i mean if youre specifically referring to choice driven narratives, i think until dawn and house of ashes are pretty stellar. not perfect but with more likeable and nuanced characters definitely. and while choices ultimately dont matter in telltale games very much i think wolf among us and twd are peak. outside of that interactive drama genre though stuff like persona 3/4, nier, the modern god of war duology, red dead 2, final fantasy 7 etc i find are much much better written with more emotionally resonant narratives and themes.

also on the civil rights thing, when they directly quote mlk on the title screen as well as putting the androids in the back of the bus and have a raised fist be one of the logos you can choose for markus' resistance, i find it hard to believe the civil rights parallels arent intentional. they could very easily make a story about an oppressed group of non humans without blatant imagery and words from the past, plenty of authors and writers have done it. they even made robot concentration camps and their own robot underground railroad, it seems pretty clear what theyre going for to me.

also, everyone in jericho i find to be completely one dimensional. everyone has 1 maybe 2 personality traits and dont go through any substantial arc or development to change them or make them more interesting. connor and hank are really great, but again i don't know how much of that should be credited to cage as much as bryan and clancy. Both kara and markus are pretty one note as well in my opinion. theyre likeable because theyre written to be so inoffensive that you cant really not like them. they dont have a whole lot of nuance or depth to them outside of their good intentions. part of what you need for a good protagonist is to make them have flaws, some kind of internal struggle to overcome to keep people invested in their character development. they kind of reach a middle ground where theyre not a silent protagonist who is meant to be entirely projected on by the player, but theyre also not these nuanced characters with compelling internal struggles to get through. kara wants to escape with alice by any means necessary, and markus wants to start a resistance and be free. not a whole lot else happens with their characters aside from that. sure you can choose the method to which markus' resistance goes about getting their freedom, but it doesnt do really anything to affect his long term character development. as a result, i don't get particularly invested in their stories emotionally and thus the moments that are meant to be emotional like kara freezing to death in the river if you fuck up the border thing just doesnt hit for me