As for escort quests, I’ve often wondered about what makes Ico okay when we revile this in other games. Probably the relatively not-stupid AI of Yorda is a big part of it, as you say. I think the way the characters are animated and directed to look believable as children—such as in Yorda’s timidity when she zaps open a doorway—might also make us more forgiving, to help us make them feel real. The blank-faced robot nature of so many game characters, unwilling to follow even the simplest instructions to avoid their own demise, is definitely one of those narrative-breaking moments for me in a lot of other games.

I can’t remember perfectly, but I believe the guys behind that site made a point of having the first thing you see in the game they designed/wrote — Portal — be a crate.

(1) you’re an action hero, there’s no way you’re carrying any armor other than what you’re wearing;

(2) you can carry four weapons max: the two varieties of swords you’re trained with, and two others (one large, one small);

(3) all your weapons are drawn on your avatar.

(2) leads to a real paucity of weapon types – but since you’re trained in swords, you’re probably only going to use two swords – works better with a strongly-constrained character definition than it would in Fallout.

(3) leads to some clipping issues, but they aren’t too bad.

And on Crates, Fallout 3 does tend to put weapons & ammo in gun lockers.

Jason:
I think maybe the least jarring solution that allows us to keep that system is using protagonists who are somehow superheroic—armored, resistant to damage, whatever. I also think a game that portrays gun damage more realistically could work, but would also have to encourage a more conservative fighting strategy. This is what I really loved about the old PS1 fighting game Bushido Blade: You’d circle one another for a while because the point was to get a single, lethal strike, perhaps incapacitating some limbs if you miss along the way.

And as for healing, I did kind of like how Alone in the Dark makes you take time between fights (because you probably won’t have time in the middle of them) to bandage visible wounds in real-time. I’m willing to buy that system more, though, when the damage is from occasional bites and scratches, rather than constant run-and-gun gameplay.

CS:
I did appreciate that about Fallout 3 (especially when I realized they could shoot for you AND you could tell them to stay put). Resident Evil 4 was kind enough to provide dumpsters for your charge to hide in, too. I think it’s a good sign that I’m having a hard time thinking of a game that does this poorly; I know I’ve played plenty of awful escort missions, but perhaps they’ve been done better in recent years as people become more aware of how hated they are.

To consider another alternative, I especially liked the escort mission in (one of the ends of) Kane and Lynch, which kept going even if you weren’t very good at escorting.