I agree with your comments on the GOAT in Fallout 3 and New Vegas. Especially in the latter, where it is very artificially inserted into the story. It was plain “clunky”, and every time I have “taken the GOAT”, it got it wrong: Whilst medicine, repairing things, and science might be my personality, I also know I am playing a game in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. I can’t do my preferred activity (staying at home self-employed in a safe environment), I have to go out there and pick up a gun. In such an environment, even pacifists need a weapon.

The idea of being observed and the game reacting accordingly is a fascinating one. I remember playing Deus Ex for the first time, and being so flattered that Paul Denton had noticed the care I had taken to be stealthy and not kill anyone.

In many ways, this is a natural development to open world, non-linear gameplay. A game that literally plays differently not simply for the paths you choose (like Fallout or Fable, as two quick examples), but also for the person that you are, from the beginning on. Thinking off the top of my head about HOW you could do this… I guess measuring the time spent in various places, how much attention you pay to newspapers, how often you save the game before coming into a conflict, combat style, speech style…. Fallout 3 and New Vegas do a fair bit of this, especially with the improved faction reactions in New Vegas.

I quite like the idea of a game style that develops slowly, that is initially quite linear but slowly changing, as opposed to changing instantaneously with massive rises or falls in “karma”.