Bioshock...the first one

[David cgc]

I think he was being a bit of a wiseass, in that the protagonist is a faceless, nameless tabula rasa with no personality to speak of that does whatever other people tell him to.

And for the sake of the plot, he has to be.
That is the most brilliant thing about this game. It takes the main weakness of most shooters and uses it to its advantage.

The moment where you finally find out who you are, is almost metafictional in that you not only reevaluate the character you're playing, but yourself as a player as well.
In that moment you realise you're basically the same as Jack.

There was something similar in Marathon, but it didn't really go anywhere like the twist in Bioshock. It mostly contributed to backstory, if that.

Durandal wrote:
***INCOMING MESSAGE FROM DURANDAL***

Strive for your next breath. Believe that with it you can do
more than with the last one. Use your breath to power your
capacities: capacity to kill, to maim, to destroy.

And just where do your capacities come from? Why do you
always go where I want and do what I say?

Perhaps you're just running a fool's errand, doing everything
as I've planned, never able to change your course. You would
do well to believe that I know the outcome of your battle with
the Pfhor already, just as I can decipher the chaotic motion of
gas molecules in the clouds of Tau Ceti IV.

Or, perhaps, that is not the case.

Perhaps, you are doing what you were meant to do. Your human
mentality screams for vengeance and thrives on the violence
that you say you can hardly endure. Your father told you as a
child to always fight with honor, but to always fight. Do you
care about honor, or do you use honor as an excuse? An excuse
to exist in a violent world.

Organic beings are constantly fighting for life. Every
breath, every motion brings you one instant closer to your
death. With that kind of heritage and destiny, how can you
deny yourself? How can you expect yourself to give up
violence?

It is your nature.

Do you feel free?

You should go to this location
and retrieve a device that the
S'pht have provided for us.
It will allow you to slay more
Pfhor. Does that make you
happy?

***END OF MESSAGE***

It'd be interesting if there was an FPS (or any traditional game) where disobedience was a viable option (like, normally, not like that bullshitty "flawed orders" thing in the second level of Starfleet Academy). I just played a little Flash game, Loved, which had a take on the concept.