Ye, that's the difference between pen and paper and a game. Unless it's a singleplayer experience, gating stuff behind story progress doesn't bode well with players and ends up generating less repeatable gameplay. But for pen and paper, you have a DM that can adjust on the fly. They can give out a level for a daring escape, they can give inspiration based on player behavior, they can have a talk with players and hear their expectations on how their character should perform at this stage (i.e. "we have slain a dragon, and my dude is a paladin that isn't strong enough to wear a damned shield!"). They can give magic items that introduce novel ways to play a character. A game isn't advanced enough to do that yet.