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

SeaPancake said:
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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Yeah, she's pretty cool I thought. Helps that the writer of Cat Lady was a psychiatric nurse so actually is a mental health professional and thus is in a position to actually do Depression Quest right, ZOE.
 
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Favorite: Ezio Auditore from Assassin's Creed series
  • One of the most iconic assassins of all time, Ezio's Trilogy was one of the best storylines of all time in Assassin's Creed. With his charming personality and sad backstory, you would definitely love this one.
Least favorite: Vaan from Final Fantasy series
  • One of the most forgettable protagonist in the Final Fantasy series. (imo)
 
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Favorites: Solid Snake. I like MGS1's gameplay way more than 2 or 3 and he balances Raiden's naivete and Big Boss' unstoppable badassery.

Honorable mentions: Samus, Amaterasu, Cortez (TimeSplitters Future Perfect), Alucard

Least favorite: Deslin and Fetch from InFamous Second Son/First Light. They were obviously created by a bunch of 40-somethings trying way too hard to be cool, and it shows. Doesn't help that their games were meant as PS4 tech demos first and foremost.

Dishonorable mentions: Artanis, Baby Mario, Ajay Ghale
 
I'd have to go with "Dante from the Devil May Cry Series" him and kiryu from Yakuza are both badass and they don't even really need to try, it's just a byproduct of them trying to get things done. Plus they are both virgins with rage. Least favorite is "mid 2000s bald man with a gun on the cover of every game." It was a real epidemic, and you can just tell there was no creative value there.
 
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. Doesn't help that he is credited for saving the day when
the main villain basically let him win just so she could feel what failure is like
, so him winning isn't some great feat like the series tries to portray in the spinoff game, and the anime sequel, Danganronpa 3. He is so bad that the protagonists in the future games basically go against his ideals which are portrayed as a major good. Doesn't help that he is basically a Gary Stu with little flaws, and the flaws that he does have actually make him endearing to other characters which benefits him.
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I have to agree, the most compelling thing about him was that in Danganronpa 3, he was facing execution for his blind optimism in letting 16 terrorists who contributed to the state of the world go. It would have been a good opportunity to examine how blind optimism and being morally good to stupid levels isn't a heroic trait, either, but at the end of the day he tells the guy who wants to kill him he knows tfw dead gf and there are just no hard feelings between them anymore.

That and he's treated as some great savior for his groundbreaking revelation of...don't give up hope. If he fits the hope theme, so does a motivational poster.
 
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I loved being Adam Jensen from the newer Deus Ex games. A lot of that goes to Elias Toufexis' voice acting, though.

Guybrush Threepwood was great fun as well, though I only ever played the first Monkey Island game back in the day. Of those point and click protagonists, I generally enjoyed the Sierra ones, but the only one that I particularly liked was Laura Bow. Most of the others (except Leisure Suit Larry, who had his own problems) were too generic, presumably on purpose.

My most hated that immediately springs to mind isn't the protagonist, but his hapless best friend. It was from some actor tie-in game from at least a decade ago. I think Jet Li and on the PS2, but can't be sure. Anyway, his best friend in the game was an overweight fool who kept ruining everything, and I was so pleased when (spoiler) he gets gunned down halfway through. I never like it in any media, really, when the main character has a best friend who's some fat asshole who's closest thing to a redeeming feature is 'not actively malicious' or 'too stupid to do any real harm'. Get better friends, protagonists.
 
Favorites: Ashley Riot, Vagrant Story and Ramza Beoulve, Final Fantasy Tactics. I'm showing my age, but I also really enjoyed Vyse, Aika, and Fina from Skies of Arcadia.

Least...you have no idea how badly I wanted to cosplay Shion Uzuki just based on the previews of Xenosaga I. Then I played the game. I came out of it wanting to baste her in meat tenderizer and throw her into a pit of starving Bengal tigers. She still has a fantastic design in the first game, though. But yeah. Bengal tigers.
 
Miang said:
Least...you have no idea how badly I wanted to cosplay Shion Uzuki just based on the previews of Xenosaga I. Then I played the game. I came out of it wanting to baste her in meat tenderizer and throw her into a pit of starving Bengal tigers. She still has a fantastic design in the first game, though. But yeah. Bengal tigers.
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Shion was actually bearable in Namco X Capcom compared to the source because they fixed something about her character that was infuriating in the source.

Due to not getting over a lot of trauma in her backstory and just refusing to ever confront it, she's basically a self-absorbed borderline sociopath cast in a sympathetic light by the people around her, and N x C toned down her worst traits while forcing her to deal with said traumatic backstory far earlier than her source canon did, resulting in her not being so insufferable.

It took by halfway over the events of the third Xenosaga game for her to shed the worst aspects of her character by contrast.
 
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Truthboi said:
Least Favorite: Makoto Naegi (Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc)

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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. Doesn't help that he is credited for saving the day when
the main villain basically let him win just so she could feel what failure is like
, so him winning isn't some great feat like the series tries to portray in the spinoff game, and the anime sequel, Danganronpa 3. He is so bad that the protagonists in the future games basically go against his ideals which are portrayed as a major good. Doesn't help that he is basically a Gary Stu with little flaws, and the flaws that he does have actually make him endearing to other characters which benefits him.
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Another thing about Makoto is how irrelevant he is with Kyoko there, as it's clear early on that Kyoko is a more intelligent and capable investigator than Makoto is. He could of been murdered in the first chapter and it wouldn't have made a difference since Kyoko would have just solved the mysteries without him. They probably should have made Kyoko the main protagonist instead. As it is, it feels like playing a Sherlock Holmes game that forces you to be watson instead of Sherlock for some reason.

Did they think the game wouldn't sell if it didn't have a "relateable" male protagonist?
 
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Brahmin Baron said:
Another thing about Makoto is how irrelevant he is with Kyoko there, as it's clear early on that Kyoko is a more intelligent and capable investigator than Makoto is. He could of been murdered in the first chapter and it wouldn't have made a difference since Kyoko would have just solved the mysteries without him. They probably should have made Kyoko the main protagonist instead. As it is, it feels like playing a Sherlock Holmes game that forces you to be watson instead of Sherlock for some reason.

Did they think the game wouldn't sell if it didn't have a "relateable" male protagonist?
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Considering how Japan is with their VN's, I think that's why.
 
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