"Moral" Choice systems and Choice systems impacting gameplay and story. How to do them right?

[ItsNotRudy]

That's still a pretty decent step up from a general reputation system across an entire game though.

Empowering any faction to ridiculous levels did not change a single thing in the wasteland until the final battle though (even then making the Brotherhood a superpower was useless). The Brotherhood could have marched up and retaken the powerplant from the 6 NCR fuckers guarding it (which I had already smashed with my giant laser) and Legion stayed in it's camp regardless of my routing everyone in Forlorn Hope and McCarran. Well guys, our enemies are defeated, let's just sit and wait.

True, but it's still better than having every group react to your character the same way just based on karma (which is the reputation part) but even in terms of empowering them, having it matter at the final battle is still more meaningful than having it just be an activity with no payoff at all. It's certainly not perfect, but it's still a step up over simpler systems (or systems with even less meaningful impact on the endgame).

Even in the final battle your entire progress in the game was hardly a factor. It all came down who you chose in the last quest. All your sins against anyone were forgiven as long as you handed them the robots they needed. Which was kind of stupid, why would they even trust you. The only effect doing anything before the ending quest was how it would appear in the final slideshow. There was too little reward or benefit for helping any side and your character is allowed to grow into such an unstoppable force that I felt it took the survival element out of the game altogether. Fallout 3 retains that feeling of scrounging for meds and ammo for a lot longer.