Agreed with branching paths. I think I was most intrigued by a pic from the old BoingBoing preview I linked where the different sites you went to changed your character, like you gained more charisma from going to Flickr. Then the quests could also have more in-game effects since they guide you to sites with certain qualities, instead of raw data points.

And great review, spot on. In fact, to add a ton more variety all they’d have to do to is put a mechanism on the missions that let you choose a non-linear path. That should be easy (just throw in another link), and it could simulate those “Choose your own adventures” roleplaying books. Hopefully something like that is in the works.