Favorite and Least Favorite Protagonists in Video games - The thread where we sperg about the people we play as

rabo said:
Really good mentions in here.

Samus (Before Sakomoto ruined her) is pretty high up there. But as far as my list of favorite it pretty much coincide with my list of waifus ;P

But protagonist I hate? Oh boy... Well we can start with Other M Samus (THE BABY! THE BABY! THE BABY!)

Aiden Pierce, AKA, I'm so mad that my crossing over some people got my niece killed. Really fucking hard to sympathize with somebody who's entire fate is because he screwed people over. I'm supposed to feel bad? That you're on a revenge killing spree because somebody took revenge on you. Two wrongs don't make a right! Also, how many other people's nieces did you kill by hacking those traffic lights and causing 10+ car pileups?

New Lara: I'm one of the few people who think she looked better than the original (Altho she really seems to get plainer looking with each game). But everything else, god, she has so much daddy issues. You know she's going to end up some 50+ dude's cum dumpster. Gotta work those daddy issues! I can't believe she's still going on about this shit in the third game OMG CHARACTERS GROW!!!!

Gordon Freeman. That's right! Come at me, I'll fight you! There are place where a silent protagonist works. Half-life did because at that time, protagonists in FPS did not generally speak. Sin's dude was one of the few exceptions. But playing HL2 which has such an emphasis on story, and to just be this sap who seems to have no will of his own, just doing what everybody else tells him to do. I know he's supposed to be a vehicle for the player and it would have been fine if I didn't see him get elevated to such a god status by the nerds. Presented like such a badass and stuff. He's a MIT nerd, I always figured his experience in HL was a harrowing one. Not one he comes back from all badass and shit.

Sonic, he's responsible for so many god damn furries.

I could keep going but I'm gonna blow a vein at this rate.
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FTFY, he micromanaged the making the making of Other M so hard he was legit looking over everyon shoulder to bitch if they did anything different than what he wanted even with the gameplay
 
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Favorite characters:
Postal Dude. Postal 1 made him a mad man on a shooting rampage that thinks he's a hero but the sequel is where his personality shines since Postal 2 trades the dark and disturbing characterization for a less disturbing and humorous character. His goals in Postal 2 were all about doing what were suppose to be normal mundane task we do in real life only for things to take a turn for the worse. Best part about him was also the various sayings and one-liners he gives.

Caleb. Gun-slinger villain protagonist from Blood whose one of the few characters I play as that in no way is a saint. His goal is revenge, he's not in any way repentant of what he does or did in the past and like Lo Wang, Doom Guy, and Duke Nukem, he's a one man army with a variety of guns. The cutscenes help cement his character as a not-so-good guy in that beyond cremating his former love interest, he simply takes out the beating heart of an ally wrapped in spider webbing and shoots down a monk after killing his former master.

Agent 47. The guy is a professional assassin who tries to find the best way to take down a target without making the death look like an obvious hit. Best part about him were the various disguises he could get, even if said disguises could look ridiculous.

I can't really think over for any least favorite protagonist from games I played. I could list Battlefield 4 but the character was just a silent protagonist and I have other gripes with that game. The Deputy from Far Cry 5 may as well get a spot since really, they just have to go with taking in Seed or letting him go, not having the idea of simply shooting Not-Jimbo Jones/Korresh in the head and being done with it at the end of the game. Before that, there's also all the shit that happens to them when kidnapped by the heralds of Seed. I get the instance is that some hunter or group of cultist knocked you out but it really didn't help to the character in any way. The deputy essentially just felt like a bastard child for the Far Cry 2 protagonist.
 
Zaryiu said:
FTFY, he micromanaged the making the making of Other M so hard he was legit looking over everyon shoulder to bitch if they did anything different than what he wanted even with the gameplay
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He was apparently moved to tears by the cutscenes. Sakomoto-san has reached depths of waifufaggotry that should not even be possible and put it into the world as a video game.
 
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Your Weird Fetish said:
He was apparently moved to tears by the cutscenes. Sakomoto-san has reached depths of waifufaggotry that should not even be possible and put it into the world as a video game.
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How much damage can a producer do to a game? One article i read he was a producer for Metroid Prime 4
 
Zaryiu said:
How much damage can a producer do to a game? One article i read he was a producer for Metroid Prime 4
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I think half the time a producer is just a dude collecting royalties. Not that I'm gonna buy Prime 4 anyway. I mean, I loved the prime games, but I just am not interested in their current console.
 
That little two-legged doodad in Tempest.

All kidding aside, I liked how "Gordon Freeman" was your silent self, there were a few 4th-wall breaking moments I loved in those games. I honestly didn't care for some of your "Friends" in GTA3, though.
 
Your Weird Fetish said:
I think half the time a producer is just a dude collecting royalties. Not that I'm gonna buy Prime 4 anyway. I mean, I loved the prime games, but I just am not interested in their current console.
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Same but i still hope it's decent, Based on hints (It was confirmed that the ship at the end of Prime true ending of Prime 3 was Sylux's, Federation Forces true Ending has Sylux forcefully hatch a Metroid) so i would be surprised he show up eventually
One of the Unlocables called Memories of the Chozo show what looks like Evil Chozo so I think they and Sylux are the threats in the next games
 
Your Weird Fetish said:
I don't know what a Sylux is. Last Metroid game I actually played was Prime 3.
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Sylux was one of the characters from Metroid Prime Hunters. That's all I really know because I found the demo uninteresting so I didn't bother with the full game. I'm really unsure about Prime 4 since Retro isn't behind it and Sakomoto wasn't outright fired for his attempt to kill the Metroid franchise.

But yeah, count me in as someone who fucking loves most iterations of Samus but fuck the Other M version and, to a lesser extent, the Fusion version as well.
 
Fusion was ok, I just hated the suit (I also am the only person on earth that preferred Prime 1 Samus to the Zero Suit version too though so take that as you will). I never imagined Samus would have a very interesting personality in a game written by Nintendo anyway. Well, I guess you could say Other M Samus was...interesting, in the Chinese proverb sense of the word.

Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't people basically never fired in Japanese corporate culture? Just moved to some small out of the way office and never heard from again?
 
Yeah. Japanese people get shamed into resigning. Or rather, they are expected to resign.
And yeah, I'm aware Sakamoto is the true culprit here. It's just... How can you not understand your character to that level?
 
Clop said:
I'm going to pick my nominees from point'n'click, not only because I think the characters matter the most in such a writing-heavy genre, but also because puzzle adventure games managed to truly spark my passion with games when I was in, like, fucking elementary school. And I couldn't even read English (until a few months after I picked up The Curse of Monkey Island.)

My least favorites come neck and neck towards the finish line:

Kathy Rain from her titular game (and I wouldn't even remember her name otherwise)
and
Deponia-series' main character Rufus.

The tie is broken by Rufus for being such a fucking shitty motivator that I actually stopped playing within the first game of the series. I checked in from someone I knew played more than the one game and they confirmed that it wasn't readying up for a twist, the character was always going to be a complete dipshit with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Rufus can go fuck himself. Kathy Rain just barely loses only because I managed to finish the game while shaking my head at how pathetically glassy her character was. It was also a shorter game, and I was so confused by her tazing a homeless man that I sort of glazed over the part where she was ranting about gun statistics to someone threatening her with a loaded weapon.

Sorry, I think I digressed there for a second. Moving on.


My favorite character nominees are going to most definitely be Fran Bow and Rosangela Blackwell

Fran because it was one of the few times where nonsensical puzzles made perfect sense because I was (arguably) playing a schizophrenic person and it was fucking creepy cool.
Rosangela because she's just the right kind of respectable underdog in a mystery-solving setting (and she did it without ever tazing homeless people, Kathy.)

I'm gonna pick both because fuck you it's my disturbingly obsessive post (and because I'd feel really fucking bad for not picking the other. That's how much I liked the characters.) See you next year!
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I liked Deponia. I played all four of them. The whole point is that Rufus is a twunt, yes. He's also a deconstruction of your average adventure protagonist - wanders around stealing everything that isn't nailed down, sees characters and places and people as mere means to an end. Kathy Rain was not that good though; Kathy was trying too hard to be a wannabe tough girl and the plot was lifted wholesale from Gabriel Knight.

If you like asshole protagonists, play A Golden Wake, where you play an amoral salesman.

Rosangela Blackwell was extremely cool. Have you played Unavowed yet? Set in the same universe.

The Shadow said:
I hate nu Lara Croft with a boiling passion.
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Makes sense for her to be moaning a lot in the first game because she's still in terrified gap year student mode, but less so in the second and third.

I quite liked the third one actually. Flawed, and the existence of Trinity is a millstone around the series' neck (sorry, but Massive Ancient Conspiracy is really hard to pull off well), but if they'd got her into proper adventurer mode at the outset it would have worked a bit better. Fun though.

Anyhow.

Favourite protagonist in gaming. That's difficult to say. Geralt of Rivia is pretty damn cool. However, The Nameless One from Torment clinches it by a nose. He seems like a blank slate, but he really isn't, oh no.

Gabriel Knight gets points as well. "What can you tell me about.... Voodoo?"

Susan Ashworth from The Cat Lady is pretty cool. Zoe Quinn, take note - this is how you do a real Depression Quest.

Going down the list we have George Stobbart from Broken Sword, who is basically "nice but dim" all over.

At the bottom of the list? Crikey, where to start. Dr Reid from Vampyr loses many points for basically being a WWI emo kid vampire. Good writing could have made him interesting but there was no good writing there. However, the biggest stinker has to be Doralice from the thankfully forgotten pointy-clicky game Fascination from the 16 bit era. She has no personality and is basically existent solely to allow players fap fuel to pixellated views of her in the shower. I'm no SJW but it's just pathetic, really.
 
Maybe I'm weird and an old man yelling at the sky, but I liked it better when the games I played didn't have complicated stories.

All I needed was a premise, good design, and good game play, and I was off to the races. Now I watch ads for video games and it looks like cinematic cut scenes are being sold rather than the game play. I mean...could you show me the game play...the thing that I am going to spend most of my time doing?

So to answer the question, my favorite protagonists were the ones that were blank slates that I could insert myself into because that's what video games were for me: It was the ultimate version of playing pretend. For those few hours I played, I was Link, I was Mega Man, I was Mario, and I could have him talk and act anyway I wanted and yes, I would add dialogue to the "story" in my mind while playing through a level...I was quite the crazed lad. Heck, when playing wrestling games, I even liked to add my own commentary to the matches.

By having so many cut scenes and intricate plots added to the games now, I feel like it takes that imaginative part away from the experience. They are selling play along movies rather than a game.

Okay okay, I'm done. Time for the old fogie to get off his soapbox.
 
Ginger Piglet said:
I liked Deponia. I played all four of them. The whole point is that Rufus is a twunt, yes. He's also a deconstruction of your average adventure protagonist - wanders around stealing everything that isn't nailed down, sees characters and places and people as mere means to an end. Kathy Rain was not that good though; Kathy was trying too hard to be a wannabe tough girl and the plot was lifted wholesale from Gabriel Knight.

If you like asshole protagonists, play A Golden Wake, where you play an amoral salesman.

Rosangela Blackwell was extremely cool. Have you played Unavowed yet? Set in the same universe.
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Yeah, I understand the trope and what they were going for with it, but it just slaps me when I have to play someone like that. Even if it's partly satirizing what the protagonist of a p'n'c game is like, I want to root for the main character. Even Guybrush had more of a moral compass when he was causing trouble (plus the game's humor was more.. you know?) and I didn't feel constantly sorry for the people he screwed with. Both me and my fellow friends felt really bad for a lot of the characters, but never Rufus. Good to hear someone still enjoyed it.

I haven't played Unavowed yet, no, and I wasn't aware it was in the same universe. Now I just need to bump it up the list on what to play next. Thanks for letting me know.
 
I really hated Ethan from Phantasy Star Universe. He's like the worst kind of main character from an anime meant for 10 year old boys that like hover boards. The absolutely useless big boobs glasses girl was a better character. It literally would have been cooler to play any anybody else. Why couldn't we play as the old Cast that punches everything to death? He was awesome. That Cast that wanted to have a baby and eventually formed a weird family with another Cast and an orphan was a better story line than whatever the hell Ethan had going on. I can't even remember. I hated him that much.
 
rabo said:
Gordon Freeman. That's right! Come at me, I'll fight you! There are place where a silent protagonist works. Half-life did because at that time, protagonists in FPS did not generally speak. Sin's dude was one of the few exceptions. But playing HL2 which has such an emphasis on story, and to just be this sap who seems to have no will of his own, just doing what everybody else tells him to do. I know he's supposed to be a vehicle for the player and it would have been fine if I didn't see him get elevated to such a god status by the nerds. Presented like such a badass and stuff. He's a MIT nerd, I always figured his experience in HL was a harrowing one. Not one he comes back from all badass and shit.
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Gordon worked a lot better in the first game when the player had complete control over his actions. You could murder the friendly NPCs if you so desired, and the game was designed to accommodate that.

Half-Life 1 and 2 are interesting examples on how to do silent protagonists and how not to respectively. The first one was designed for him to be a player vehicle, nothing more, nothing less. The game didn't have much of a focus on narrative and characters, so a blank slate like Gordon thrives. HL2 meanwhile tried to give him more of a backstory and establish relationships with other characters, but the guy literally has no personality. Gordon's perpetual silence comes off as jarring when other characters are talking to him as if they're supposed to be having a conversation.
 
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Baldur's Gait said:
Gordon worked a lot better in the first game when the player had complete control over his actions. You could murder the friendly NPCs if you so desired, and the game was designed to accommodate that.

Half-Life 1 and 2 are interesting examples on how to do silent protagonists and how not to respectively. The first one was designed for him to be a player vehicle, nothing more, nothing less. The game didn't have much of a focus on narrative and characters, so a blank slate like Gordon thrives. HL2 meanwhile tried to give him more of a backstory and establish relationships with other characters, but the guy literally has no personality. Gordon's perpetual silence comes off as jarring when other characters are talking to him as if they're supposed to be having a conversation.
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It's interesting you mention this. If you listen to the developer commentary in HL2, while they go on at length how they wanted the characters to interact with you and all the pains they took to make you like how that occurred, they oddly did nothing to make the interactions seem like they went both ways.

Doom 2016 did a silent protagonist a lot better in this regard because they gave your character a lot more emotion through use of excellent camera work and body language coupled with a script that didn't leave so many "shouldn't I have heard my character say something at this point?" moments.
 
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GethN7 said:
It's interesting you mention this. If you listen to the developer commentary in HL2, while they go on at length how they wanted the characters to interact with you and all the pains they took to make you like how that occurred, they oddly did nothing to make the interactions seem like they went both ways.

Doom 2016 did a silent protagonist a lot better in this regard because they gave your character a lot more emotion through use of excellent camera work and body language coupled with a script that didn't leave so many "shouldn't I have heard my character say something at this point?" moments.
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Yeah, pretty much. It's even more jarring when you're in the elevator and Alyx says something along the line of "So you're the strong silent type huh?"
Also, in Half Life, Gordon hasn't got much of a choice. He does everything not because he's asked, but because he's fighting for his life. And you're not being ordered around for most of the game. You're left alone to navigate your way through the facility while in HL2 you're dragged from one mission to the next. Always just silently obeying.
 
Truthboi said:
This guy is truly the most bland character I have probably ever seen. He is essentially a dating sim protagonist that was given an attempt at being a character and fails miserably. He never really develops as he remains a naive, and optimistic boy till the very end of the game who has to have his hand held by more intelligent characters to progress. While he is intentionally bland, that makes it worse and his blandness is extremely unrealistic since he basically likes whatever is popular at the moment which takes out the relatability factor the developers intended for him.
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Yeah he feel like the game was going to have a silent protagonist but half the way they just put him here with his bullshit super luck skill, at least in the extra materials is explained tons of shit about him to make him more relatable (the reason why he was chosen to enter the school) at least he is not a all powerful mary sue and almost all the bullshit he does is because between a bunch of crazy persons and insufferable geniuses he is the voice of reason and he make them follow his plans, i think people consider him a whiny little dumbass because his original voice actor in japan is the same as Shinji Ikari so the roles are connected, i still found hilarious that his edgy version of DR2 is actually better

Sable said:
Luke from Tales of the Abyss is godawful and whiny, and I don't care that there's a story reason, it's not enough to make up for it.
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This in spades, god he almost made me drop the game, i tolerated it because Tear is voiced by Yukana and i could deal with his bullshit by just ignoring him, at least he got redeemed if you actually take your time to pass all his whining

rabo said:
Samus (Before Team Ninja ruined her) is pretty high up there. But as far as my list of favorite it pretty much coincide with my list of waifus ;P
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I did what a friend told me and played the Japanese version of Other M, that is for all purposes better because she sounds less annoying than her american counterpart making the game more tolerable, is still trash but at least you will not be annoyed (she still say Baby in the Japanese version so you are not safe), dont know why Nintendo was all greedy at got barely recognized voice actors (even in japan), in my group we pretty much have a consensus that maya sakamoto could have done a better Samus

To not derail to much favorite character well i dont have anyone in specific but one i felt very sympathetic was your character in Dragon Quest V, because the game throw you all the bullshit you can imagine

Practically the game start with your father that is a king grieving that your mother was taken by demons, them he quit being a king and make his life mission to find the hero of legends that could probably save her, the best clue he has to find him if that he needs a specific set of armor and a sword and if that person manage to use it then he/she is the hero, in YEARS of search he only found the sword, a little into the game you get captured as a child by the bad guys then you have to watch how your father is murdered in cold blood by them (in the PS2 version is more dramatic) after that you get slaved by the bad guys, fast forward years you are a adult finally manage to escape your tormentors and decided to continue your father quest, when you found one of the piece of armors you in very JRPG fashion believe that finally your moment of destiny is here, you are going to make it big now, then game fuck you harder with another revelation

You are not the hero of the legends

Yes, after all that bullshit you actually believe that you are supposed to be the hero well you are not, you are just another guy, full of resolve you decide to continue your quest in finding the hero,in the way you finally find love, get married and have a pair of twins, you finally are happy after years of being slaved and only your quest remains

Well no fucker, after a fight with one of the big bads you and your wife are petrified, your kingdom that you reclaimed before mourn you and believe you dead, your petrified body is sold as a statue to some jackass, and destiny even robbed you to see your children growth and that is like halfway of the game, i mean shit is very grimdark and the orchestral music make it more sad you actually reunited with your children and one of them can even use the hero sword!

Is hard to not feel sorry for him

now that i like like i think can only say Adol Christin from Ys, he is just another mary sue that like to adventure and cuck goddess for the heck of it, but even when he doesnt talk to much he is humble and likeable, and almost all the bullshit he pull is thanks to his friends (aka Dogi the daddy wallcrusher) or thanks to legends that always help him (in Lacrimosa he is practically chosen as the best human to ever lived for some reason)
 
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My favorites are:

Isaac Clarke from Dead Space because he is absolutely done with the necromorphs from minute one and it shows.

Zer0 from Borderlands 2 because of him being an assassin and speaking in haiku. It's just a neat gimmick that I really enjoyed.

Jimmy Hopkins from Bully because despite being a miscreant, he isn't a complete sociopath. He has a heart and only likes to punish people that cause people problems or try to fuck with him.

Susan Ashworth from The Cat Lady. It's a personal game for me because of its clever, visceral way of approaching depression by combining it with surreal otherworldly imagery, blurring the lines between reality and delusion, and gritty grimdark Criminal Minds-kind of villains that you have to deal with. She is a very drab and dour middle aged woman with no friends, but even so I still wanted her to find happiness and found her social awkwardness and iciness to be par for the course considering where she was in life.
 
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