of story and level design as that was one of the critiques I had with SOMA for being more linear with story and level design than I expected.

There is actually way more events that are optional in-game rather than areas. It really depends on what you want out of the game: would you prefer more ways of traversing an area but the same events happen each time or would you prefer one linear area but with a lot of cool events that can effect how you go from A to B?

Spoiler below!

As for the story the choices you make should matter later on, because after beating SOMA once you realize the choices you make were pointless and it didn't effect the outcome of the game.

This has been the same for Amnesia. Yes, there were more areas to explore in Amnesia than SOMA but they were usually not very dense with details unlike SOMA (maybe because of the amount of detail work on SOMA might have had a hand in events over area design?) Personally, not knowing there are extra contents in a game is way better than knowing they're there and wanting to go back to them.