Sure your "choices" carry over, but what effect do they really have? There are some different characters you interact with, but otherwise you're on the same rails that any JRPG sets you upon. Not only that, but for all the improvements that are made the invested time to deliver them is robbed from the production of actualt content. How many hours of real storytelling was there in Mass Effect vs Baldur's Gate 1?
This is a point I take slight issue with.
When it comes to choices in games, what does that really mean? There is no real game I know where you can make 'storyline' choices that isn't on rails.
The only ones what arn't on rails are not really 'storylines' but emergent stories. Like say Mount and Blade. ("I fought the hated Nords for control of this important location and won with only a few casualtys, only to see heavy reinforcments riding towards me on the sunsets illumination. The only path was retreat, back to Suno or face oblivion.")
Its still just a state machine. With prettie graphics and holefully some if statements to refrence previous choices.
Nesrie makes a good point about the origin stories of DA, they don't change much but they give YOU (the player) a deeper understanding and YOU (the character you play) some backstory in the game. Without the origins your just another n00b faced warden recruit.
In todays RPGs the choices ARE the "world view, personality, or even approach to other characters" role play of the past. They arn't really to do with the set storyline at all.
While the state machine argument is correct, one could make that argument of our own universe. But the fact is with many games you don't even get to make some basic choices. You don't choose your enemy, they choose you. You don't choose your solution, it chooses you. Heck, in Dragon Age, you don't even get to choose where you stand when a battle starts. The loss of these choices over many generations of games is, in part, due to a conversion of focus from content to superior look and feel. Some even see this as a good thing and I can't say they're wrong, just that it isn't my preference.
These are the types of things I'm talking about. In Mass Effect 2 do you get any choice but to work with Cerebus? No. There's a galaxy of societies, organizations, companies, governments, etc... and you have to work with this one, even if your character's world view strictly forbids it. What if you want to work with the villains? What if you want to choose non-involvement? What if you could concievebly argue for any other possible organization in the entire galaxy to be the one you work with? Well we didn't write that. What about Liara? Why can't I join her on tracking down the Shadow Broker and put off dealing with the Reapers? We didn't write that either. Check out our new artillery though! Looks cool when it explodes, huh?
I'm talking about the all too precious few moments in most games these days where you actually get to choose the problem domain, instead of simply being presented with it. But to offer this developers have to write more than one path through a game, write more content, account for more choices when presenting later situations, etc... but their hands are full with developing awesome art assets.
A good example is the way you build your Keep in NWN2. You want to focus on income at the expense of the people? Be prepared to deal with Harpers and others looking to convince you otherwise. You want a stable economy? Well now you might not have enough to keep things running. A simple "state machine" yes, but by the time you're done, it feels like you've built a nation and depending on your character, have a reason to fight for it. Or not, maybe you gave control completely over to others because you don't want to be a leader or you just don't care. Your choices affect whether these people live or die later, how many survive and what their fate is, how powerful the enemy gets, who your allies are, your reason for fighting, etc... Unfortunately it even doesn't go as far actually allowing you to side with the villains or trying to be autonomous from coming events, but it broke some ground. Choice is good and here you have a lot.
We can also take Mass Effect 2 as an example, but in a different direction. Your choice of who ends up residing on the council may change some side quests that are offered, and even change the look of the Citadel and some other areas. But does that change who you ally with or what your goal is? Why can't you choose to just save Humanity and sell out the other races? With almost all Humans on the council would there really be the same problem with convincing them of a threat, especially if your character is focused on Diplomacy? Oh wait, Diplomacy is largely just another statistic to get you cheaper prices on weapons... There's only one solution to most situations and even if there is more than one "choice" the outcome is largely the same, with a small deviation like that maybe you lose access to an individual in your list of who comes to fight more aliens with you. About the coolest choice effect for me in this game is the chance at irreparable failure of your mission. Nice, but should this really be the Gold standard? Because there are those to point to it as such and dismiss any who would argue otherwise. Maybe not here, but I've had this conversation a few times.
It's this carte blanche acceptance of a "set storyline" that tweaks me the most though. It keeps the demand focused on art development instead of character or world development and it's why I would propose some find the industry in a state of decline today. In that view I'm inclined to agree with the OP. Sure, there's a market for these shiny new games, as has been demonstrated quite thoroughly, but to defend it as the only way to make a game, or to say there's no market for anything else dismisses larges groups of people out of hand. I think I and others are here then to voice our opinion on the subject and to demonstrate that there is a market for a product like this. I'm definitely not here to state that there shouldn't be a market for what we have now though.
Really what it comes down to is an expression of opinions and an intelligent discourse on their merit, which I'm glad to have found a good place to have that.
