Player Choice

In the wake of the Assassin's Creed Odyssey controversy - which you can read about here if you're interested although it is by no means essential reading, just the inspiration for this thread - I'd like to ask you: how important is player choice to you?

Are you the kind of person who takes greater fulfilment in personalising your experience (be it through character customisation, dialogue trees, skill trees, etc) or are you content with playing a game where you have no influence over the design? What are some of the best and worst games you have played that have allowed you to make your own choices, and what series do you believe could benefit from letting players choose how they play?

Very important. I like feeling connected to my character and that largely comes from customizing a look I'm satisfied with and building its own skills. Doesn't mean I'd not play otherwise though, but it really does give me more attachment if I'm not playing your standard premade character that doesn't have its life laid out for it. Guess I wouldn't mind if something similar to your linked article happened to a character I was playing, but would definitely prefer it not.

I never mind a lack of customization, since the most I usually change is clothing.

Even when I'm allowed to design the character in the beginning, I don't stray far from the default look.

I did not know about the controversy, but judging just from the linked post, it seems like people are upset mainly because what was promised by the devs was not delivered - it's more of a false advertisement than anything. Any other game that did not state what Ubisoft had claimed would be in the game (freedom of choice) wouldn't get this much hate, and that I can understand. If I am told that my choices will matter and play a large part in shaping the story, I would be upset when they actually don't. It's why I didn't like Telltale Games - there's always a disclaimer at the beginning telling you your choices matter, but if you most of their games more than once, very little actually changes based on your dialogue and action choices, and the stories are quite linear, in my opinion.

But in general, without a bold statement like that, I do like customization and choices, but I do not mind if they are not present. It's a nice added bonus to me when customization and dialogue options are very rich, but if a game is what it is and excels at what they are trying to do, whether it's to just tell me a really good, linear story or have really fun gameplay and mechanisms, the customization/choices aren't necessary for me to enjoy the game.