Protagonists who act without player input in the service of plot or character developmentI just finished Bioshock Infinite, and I was blown away by all but two parts of the game. The first is that you can only carry two guns. The second is that Booker Dewitt is a moron and I am powerless to change that. I understand that the game deliberately wants to make him a character that you just happen to control for most of the game, and not an RPG player character, but it's really jarring when he does dumb shit like
Taking ball #77 after being explicitly warned not to
Just standing there as a five-foot-looking waif bashes him unconscious with a wrench
Bashing in Comstock's head having barely met him
Willfully submitting to death by drowning instead of trying to question Elizabeth's logic
Without any player input. There are plenty of games that railroad you down very particular linear stories, but none of them have ever been this offensively blatant with their "Fuck you, player choice!" attitude. The Half-Life games get away with it because all the railroading is portrayed as the result of external forces, not Gordon Freeman acting without the player's input. The first Bioshock gets away with it by explicitly stating that every stupid, horrible thing Jack does is the result of
In contrast, maybe 75% of the conflict and 90% of the tragedy in Infinite comes from Booker being an idiot with the self-preservation instinct of a worker ant. It also manifests in smaller ways, like him thanking Elizabeth when she constantly feeds him ammo instead of health as I imagine him swisscheesed with bulletholes but holding a fully loaded gun.