To me, this is different choices in player autonomy.

Rockstar is bad at it, but you know what the worst was in my experience?

Hogwarts Legacy. (Note: I pirated this trash to not give Rowling any money)

Right off the bat, at the beginning of the game, you’re meant to follow your Professor through a dark seemingly endless empty space. If you leave the side of your Professor, nothing terrible happens, just big red scary words cover the screen saying you’ve failed because you lost track of the Professor.

In a game that actually respects player autonomy, you wouldn’t just be like “Hey, you’re doing THIS MISSION WRONG” (which is basically what the message said in nicer terms), you would give the player an actual event showing why it was dangerous.

What would be so hard about animating a shadowy horror coming out of the shadows and snatching you, instantly killing you? At least then you have learned why you shouldn’t venture alone. Because there are scary monsters in the dark and they could kill you! This respects the players autonomy by allowing them to explore but also giving them clear limits that fit the theme of the world in which they exist. There’s definitely scary horrors in Harry Potter, and a myriad of things that could kill a new student. We don’t see any of them, just big all caps “YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG!”

Nope, instead we’re fed a line about how you failed because you didn’t follow directions properly.

The game would pose further issues, like not being able to jump over obstacles that your character is clearly jumping higher than. Invisible walls is another thing which disrespects player autonomy and breaks world immersion.

It’s been a while since I played it, but the whole game was crammed to the gills with these kind of wag of the finger “we didn’t tell you to play that way so don’t” instead of using compelling story-based reasons to keep people from doing those things.