What good examples are there of role playing games or adventure games that allow players to shape the storytelling of the game? Ie theres a million games that let you choose what colour hair you have, or how tall you are, but what other ways have games allowed a user to customise the experience? For example Knights of the old republic lets you choose whether to be good or evil or somewhere in between, that affects how things pan out in the later game. And in MGS you effectively choose between otacon and meryl by giving in to or resisting the torture.

In Indigo Prophecy/Fahrenheit, the story is somewhat flexible. It's sort of a simplified adventure game, which looks like one big cut-scene (where you have control over the characters, of course).

The story does follow one predefined path, but every little decision you make as you play along can affect it in a small way to alter it from the the base story. You get to control multiple opposing characters, so for example, you can purposely play worse on one to make the others job easier, or the other way around. Most of the scenes can be played out in many different ways. You can exit the diner calmly, after paying for your meal, or storm out the back door with blood on your hands.

I think the best way to describe the story would be that it's elastic. You can stretch it from its predefined path, but there's a limit to how much you can flex it. In the end, it comes back to the same place in the story, but there are many different ways you could've gotten there.

I must play farenheit.
People generally seem to dislike elastic stories I think its a great way to be told a story your way.

Clock Tower had like eight endings. You could just run the heck away in the very beginning by stealing that car, or you could go all the way through tot he climactic rooftop showdown. It was more a branching tree than true flexibility, though.

Didn't the Fire Emblim series have something like this? I played about five minutes of a game that was in Japanese, but I'm told that the game takes place over two generations,a nd the interactions between characters shapes their lives and relationships, and some of them have children that join your army in later campaigns, so your decisions can determine which characters are introduced and which story arcs are pursued.