Essential Elements - What makes a good RPG?

Choice is huge.

In a tabletop setting I generally have a ton going but I always allow the players to go with the flow. It doesn't matter if my finely honed political system is awesome, if it bores them I lose and we all lose. It's essential that there be an underlying structure though.

In an MMO or Console game, I need to be able to explore the world and basically do silly things or off-the-board stuff. I'll finish the main quest eventually...but without side stuff to learn, it's pointless. I agree on the customization aspect since I almost always have a character concept in mind and if I can't get the hair, suit, etc. down I feel really, really annoyed.

As for themes, really wish politics would be more of a thing. Skyrim had this to some degree where you could side with factions and influence stuff. Health worries (to a degree) are cool too. The people remembering what you've done, learning to use vehicles, so much out there.

I don't think customization is required to make a good RPG, but I might only think so because I considered Telltale's The Walking Dead to be a role-playing game, but it's a video game, and not all role-playing games are video games let along electronic games but often card games or board games. But customization is important for satisfying "role" play. It's nice to have some way to control the definition or characteristics of a role. Another nice thing but very much simply a bonus is an inventory system (which is like an extension of customization), and a further other is a map, a board, a set or a stage of some sort, a finite open world.

How about emphasising more *restriction* of choice, i.e., that choice is possible but difficult or biased in certain directions. And that customisation can only come about through choices made within the game and how they are supported or resisted by other players.
Characters should also be customisable, but only after one has a character allotted where choice is not involved: you get what you get and then have to work with it to make it the character you want it to be.
I don't there should be a story. The story is what happens in the game. There need to be aims, targets, obstacles, a backstory, I guess: but the full story should be what evolves in the game, with room for radical revisions if the players can swing it.
The rules have to be tight so that the "world" holds together enough to have plausibility and to have sufficient substance to withstand the strain of customisation and revision.

But I'm talking about mimicking real life really, because real life is an RPG and the escapism of playing should address the frustrations of reality.

I actually have found most RPGs I've tried to be rule-laden and cumbersome and not user-friendly to newbies - like real life, in that respect, perhaps. The game I find most intriguing, but have never been in the right group to play, is Nomic. An RPG version of Nomic would be terrific.