Further to this, Witcher also avoids the good/bad dichotomy that slightly ruins the choices in games like Mass Effect and Fallout.
Slightly ruins? It has been the everloving blight since Fable popularized that garbagio.
Not that I blame Fable, it did it first and was ABOUT pointless good versus evil.
Actually, Fable (2004) was preceded by Knights of the Old Republic (2003) which had a "light side/dark side" (and was made by Bioware).
In fact, in Baldur's Gate (1998) you would gain and lose "reputation" depending on your moral choices. Of course, this was a game where moral choices often boiled down to "kiss the baby/shoot the baby". Except I remember I once got "evil points" because a racist, angry mob was trying to burn a black woman at the stake just for being black (ie dark elf) and I felt "Huh, that seems unethical." Apparently this meant I had to slaughter the entire angry mob. Of course, it turned out she was totally evil. Because she's black (purple?).
Anyway, alignments were pretty much brought to the world of video games and made popular by Bioware.
My problem with Fallout is that the protagonist is really bland, so I'm having trouble paying attention to the story. But overall, my feeling is that none of my choices have any weight. I really think Bioware did a great job with Shepard from Mass Effect in terms of balancing customisation with a pre-defined personality. Now Bioware just needs to shake off their baggage and mature into Witcher-style morality and choices.
