I’ve followed Telltale since 2005. I own all of their titles, I’ve played all of their titles. I’ve seen the evolution of their games from classic point and click to their current story-driven narrative games. For myself, story is king and they’re the kings of this new niche they’ve carved out for themselves.

Their gameplay isn’t bad, it’s just different. The way they develop their titles doesn’t lend itself to being able to have all of these wildly diverging paths that all end up going off on their own. It’s a baseless complaint anyway, no other modern titles do that so why do people try to hold Telltale to a standard no one else meets in the first place?

That all said, how players react to the story does shape how the story evolves later on because they develop an episode at a time. They track the choices people make in every episode and use that information to help guide them in where they’re taking the story. So yes, your choices do matter just not in the way most expect.