Skyrim vs Dragon age - Avatar vs protagonist

One of the first things I wanted to do when I became a game designer was to create a role playing game which maximized the possibility for choice for the player, I believed that all a game truly needed to make a truly immersive role playing game was choice and feedback. However after a few titles that follow this concept emerged I found them lacking when it came to the actual role play value and immersion, it seems that when this is the case the player is not in fact playing a character but an 'avatar'. The avatar of a player has absolutely no role playing value and is little more then a doll to represent the player's interests, it seems as though in this sort of situation you would feel more role play value 'as if you were there'. However the reality is quite different, what actually seems to happen is the player feels no attachment to the avatar as an actual character, thus no role play value is generated.

I have been running a World of Darkness role playing game recently primarily as a research tool since my original project subject was the WoD IP and moving it to a digital medium. However I have continued the game because it is a storytelling game allowing me to see how players react to role playing stimuli, I am also recording the games to review how people react to parts of the game. What I have found about the game which has put me onto this line of inquiry is that if you give the players a blank canvas of an area and do not give them clear goals they will not decide any for themselves. They will feel lost without any feel for the character even though they themselves are the character, they do not attempt to try and tell their own story but instead await to be given the story to work from.

It is off this that I base my hypothesis that choice alone does not allow players freedom, the more choice you give to somebody after a certain amount actually makes things harder to do at the end of things. It seems that there is a big difference between playing a role playing game and role playing a character, playing a character does not actually inspire roleplay but is instead seen as mastering a system. The player cannot really ever feel the emotions of the situation imagined to them, however what they can do is emote with a fictional character so long as they completely acknowledge that the character is not in fact them but a separate entity with their own goals and desires, you are simply imposing your will upon them not becoming them.

Evidence:
Bioware RPG stratagy
Wod Game

(Randy Pitchford, creator of Borderlands 2)

The above link features a talk by the creator of Borderlands 2 where he talks about the importance of choices in games, but more importantly how people react to choice in certain situations. He reported that after a series of tests people only really care about the worst option and the best option when it comes down to it, people also seem to think more positively towards the choices they make and negatively towards the choices they did not make. With these considerations borderlands includes a lot of simply choices between 2 different outcomes, the purpose of this is not to allow diversity in an end result but to give the player more choices, simply because choices are empowering to gamers even if they do not have any real power.

(Mass effect, Bioware)

A prime example of the above teachings is Bioware's Mass effect IP, a game that offered series of choices for the protagonist which had a rather large amount of impact to the storyline, much like the one shown here. However they eluded to a branch in the ending of the game which could never have lived up to its own Hype. The most successful part of this game series however is that they did not need to live up to the impossible goal they set because they made every single choice matter on a personal lever to the player, this was do to the high levels of empathy the player could feel towards their protagonist. The 'shepherd' had lots of well written character development and relationships with their crew members which allowed for a significant roleplaying feeling and the ability to see serious value in every single choice that the player makes.