What other art forms have non story "bits" or parts of the story that are not controller by the author? At any rate drastic tonal shifts in movies and novels are generally criticized as bad things.
Except when they're not; see: black comedies and dramedies, action and adventure movies with romantic/dramatic moments, crime thrillers turning into horror flicks and so on.
Of course, the tonal shifts are better built in movies and books rather than video games, but that's rather a case of different mediums and environments.
But the fact it's more "drastic" and "jarring" (though I'm still waiting for those valid examples) in games is rather a part of video games in general, where everything is drastic and overblown. Ultimately, video games are a medium of gameplay over storytelling, with the story bits just being the small reward you get after completing the challenges.
This seems wholly irrelevant to what we're talking about. To have something similar, you'd have have the same scenes and then in the next scene Neo refused to attack a person because they're an innocent civilian. See how that is a dissonance and potentially displeasing to the audience?
Yeah, that's bullshit and I wouldn't enjoy it either.
But let's stop pretending that this is what happens in most video games.
I remember this game called Full Throttle, and I think there was a whole series called Police Quest...
Full Throtle, huh? I remember that game begins with you busting open a door, threatening a barman with a beatdown and then fighting a bunch of jackasses by throwing their bikes off-road. Hardly the most boring of a gangster's life.
You're right with Police Quest, though you do somewhat prove my point since PQ is the least well-remembered and beloved pf the Sierra games, even by fans of adventure games.
Anyway, those are adventure games, not action games. Even there I'm sure you would have pretentious bullshit artists argue that "solving puzzle is ludo-narrative dissonant and it hurts me in the butt". After all, people who use these kind of terms are the people who praise shit like Gone Home and The Walking Dead, where puzzles are minimal to non-existent and it's all about story.
Sorry, but if the purpose of the ludo-narrative dissonance conversation is to diss gameplay completely out of my video games, I'm heavily against that. If it can be made more logical and fit more with the story and tone, that's fine, no one is going to hate that - as long as you're able to do it properly.
But don't give me "press F to pay respects" or "move mouse to brush teeth" because I can't accept that bullshit.
So just stop the game before this and wrap it up with a text scrawl or something.
So you want a game where you only kill one dude, then a text epilogue where they tell you what happened? I'm not sure I get what you're trying to say here.
Well first we must define what is fun*.
...
*I'm actually not even kidding here. Millions of people found Fallout 3 more "fun" than Fallout 1. A big reason people like the first one more than the second one (which again is more popular) was that the first had more verisimilitude.
If it helps, I'm one of the people who never understood the bullshit criticism about Fallout 2's lack of verisimilitude. F2 has lots of faults, but gangsters and Monty Python references were not some of them. Mainly because the first Fallout doesn't hold much water in that regard anyway, with F2 just pushing more of the same. Gangsters, casinos, religious cults, pop-culture references, wild-wasteland cowboys. You can make the argument that the jokes and parodies were more crass in the second game, but you can't say Fallout is a better game because MOAR REALISTIC.
Again, it's a deep hole that doesn't lead to anything pleasant.
As for why many more people find Fallout 3 fun or why the Codex finds Fallout 1 more fun, that happens for entire different reasons. Better gameplay, actually plays like an RPG, much more pleasant to look at, better writing (as in actually clever and interesting rather than more "life-like") and so on. The people who like FO3 more are just dumb bastards who wanted an FPS with dialogue scenes.
Again, if you hate FO3 mainly because VAMPIRES, something is wrong with you.
You say a game should be fun first and story should come second. Well that's fine but it means the story should actually come second and support the actions you are actually taking as a player. If they're unrelated, I would question why that story is part of the game at all, and even worse when they cause dissonance, I want them to change one or both elements because I generally find dissonance displeasing and jarring.
So ... you're getting triggered by the dissonance?
I don't know man, you just sound like you're looking for the problem in the places it doesn't belong. Should video games not have stories unless they completely react to your gameplay style and choices in-game? Should the AI be so good that fighting one mook instead of hundreds be actually challenging as fuck?
Sure, lets do that. Right after we erase Fallout 3 from existence, bring back Black Isle together with Tim Cain to make Van Buren and Arcanum 2 and other PT-like games, solve world hunger and other such minor things
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Honestly, I could care less for stories in video games and I don't praise them either. Just remove them altogether and do good games with good gameplay and small blurbs of text for atmosphere, that's all I ask.
No one has said anything about plausibility. However, if a game doesn't have ludonarrative dissonance, then it doesn't have it. You don't need to say the term is bad because there exists a set of games which don't have it.
Considering the pre-menstrual attitude of the people talking about it, I'd hardly argue any of them are at all. Or at least, they're vastly misinterpreted due to political biases or some serious lack of understanding/experimentation/research. Kinda like your next quote:
Well the best GTA example is 4 when you do in the course of the game kill dozens if not hundreds of gangers and then watch cutscenes as the mc decides whether or not to kill one more and it's really jarring.
See, this is why I can't take you folks seriously. Did you actually play this game? Do you remember the specific cases when that happen? Do you remember much of the story of GTA IV and how it related to its gameplay?
I mean, seriously, you can do basic research like searching a wiki related to the game and you're done. You don't have to vaguely remember details from a game you barely paid attention or take the honest word of an idiot like Campster as truth.
Your cutscenes as the MC decides whether or not kill one more, I suppose you refer to those stupid choices you have to make during the game. Here, check out the choice (about 9) you have to make in the entire game:
http://gta.wikia.com/Player_Choices_in_GTA_IV
See how they somewhat fit with the story context. The first one actually gives you a reaction in-game if you decide to go dating instead of saving Roman.
The second one is the "ponder if I should kill" one. Except in this context it DOES actually make some sense, because it's relatively early in the story and it's a pretty small body-count by GTA IV's standards. You beat up some thugs, steal some shit, kill one of Roman's bully early on (again, with a comment from Niko if he doesn't), then shoot/kill in self-defense in one or two of the Jamaican's missions.
You see, Ivan is the first straight-up murder in the game. The first time you're sent to actively kill someone, as in chase him down and put a bullet in his face.
After this mission, you kill the guy who sent you to do the hit and from there-on is an on-going carnage where Niko becomes a straight-up gangster and hitman for various people. This isn't bullshit, the ingame story places Niko as an assassin. He's not a poor sod caught in a terrible place, swearing not to kill anyone anymore. He's a murder for hire and he hates himself for it.
The third one is there simply because you can kill the girl, but there's no reason to. You're after the money and a dude who shoots at you, there's no demand on killing her (and if you do, you get a reaction from her ex boyfriend).
The fourth one is the one closest to your problem. You're sent to kill a negro, you kill a bunch of his henchmen then you get the choice of sparring him or killing him. Yeah, you could argue this is bullshit but it still kinda makes sense in the context. The guy who sent you to do the hit was an asshole who blackmailed you, the target was unarmed and surrendering himself, he promised to reform and blabla. Also you still get to kill him later on anyways because he wants revenge and bullshit.
Then there are two or three choices where you HAVE to kill someone (out of 2 possibilities), it's mandatory. Again, lots of people seem to remember the story of GTA IV really wrong, as if Niko was a constant pussy who always acted innocent during the story bits or was only conflicted about one or two murders. He wasn't, in fact the "official" kill count (as in, stuff required by story aka assassination and shit and not nameless mobs) of GTA IV is bigger than the killcounts of GTA III/Vice City and San Andreas combined. Because Niko's defacto job in the game is that of a hired killer.
Then there's the big one, killing or sparring Darko, the traitorous soldier from back in Yugoslavia. This one also makes sense because it's a "personal" kill, since it ties back to his backstory in the war (complete with civilian killing and other nightmarish bullshit that are far worse than the mafia hits he does in the game) and the reason he's in Liberty City in the first place. Killing or not killing him is not "dissonant" because it's more about his own satisfaction of killing that dude and having his revenge; or not.
See, that's what I'm talking about. The game is not suffering of ludo-narrative dissonance, you're just a bunch of jerks who don't bother playing the games you bother criticizing.
You could make the argument "yeah bro but you can kill civilians and cops and shizzle". Yeah but you can also climb and jump all over buildings, or spend the entire game sitting and playing darts. That doesn't mean the story should conform to those free, meaningless gameplay choices and make Niko an X-TREME parkour sportsman or a Darts veteran. Sure, a better game would have the world react much better to the thinsg you do but no one called the GTAs some masterpieces (and IV was a dissapointing mess even to a fan like me).
There's no actual incentive for killing civies or cops. It doesn't count for 100% completion rate, it might not even have achievements tied to it. You have achievements for doing all the stunt jumps or beating the highest score in Darts, but not for senseless killing.
You seem to have not understood what ludonarrative dissonance is, and you seem to be mostly talking about tone and tonal shifts.
No one understand what ludonarrative dissonance actually is, that's the joke. It's a pretentious term used by pretentious faggots who never really attempt to explain or make a conscious effort to sustain their arguments. It's almost always the same bullshit coming from the same background.
. So much for not wanting chimp status fights. 
you people, I swear...
