> My personal preference would be to have a single, on rails story, where the player don't truly have a choice. It's an interactive movie.

I can't bother to play those kind of games. A movie will be able to deliver its stories a lot better than a game.

But with choice and branching you get to appropriate the protagonist(s) and some story events can be a lot more impactful then. Lately I played Cyberpunk for which you have some choices in most missions and the endings hit different. If anyone involved in the DLC story is around: kudos to everyone involved in making the "face in the crowd" ending. You play some almost super heroic character and due to your choices (which involve betraying and killing a lot of people) you get to survive: alone and back to generic human power level.