One of the things I really enjoyed about Heroes Rise was its length. Many of the other CoG offerings ended early and abruptly for my tastes (e.g. Choice of Zombies was fun, but sent me immediately back to Zombie Exodus for a main course; Choice of the Dragon could have been twice as long and still kept me entertained). By contrast, Heroes Rise took its time, with the plot arc, cast, and detail of a good-sized novella. On my first read-through, based on my sense of the CoG “average,” I kept expecting the story to end. But it kept going, and took the time it needed to unfold the world and the story. I found that very satisfying.
To have a game of HR’s length that also has lots of significant plot variation based on your choices would be enormously time-consuming for the author (and lest we forget, nobody’s writing these as their day job). I’m impressed by the writing time that Zachary must have put into giving significantly different storylines based on your choice of sidekick.
Now, those stories do all feed back into the conclusion in similar-though-not-identical ways… and I can see the case that (having already invested as much time as he did) he could have written significantly different endings for the sidekick plots as well. And his extensive use of fake_choices will bug some people more than others.
But as someone who enjoys long stories significantly more than short ones, I’m willing to accept that for CoG games this will usually involve a significant trade-off in plot variation.