This post may have some viewpoints that can overlap with your questions.
From my point of view, in the case that you only play the game once, you can be playing a game that has a lot of choices on each point that all lead to the same output and maybe you never find that out. The first time you play a game you don’t know where the other choices lead, so if the choices don’t affect the story you could be feeling the exact opposite (until a certain point obviously)
Now, for branching your game, you can add different reactions for a npc, let’s say 0-30 / 30-60 / 60-100 % of relationship, you’ll have to write three times more than if the interaction with that character would be linear, and that’s only for one, if you have five characters and do that with everyone you’ll have a lot more.
I think it must be a balance, in the grade that choices affect things and the ramification control you need to do to not spiral down into an unfinishable monster that has too many branches.
Maybe what matters most is the story and not the choices. Maybe you can make a game with a few variables that only has two endings and it sells like gold and another with lot of choices and paths and it ends up gray and dull cause it’s all it has, choices.
It’s nice when you encounter a few choices that make you stop to think hard about which one you should choose, but I don’t think it is strictly necessary all of them be like that. You have a lot to play with, maybe even make it backwards, where simple choices are the ones that affect the story the most…