That's nonsense. How can EA consider it a 'win' moving one of their big christmas sellers to the retail-dead middle-of-the-summer?

"...Bioshock and Assassin's Creed, ostensibly action/adventure games that are really about the lack of choice or control one has when agreeing to play a game."

Do you genuinely believe that? Seems a bit of a stretch to say that NOToffering the player such choices is actually a postmodern statement about the lack of such choices in videogames. I think they were just badly designed games in that respect, simple as that.

I don't think there was an underlying desire to make the games 'really about' anything other than ... well, what they were actually about.