Black & White (2001)

I loved this game when it came out. You play as a god with the goal of gaining followers and defeating Nemesis. You can perform various miracles for your villagers like producing food or throwing fireballs. You have an area of influence that you cannot work outside of, and can increase that area by converting more followers. As you progress your choices affect how your hand (basically the cursor you use to interact), temple, and avatar look. Do more good, and everything looks Holy and nice. Pick more evil, and things turn dark and scary. As mentioned, you have an Avatar animal that can do things for you. There are a couple options, Ape, Wolf and Tiger that I can think of off the top of my head. One of the best things about this game, and a thing that earned it a lot of praise, was the ability to teach your avatar. There was a leash you could put on it that basically put it in learn mode. It was watch what you did and learn to do the same things. As it was left to do its thing you could reward or punish its behavior to teach it how to behave. So it would learn to help villagers get food etc, while you were off doing other things. There were two other leashes that would prompt it to act benevolently or malevolently depending on what you wanted from it. It really was an impressive system. And your avatar didn't have to match your alignment. You could be a wrath of the divine, burn down a village type fiery, but your avatar was helpful and kind to help the villagers recover. It was a really great game, and now I really want to play it again. oh! And I included a link to the song that has lived in my head for over 20 years. Enjoy!