I like this long, thoughtful post by Ashelia on Hellmode about choices in video games. One is often presented with the opportunity, in games, to choose one of two (or more) courses of action.
A lot of times this doesn't really have much impact in terms of how things develop in the game, but it can be a way to personalize the character and the experience. The post suggests that it would be cool to have choices, and the moral decisions they often represent, actually mean something in the game.
It should actually matter whether you decide to kill innocents for personal gain, or rescue kittens from burning trees!
Obviously the more a player's choices are able to impact the course of the game's story, the more potential story branches you'd have to be able to get to, and the more complex things would have to be, so that's probably a lot harder to write and program...but it would be cool. Also, think of the replay value!
On the other hand, I can see a sort of upside to the more linear (or multi-linear) way for games to go. I mean, it's kind of nice to know that you can do x, y or z along the way, but that you'll still get to the same destination, isn't it? Because there's a story there, and you want to know how it turns out, and you like to know that you only have to play it a few times to try out all the options and grasp the whole picture.
If every choice you made really had the potential to make significant changes to the way things worked out in the end, you'd have to play the whole thing hundreds of times to get the full experience!
I'd never be able to leave the house.
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