To quote you, "This, right here, is wild."
Which is it? It can't be both. If you mean illusory in the sense that they're not real in the meatspace sense of real, then yes, they're illusory by dint of them being choices in an elf game. If you mean illusory in the sense of them not having meaning or consequence in the game, then they're clearly contradictory statements.
The answer is: Both. I get that you think it "Can't Be" but, yeah. It is.
Because our Consequences are, likewise, illusory. Not just in the sense of Meatspace (In which all of our choices are -also- illusory and predetermined by the starting state of the Universe at a time no later than the Big Bang) but in the space of the game itself. Any consequence is made up by the DM at the time they decide the Consequence must occur. Oh, they might have a list of options written somewhere, or try to envison the circumstances and narrate something based on a character's explicit actions... But those consequences have no more weight than any illusory choice.
Especially Narratively. Which is to say that Choice and Consequence are equally important in the narrative, because they're both just as illusory.
It becomes a shell game if the DM moves things around so that the players' choices don't matter.
I had a big response for this, but I'm gonna move it down to a different part of the quote 'cause you FINALLY hit on an important bit.
So it's bad when no matter what you do the DM forces their predetermined story on the players? Got it.
Ehhhhh... You've taken this one out of context.
So now it's perfectly fine when no matter what you do the DM forces their predetermined story on the players? That's confused.
You took this one out of context, too. They both go -together- to try and express the next little bit where you finally get to it:
It's only a question of scale between Quantum Ogres and the Dead Princess. Both remove meaningful, consequential choice from the players.
Scale.
If you're moving around an Ogre and it's not specifically an "We're avoiding the Ogre" situation then it doesn't matter whether they choose the left path or the right path as long as where the left and right path go (a dead end versus to the exit, for an example) still hold true. They've made a choice and it has consequences and who -really- cares where the ogre is?
Now if it's specifically a "We're avoiding the ogre and trying to get to the exit" situation and they pick the way out after listening at the doors and then you swap the exit and the ogre room to make sure they have failed, then yeah. That's pretty crappy of you as a DM.
Nothing in reality exists as a binary. It's all a matter of degrees and scales, of levels and depths. Trying to present ANY illusion of choice as automatically wrong and theft and bad and GRRR YOU BAD DM WASTE PREP TIME Gnashing of Teeth Tearing of Hair...
Just doesn't really work. Well. To quote you: "To you, Perhaps."
But that kinda abject binary, which I kinda called out from my first post and your positively and negatively charged speech, is gonna result in literally nothing in any discussion resulting in any kind of answer to your initial question. There is no "Good Enough" answer.
The problem is that the DM has forgotten that it's a collaborative storytelling game. If the player doesn't want to engage with those hooks, the DM should talk to the player and design better hooks.
Yeeeeeah... see... that kind of statement which presumes that there are no bad actors among the playerbase of D&D. And it's -hilarious-. I've had at least a dozen players, that I can -remember-, who decided to throw hissy fits or play counter to the story and situations they were in just to be contrarian. Most of them with CN or CG on their character sheets.
"It must always be the DM's fault!" says a lot, here.
