I don’t think we should slide all the way to “it’s all the same”, which tends to be the lazying result of any topic like this that goes forever. Let’s take a non-detailed step back and remember some basic differences. If I compile a default Inform game, put a table in a room and an apple in another, I can go around taking and or leaving the apple in any room, eat the apple or do other things. They’ll have default responses but they’re doable. Depending on how I set the table, I could drag it around and stand on it in any room, etc. This is already a high degree of world modularity that CYOA won’t do out of the box, and isn’t suited to do if you build it up… but (a) it’s also a thing a CYOA primarily isn’t interested in doing because it has other strengths and (b) back in the parser game, it will need to be put some use to have its effect. We don’t help ourselves with all these "isn’t necessarily different"s. There are default degrees of difference that are real. We can say we can get a parser game and make it all choices (I was writing an extension that does this) or build up a big world model in a CYOA game and then be inundated by too many clickable links and lists, but these aren’t the core strengths of either model, are they?
-Wade