I’d love to give this more likes than the one. Have these instead! <3<3<3
At the risk of sounding like a jerk, if people want to play exactly the character they want they’ll have to make their own game or look at something more freeform than CYOA/IF. Like Collaborative Fiction or Tabletop RPGs or LARP. I’ve done all those and enjoy them for their own merits but any prefabricated game only ever allows for you to make the choices someone built into them anyway. Like in those Skyrim vs. Dragon Age debates when people would say, ‘You can do whatever you want in Skyrim!’? That’s a phallacy.
But I digress. I’d argue that immersion is achieved by choosing as your character would. Players might enjoy the end result in spite of it not being what they expected. Which would be cool.