Railroading would be if the choice was removed entirely and your character was made a revolutionary by force without the author asking the player. I think it’s true that it might annoy some people, but it’s still important in IF to ask a number of times in case the player does want to change their mind. When authors don’t, the complaint more often than not comes up that the player was not allowed to craft their own story as they went, but rather, they were shoved into an ending for which they weren’t prepared.
As for MeltingPenguins’ question, I prefer huge, epic, showstopping plots myself and honestly, it’s just because I am an extra person, haha. Don’t get me wrong, smaller and more intimate stories centered around a handful of characters are something I can go for as well, but I tend to speed through one-shot stories that start and end massive or series that start small and get bigger far more excitedly than the “there was this person who did this minor thing with their friends/lovers…and that was about it” stories. I’m a simple girl. I see “topple the government,” and I hit purchase.
As many have mentioned, I think it all comes down to whether the story was always written with a big or small endgame in mind or whether it was somewhat shoehorned in. Some of the trouble with the shoehorning may come from the nature of IF making authors feel like they have to give their audience every ending possibility that could ever happen under the sun though, including but not limited to the characters literally flipping the entire world upside down. I have not written IF, but I imagine it can be pretty difficult to handle the pressure for “bigger,” “better,” and “more choices with REAL impacts!” because what does any of that actually mean? The balance between structured story and chaotic sandbox is thin I’ve found.
Series usually wind up dealing with this better in my experience solely because they have more time and space to build the stakes; however, a great example of a story that started somewhat small and went surprisingly bigger than I had anticipated was Creme de la Creme from @HarrisPS. I thought it was handled well and crafted into the rest of the plot slowly enough that it wasn’t simply dropped in your lap suddenly leaving you wondering wtf just happened. Some may not consider one academy’s corruption as being a “big” ending of course, but what had drawn me to Creme de la Creme was the thought of being a snobby rich kid doing snobby rich kid things for a couple hours, so I definitely was not expecting a fat plate of covered up murder, nor overthrowing the leader of a kidnapping ring.
It’s always nice to have concrete examples of solid writing advice.