SPOILERS!
I'm contractually obligated to inform you that the following article contains spoilers for the following games: Pillars of Eternity, Dragon Age: Origins/Awakening/Inquisition, Tyranny, and the Mass Effect Trilogy.
The hallmark of RPG games lies in the recognition and consequences of the choices the protagonist makes throughout the game or series and indeed, how aforementioned choices are handled can make or break a game. I'm sure a few of us are still fairly salty at the egregious way in which Bioware ended the Mass Effect trilogy, to the point where the amended epilogue did little to assuage us. Which was an added shame given how, in my opinion, the final game did a great job in validating many of my choices that spanned the entire series.
Despite not being entirely game changing, it was incredibly rewarding to have surviving characters and old friends make cameos and offer their aid but specifically your choices with Wrex and the Rachni Queen all the way from the first game allowing you to potentially have them by your side. I was beyond pleased to even have that reporter (whose name escapes me) from a small side quest in the first game make an appearance and salvage a situation in the third game.
The Dragon Age series of course also has a stellar record, in my book, of keeping track of one's choices. Having Loghain survive all the from Origins and possibly beyond as well as having the Dark Wolf in Awakenings take up my character's prior mantle was very rewarding. Tyranny, a newer title, went one-for-one with me. While I found their Conquest vignettes a fresh and welcome change in the way a prologue was conducted and very impressed with how they affected your character's reputation and reception by various factions - I was disappointed by how insulated the final DLC, "Bastard's Wound", was formatted in that the characters in the Wound fail to acknowledge your exploits. Granted, the reasoning may that the locale is simply too isolated but that's a poor excuse.
I mention Pillars again because, despite a few bugs, the debate with the Eyeless at the end of the White March II does a fantastic job of really tying in your actions across the game, possibly even against you. More importantly, the impact your choices have on your debate equate to a very drastic change in the pantheon as opposed to just a simply cameo later on as we usually see. It ended up being an incredibly moment when I managed to convince the Eyeless to resurrect Abydon with tempered memories.
As much as I enjoy all the various ways the choices and consequences can manifest, I understand what a problem it can cause for writers and designers moving forward as they have countless permutations to factor in and that sometimes things have to be streamlined or railroaded, but I hope that RPGs continue what in my opinion, makes them so incredible. Agency without choice or consequence would make for very dull games indeed.
