Current Events > Games where the protagonist isn't really the main character to the story.

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Silent Hill 4, Henry Townsend

FF XII, Vaan

came in to say Silent Hill 4.

FF12 was the first that came to mind.

Donkey Kong County 2 & 3

I feel like we just did this exact topic recently.

Lord of the Rings: The Third Age

Pokemon Sun and Moon

The Legend of Zelda

BioShock: Infinite.

It's an escort quest and you are the idiot NPC.

Oblivion

Super Paper Mario, if we extend "the protagonist" to mean "all of the playable characters".

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


DQ9 kinda works too. The real main character is the fairy since you and your party are basically just a bunch of mutes doing all the fighting for her.

Final Fantasy X.
Yuna always seemed more important and needed to me.

Monster Hunter World. The Handler is the one piecing together what's going on in the ecosystems of the new world and showing the commission what to do and investigate. You're just there to get monsters out of the way and occasionally gather evidence for her.

Super Paper Mario, it's Blumiere and Timpani's story
Final Fantasy X, I would say Yuna is the main character of the story.
Final Fantasy XII

FF13 - Lightning

hivebent4life posted...

Oblivion

My first thought

Final Fantasy Tactics also sort of fits here

MGSV sorta

Knights of the Old Republic 2.

Kreia and Revan are the real center of that story.

Trails from Zero is far more Tio's story than it is Lloyd's.

Trails to Azure, similarly, felt like it didn't even really have a main character, with Randy, the Croixes, and KeA being more integral to the story than Lloyd.

Since it's fairly recent: I'm gonna say Xenoblade X. Your created character is the protagonist, but in actuality it really feels like Elma's the main character.

SAlYAN posted...

Knights of the Old Republic 2.

Kreia and Revan are the real center of that story.

A little, but entirely too much is tied to the Exile and Malachor V for that to be completely true.

At least half of your squad is broken because of it.

Oh, Ciri is definitely the main character of The Witcher 3

SAlYAN posted...

Oh, Ciri is definitely the main character of The Witcher 3

That one I'll agree with.

God Wars is an example. The player character isn't the protagonist; Princess Kaguya is.

SAlYAN posted...

Knights of the Old Republic 2.

Kreia and Revan are the real center of that story.

Agreed but looking at 2 with no context outside that game and the Exile is still the main character.

Any Terminator game where you arent John. So almost all of them

Baten Kaitos

Soulcalibur, if you assume the "poster" characters are the protagonists, since the Kilik/Xianghua/Maxi trio are pushed as the main characters, but the series never truly stops being about Siegfried/Nightmare.

This is highlighted moreso in retrospect in SC6, to be fair, where they're the actual focus of the main storyline, even though you already know they aren't the most important characters.

What if the main character is evil like Hades and Diablo?

Language of the topic title is confusing to me and I haven't played SH4 as a reference point... I'm guessing "protagonist" is intended to mean "the most playable character".

SAlYAN posted...

Oh, Ciri is definitely the main character of The Witcher 3

IDK. Like, maybe about as much as Godot is the main character of Waiting for Godot.

Geralt is not the most cosmically influential character in the story, but you explore him a lot more than Ciri. He and his friends are constantly looking for her, but the content of the game is that search. And from that process you learn way more about the connection between Geralt and his network than between Ciri and that network.

And yes, i know Ciri says "this is my story, not yours", but that's a metatextual thing. It is Ciri's perspective about what her entire journey has meant (working with Avalacch to seal the White Frost), but that doesn't alter the actual textual content of the game, which is Geralt's search.

Doe posted...

I'm guessing "protagonist" is intended to mean "the most playable character".

I think it's this, and/or who is presented as who the story is about, vs. who actually moves the story along the most. It's why I mentioned Soulcalibur, since in the original (and then highlighted again in 6, since it's a reboot/retelling), who the story appears to be about aren't the characters that actually end up moving the story along the most.

Doe posted...

IDK

I'd say it's arguable if you look at "protagonist" in the sense of "the one whose choices drive the overall plot."

So much of the main story is Geralt reacting to Ciri that I can see where people would make the argument.

But you're right in the protagonist sense of things like "audience surrogate" or "character most explored/exposed/experienced to/by the audience" or "the character experiencing the majority of the plot."

Like in the sense of the overall world of Witcher 3 Ciri would be the protagonist, but in the sense of Witcher 3 itself it would be Geralt.

HashtagSEP posted...

I think it's this, and/or who is presented as who the story is about, vs. who actually moves the story along the most. It's why I mentioned Soulcalibur, since in the original (and then highlighted again in 6), who the story appears to be about aren't the characters that actually end up moving the story along the most.

Hmm, I guess the way I'm looking at it is that characters can be bigger catalysts or functional macguffins in the story, without actually having a lot of exploration, development, agency etcetera. I think "most functionally important/useful" is distinct from "main character", which I've always understood as who the work is primarily about, in terms of following and exploring a person. And the search for Ciri, as important as she is to the events of her world, is something the game uses to explore Geralt far more than to explore her.

Doe posted...

Hmm, I guess the way I'm looking at it is that characters can be bigger catalysts or functional macguffins in the story, without actually having a lot of exploration, development, agency etcetera. I think "most functionally important/useful" is distinct from "main character", which I've always understood as who the work is primarily about, in terms of following and exploring a person. And the search for Ciri, as important as she is to the events of her world, is something the game uses to explore Geralt far more than to explore her.

I'll admit I don't have ton of experience with Witcher, so we may not even be disagreeing.

In my Soulcalibur example, the poster characters when the game came out were a trio of new characters in Kilik/Xianghua/Maxi. And while they do important things in the story, when it comes down to actually moving things along... The actual catalyst remains Siegfried/Nightmare, from the very first game (Soul Blade), and continuing onward.

Then, in SC6 (a retelling of 1), the main storyline again focuses on that trio... Even though we already know that the main catalyst is Siegfried/Nightmare. So while the former was kinda ambiguous, since... Fighting games rarely dictate a "main character," SC6, which was a retelling, kinda DID dictate main characters, by choosing who you fight as most in the main story, and yet it's again the poster characters, but not actually the ones that cause the most story movement.

Now, as you explain Witcher, it kinda lines up with how Soulcalibur plays out. In SC, the main three are searching for Soul Edge, and have an actual impact on it... But at the end of the day, Siegfried/Nightmare (the one that has Soul Edge) is the one that ACTUALLY moves the story along, and the "main characters" just kinda... Impact him, so to speak.

I'm rambling, at this point. I'm just trying to explain the difference I see, in that, even as a fighting game, SoulCalibur kinda showcased certain characters and made them seem important (and later actually has you play as them moreso than others, in the main story), even though their impact on the actual overlying storyline is... Much more inconsequential than other characters. So while their story is very... Their impact on X, at the end of the day, the story is moreso about... X, which is DIRECTLY tied to a different character all together.

EDIT: Now, that said, when it comes to actual characterization, the "main" characters of Kilik/Xianghua/Maxi absolutely do get more than anybody else.

Came in to say FF 12

lowkey Xenoblade 3

ffx
zelda
games with mute protags that's always told what to do?

@sabin017sabin017 posted...

What if the main character is evil like Hades and Diablo?

Zagreus isnt evil. What makes you even say that?