#3 is generally inevitable in interactive stories.
Boring math: even with just two options (wrting.com allows 3 for paid members), if writers don't end their threads often there are 2^level threads.
2 levels in that's 4 paths (e.g. after choosing a character)
3 levels in that 8 (e.g. after choosing an age or situation)
4 levels in that 16 (e.g. the introduction to the story)
So the story hasn't even kicked off yet and there are already 16 different threads started. If a good story requires a minimum of 3 more levels before wrapping up, that's 2^7 live story threads or 128 different paths. That's a lot of writing and I've seen plenty of stories with more levels.
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