Games That Let You Name NPCs - DSP, Batman, and Moviebob fight aliens

Judge Dredd

Judge Dredd

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Being able to name you character has been a thing in games for a long time. Most people name characters after themselves, but sometimes people get clever, like naming them "I-I say" so that all the characters sound like Foghorn Leghorn, or "Oh fuck, I" to make it sound like everybody is making mistakes (supposedly that was made popular by a Game Grumps Pokemon run, but I can't find a clip).

But then there's games where you get to name/customise a number of NPC, or at least partially controlled ones. There's a lot of fun to be had naming characters after friends, celebrities, fictional characters, or lolcows. This is something that has been a bit of obsession of mine. I don't know if it has a name, but I find it adds a lot to a game and I want more. There are a few games that spring to mind.


The most famous is likely Oregon Trail. An edutainment game from back in the day where you journey across America. It's famous for people making a party of friends and having them die of dysentery. Various versions can be played in your browser on Archive.org and I recommend checking out any of them. I had one run of Oregon Trail Deluxe where one guy got bit by a snake every 5 minutes. Leading to the headcanon that he was keeping it as a pet but it didn't like him. Oregon Trail spawned a number of parodies such as Death Road to Canada and Organ Trail that have you travelling across America to escape a zombie apocalypse. I wouldn't recommend those.

Xcom is of course the king of this. Xcom EU, Xcom EW, The Bureau Xcom Declassified, as well as clones like Pheonix Point all deliver the goods. These characters can either be heroes who carry the whole campaign with heroic deeds, or get shot in the face and die in the first round of combat. Xcom 2 is the best with this, having characters created ahead of time that are sprinkled throughout the campaign. These can also be shared, meaning you can download the cast of Resident Evil, or every US president, and add them to your game with just a few clicks.
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One reason these games work so well is that guys aren't disposable, but bad things can happen to them. You get attached to your team and the natural flow of the game often leads to funny stories. Like encountering a rugged survivalist who survived the alien invasion alone for months, only for it to turn out to be DSP.

Another game that does this well is Zafehouse Diaries. The game is about surviving a zombie apocalypse, but the party keeps in bickering and messing up simple tasks. It's an easy game to min max, and after a few runs you basically "solve" the game and everything else is RNG, but the ability to make anyone and see how they fare works well. They made a similar game about an armoured train, but once again it's easy to "solve" the large amount of party members means there's little attachment.


There are other games like this. I know of a few.

Gran Turismo 4 Randomizer has b-spec where the AI drives the cars for you, and the prizes are based on the drivers name. Supposedly GT5 fleshes out this mode more, but I've not played that one.

Dragon Quest 9 is a JRPG where you take a custom party through a typical JRPG story line.

There are a number of Xcom clones or other tactical wargame games that offer various levels of customisation.
  • Warhammer 40,000 Chaos Gate. Heard this one is good, but never got around to it, and has DRM so I'm in no rush to get it.
  • Xenonauts 1 I have, but didn't like that guys are basically disposable in that game.
  • Xenonauts 2 has been in development hell for years.
  • X-Piratez, World of Terrifying Silence, and other Open Xcom mods are fun in concept, but I'm really bad at them.
  • Football Tactics and Glory is Xcom but football, and while I don't think you can name players, all the teams can be renamed, so you can play as Kiwi Farms vs DSP United. There was a mod on steam that renamed all the teams to fictional companies like Umbrella Inc.

If there's any more like these, let me know.
 
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You can rename your Darkest Dungeon roster. If you play modded, it's practically mandatory just for keeping track of who is what. I'm not creative and tend to name them by team comp.
 
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It's my God-given right to name my rival Ass or my IRL friend's name in a pokemon game
 
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I always enjoyed the freedom to name important people/things whatever you wanted in the MOTHER series. Emphasis on 'things.' Can't really think of any other games that straight up ask you to name 'your favorite thing.'
 
Capsule Creatures said:
I always enjoyed the freedom to name important people/things whatever you wanted in the MOTHER series. Emphasis on 'things.' Can't really think of any other games that straight up ask you to name 'your favorite thing.'
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Stardew Valley has you add it at the very beginning, and you don't ever see mention of it until like hours, days, months later, and by then you may have forgotten what you put, and be very confused.
 
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reptile baht spaniard rid said:
Stardew Valley has you add it at the very beginning, and you don't ever see mention of it until like hours, days, months later, and by then you may have forgotten what you put, and be very confused.
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It also doesn't make sense if you put something specific like a piece of media. Once you know the context, you can have some fun with it, but when you don't know the context it makes the first encounter kind of confusing.

When it's referenced is when you eat a rare fruit that gives a permanent stat increase and the taste, smell, etc. reminds you off your favourite thing. This can lead to weird outcomes depending on what you put. eg. if you put a piece of media "The taste reminds you of Dino Crisis." The fun potential here is obvious once you know. When RTGame did a run as Walter White, the fruit tasted of Meth.
 
Rollercoaster Tycoon lets you rename guests, and there are some special guest names that cause them to act strangely. For example, naming one Michael Schumacher makes them race go-karts much faster than everyone else, while naming them Mr Bean makes them race extremely slowly.
 
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Capsule Creatures said:
It's telling how little the favorite thing comes up in-game seeing as I have hundreds of hours in Stardew and even I forgot about it, lol
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The other stardew valley hack is apparently you can name yourself or kids or pets or cows names like [173] and then whenever that name is said in game, you get whatever item 173 is.
 
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Wild Arms 3 has a "name tag" item that you can use to rename NPCs. It's been quite awhile so I can't remember if this item is limited or if you can get enough to rename everyone. I think I collected about six of them.
 
I remember SimTower let you name individual NPCs that lived and worked in your tower. If it was an office worker, they went home every evening, but if it was a condo dweller, they didn't. Unfortunately, if things changed and they decided to leave, you would get a message that they left permanently if you tried to find them.

The office workers weren't around at night, yet the condo people didn't seem to take advantage of any of the building's features...come on, there's a whole shopping concourse in the basement and you don't even so much go down for hamburgers?
 
You say NPCs, but nearly every example is for naming and/or customizing your potential party members. So I'm going to just guess this is for general free-form-ish games with abominations characters the player makes rather than JRPG-style fixed casts?
 
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Lego Rock Raiders, which, let's be honest here, is objectively the best game ever made.

Not only can you name your Rock Raiders, you can train and equip them to become pilots, drivers, guards, etc. And, as long as they don't get  killed teleported back to the ship after getting injured by the monsters, they persist through the campaign.

I used to name them after me, my brother and my friends.
 
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Miitopia is a fun example, especially since there are so many characters and Miis can be pulled from either your own system or online.
Judge Dredd said:
or "Oh fuck, I" to make it sound like everybody is making mistakes (supposedly that was made popular by a Game Grumps Pokemon run, but I can't find a clip).
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It was Pokemon Emerald, one of the first things they did.
 
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Weltraumfürst said:
Not only can you name your Rock Raiders, you can train and equip them to become pilots, drivers, guards, etc. And, as long as they don't get  killed teleported back to the ship after getting injured by the monsters, they persist through the campaign.
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I played Rock Raiders way back as a kid. Didn't remember that feature. That's awesome.
 
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