One of the issues with branching paths and all of that is that it's a lot of scripting work to do, provided the game doesn't wholly rely on algorithms anyway.
The opinion of the many developers stating that doing this huge amount of extra work for something the player might not even see is a valid one, yet I always have to *sigh* when I think of sequences like Planescape Torment's true climax. To me anyway, not that the ending sucked, it plays out equally, and it's as far from suckage as they come. It's an event that occurs about half-way through the game. A sequence of a kind I haven't seen in any game since then, which is not surprising, considering time/budget constraints of many projects or how many developers think about subjects like these in the first place.
Basically, it's a twenty+(!) minutes sequence that consists of nothing but branching dialogue, prose and special goodness, provided you like to read A LOT, that is.
A sequence in which you finally get some answers to questions that have been bugging you ever since the beginning of the game. A sequence of choices and consequences, in which you decide over the destiny of those who are travelling with you and your own alike. It's like the best of Infocom, Fallout and pure awesomeness all rolled into one, and, er, anyway:
Filling out the application for beta testing as we speak.
