I'd agree that knowingly giving up something for something else can often be a satisfying choice, but to the exclusion of alternatives?
That's rubbish, frankly*.
The Witcher example is just about perfect- I don't want a little pop-up or similar to tell me what the consequences of letting the elves get weapons, or preventing them, are in advance- that encourages the worst type of metagaming. It's fairly obvious, situationally, that there will be consequences and you have a fair idea what they may be and that is all that is necessary. Either way you get consequences. The capacity to be surprised is a very important part of having a good story.
You don't seem to understand. It's not the CONSEQUENCE that needs to be known, it's the CHOICE that needs to be informed.
You need to have a pretty good idea what you're choosing - because otherwise it's just a person with his hands behind his back asking you to pick one.
You see?
In AP - FAR too often, you're asked to make a choice between 3 stances, without having a good enough idea what those stances will actually do, and without knowing exactly what you're effectively choosing between. The latter, because the dialogue is very quick and obscure - and you're actually expected to reply BEFORE the line is delivered.
Just like traditional CRPGs, where you're asked to choose between saving a village or a person. You know, where you know exactly what the choice is, and you have a good idea what you prefer, even if the outcome is blurry.
That's what I meant.
That's what makes it fun, because then you can actually pretend you made some informed choices, and created a positive outcome based on your best intentions.
And you have plenty of indications in AP, if you bother reading the dossiers you can find out very easily what most people like and dislike, and it's an essential part of and point of the story (and I'd argue, just about every good "interactive" story) that some may lie or manipulate you into making "bad" decisions. If you take, for example, the word of an obviously untrustworthy type at face value, or run around executing people because you're just following orders then you don't really have much to complain about if you don't get exactly what you expected. Sometimes there simply aren't any nice clean obvious solutions, much as is the case in real life.
Finding out what people like or dislike through those dossiers, is an incredibly gamey mechanic, that I frankly couldn't take seriously.
Even when it was obvious what you were supposed to reply to gain favor (or piss them off), it was FAR from obvious what that meant. I mean, you could intentionally piss people off or make them happy, but there's ZERO indication what you're going to gain from that, so it's just another random stab in the dark. Unless, of course, you pretend to actually understand their motivations.
*Fine, even to be encouraged in a strategy game like Civ, but Civ ain't an RPG by any but the most trivial of definitions and there's a fundamental difference in both decision making and story structure between the two genre.
Strategy is a huge part of any CRPG, and I'd claim C&C is just an expression of a compelling strategic aspect.
Developing your character and roleplaying can very easily be argued to be yet another expression of your strategy.
That's why I found the Civ example a perfect demonstration, because you don't actually know the consequence "the first time" - because you haven't played the game. But you're making informed decisions based on an idea about what you want from your empire. That can succeed or fail, and you will use those experiences on your next playthrough - but they typically MAKE SENSE.
AP just didn't make sense to me (and obviously many others) - the first time.