Sure. And I see a bit of that in Wraith_Magus, like when he says that all games should make as much use as possible of spatial simulation. But he’s also saying things like this:
which I take to be a different issue. You can arguably tell different stories with text than you can in, say, a graphical representation of space. Articulating what you can and can’t do well in a medium seems like a worthwhile exercise.
And maybe even more usefully – what does ChoiceScript as a medium nudge us towards doing? Not (pace Wraith) like a straightjacket we can’t escape, but a natural tendency that we’d have to lean against if it was clashing with the experience we wanted to create? I don’t think Wraith is wrong when he says:
or points out that most CoG games thus slip into a structure where you’re pressed to make choices consistently with stat-maxing in mind – whether or not the choices actually make sense with what you think your character would do at a given moment. Achievements, now a core part of CoG, further incentivize playing your stats rather than your character.
Stats and story are two core elements of ChoiceScript, and they clash with each other–not inevitably, not inescapably, but pretty often. Stats are both a key strategy allowing the story to develop through delayed branching, and also an ever-present distraction that risks pulling people out of the story.