"Sometimes" is a weasle word, but yes, the "great forces" view of history can lead to a disparaging of agency (e.g. choice) and various flavors of determinism (some of these approaches, like Marxism, are explicitly deterministic).

There are of course ways around this; one need not embrace a totally anti-individual view of history to not think the "Great Man" view of history is bunk. Most historians tend to try and identify the relative contributions from "forces" and from "individuals" — they are not actually incompatible ideas (forces make the context that can give individuals the power of agency, which in turn modifies the context).