some Final Fantasy's have this divide FF12 Vaan is the pov character but Ashe is the main character since she is the one with the quest that drives the narrative FF10 Tidus is the pov character and Yuna is the main character with the quest to defeat Sin driving the narrative but they fall into a more duteragonist situation FF15 Noctis is both the pov and main character Fire Emblem 3 Houses Byleth is the pov character but the lord of their route is the main character Tokyo Mirage Sessions Itsuki is the pov character but his friend Tsubasa is the main character since she is the one with the goal to become an idol Radiant Historia Stocke and Eruka are deuteragonists even if Stocke is the pov character
So, Hi-Fi Rush logic, can be used for far-cry 6, Because Dani is recruited into a guerilla rebel communist group, which is owned by clara garcia, and is actively using it to take down the main antagonist, Anton Castillo.
Final Fantasy XII. Vaan is not the main character by a long shot. It was a huge criticism of the game. There was hardly a reason for Vaan to be in the story at all.
Another great example of this is S.T.A.L.K.E.R Anomaly and its modpacks (GAMMA/EFP/Dark Signal ect) Just roaming the zone at night looking for an artifact to sell, a stash to loot or whatever it may be. Then in the distance you hear dogs barking, you pull up your gun ready to fire but it turns out the dogs weren't attacking you. After a few gun shots ring out in the distance, you get a message on your PDA saying "Just saw some eggheads (zone slang for Ecologists) take down a few dogs just north of the Agroprom Facility" With events like these, it really nails down the feeling of not being the main character. And the best part? None of it is scripted, it can just happen.
Final Fantasy XII. The main playable / POV character is absolutely not the main character -- that would be Ashe -- and the game plays with the concept of who's the lead right up until the end. (Balthier: "Princess! No need to worry. I hope you haven't forgotten my role in this little story. I'm the leading man. You know what they say about the leading man? He never dies." Fran: "I'd say you're in more of a supporting role." Balthier: "Fran, please.")
Another game to further explore this relationship would be FFX. Tidus starts out as a point of view character before becoming a protagonist right at the end of the story.
it's often been cited that the real protagonist of Life is Strange, a game that prominiently features player choice at the forefront, is not the player character Max Caulfield, but her best friend and lover, Chloe Price
A good example of this from one of the first lines in the game is Brutal Legend "A good roadie knows his whole job is to make someone else look good, keep someone else safe, help someone else do what they were put here to do. A good roadie stays out of the spotlight. If he's doing his job right, you don't even know he's there. Once in a while he might step on stage just to fix a problem, to set something right. But then before you even realize he was there or what he did, he's gone."
you know, I've watched this video twice and I'm still amazed that there was no mention of Kenshi- Its a brutal open world RPG that doesn't pull its punches while also keeping you in the mindset that you are nothing. All you are is just some dude, or a group of dudes in a post-post apocalyptic world just trying to survive and navigate through the world both politically and physically. while you CAN become something or someone, it doesn't tell you how to do that or where to go. you're on your own. With nothing but some rags, a metal pipe and some pocket change.
he specifically said in this video that he's not touching on games where you can play as multiple characters. the premise of this video is specifically about playing as a single, defined character in a game where there is a non-player character that feels more like the protagonist than the player character.
Great insight and editing! Really impressed. This is one of the best games ever made. It just has so much going for it and you're right, it sticks with you long after you stop playing.
The Last of Us is like a movie where you have to solve a puzzle to unlock the next scene. The gameplay is decent but it isn't the main focus, the story is. Which is why it translated wonderfully into a TV show where most videogame to movies fail.
I ddidnt finish the video yet so i don't know if he mentioned it but stray feels pretty inspired by "i am a cat" in which the story is said from the viewpoint of a cat but the cat isnt exactly that mutch of a main character Edit:i feel like i made a mistake explaining it the cat is definitely the main character in the book but its more of a narrator just the kind that interacts with the story bc the book mainly focused on people around the cat like its owner and his family the book is actually pretty cool itd been an inspiration for me a few times and if youre interested in something like it you definitely should check it out) disclaimer the book is a Japanese satirical novel so it doenst exactly have the same vibe as stray but its still really cool I really hope he didnt talk about the book in the video or im going to sound super stupid explaining all of this
While you are definitely the "main character" in Dark Souls, I often got the same feelings described here. It's as though your actions are taking place in an overall insignificant few years, while the world itself has existed for millenia. It's deepened in how the lore is often hidden and how npcs talk to you as though you are just another lost soul. I know you could argue this for most any game, but anyone who has played will know the feeling I mean, it's as though the real story is being played by gods and you are one of their pawns.
I know he said he wasn't addressing ensemble casts, but I maintain that Final Fantasy XII's main character is Ashe and Vaan is just along for the ride.
I got so mad at The Witcher 3 shoehorning in a "you're not the main character, Ciri is" at the last minute and almost giving me the "bad" ending, based on four random decisions I'd taken, one of which was offering to come along on some quest, when apparently I was supposed to say "nah, you go without me, I'll just sit here and chill for a bit after spending the entire game trying to find you, my beloved adoptive daughter, because going with you would be over-protective, apparently". Absolute nonsense, but luckily I'd made the "right" decision on a couple of the other seemingly unconnected choices so I still "won" the game. That whole game is a pretend-rpg, where the player gets tricked into thinking he's in control but he's actually just being forced into doing what the developers want him to do.
I liked the game and I think the whole point is that you don't know what decisions will lead to what consequences, just like in real life. You could do something inconsequential in real life that could have unknown effects. If a crazy person on the street talks to you, being kind and friendly or rude and dismissive are both equally likely to make that person follow you home and k*ll you. You could choose to be social at work and either get fired for talking too much, or end up getting promoted/making a connection that gets you a better job. I understand that video games are a form of escapism for a lot of people, so it's fine if it's not for you, but I actually really liked that it was impossible to forcibly engineer a "good" ending just by being a good person or picking obviously correct dialogue options. You can't just predict that everything turns out alright just because you did the "right" thing. And that's very true to the way things happened in the original book series. BOOK ENDING SPOILER Geralt only gets a "bad" ending in the book series because he chooses to be a "good" person and defend innocent people. it's what all of his character growth is leading towards over the course of several books. and he dies for it. that's life.
@@2GoatsInATrenchCoat The thing is, the game hadn't established itself as being a game where I was given true choices, so by the time I got to the end I'd been conditioned to just pick whatever seemed like it would lead to a fun fight. I genuinely don't see the great writing and quests people rave about, I see a game that tricks you into thinking you have the power of choice, but usually just forces you to pick between two shades of grey, and arbitrarily chooses one to result in something worse than the other, kinda like some of the Daedric quests in Skyrim, where you're at the whims of basically a demon, and your choice is basically between finding the lesser evil or be destroyed by a being much more powerful than you. That'd be a creative choice I could understand if you were playing as a regular person, but Geralt is a goddamn overpowered hero of legend, at least compared to the people and monsters you encounter in the game. If I'm able to slice my way through hordes of monsters, why the hell am I letting a group of basically bandits in official gear control Crow's Perch even after I catch a few of them raping a young woman? Why am I choosing half-assed solutions to interpersonal drama when one person is clearly an evil asshole and I could just kill him? It's an role playing game where the role you're forced to play is that of a very narrow spectrum of the character Geralt, who apparently doesn't realise how much more he's capable of. It took me three attempts and a dozen mods before I managed to actually make it through the entire game, after which I replayed it several times without touching the main questline, roleplaying as a Geralt in a world without the Wild Hunt and Ciri, which I found to be a much more enjoyable experience. I don't think the game is trash, I just think the choices it gives you in quests are manufactured to be a lot more arbitrary and limited than they realistically would be, and it's incredibly frustrating to have the game put it's thumb on the scales at crucial moments, breaking my immersion.
I have a simple rule "If you are the main character, you effect the story, and no matter what, you won't die until it destined" (And are often a CHOSEN ONE) That means, if any character on the side, no matter how much "story" they tell, if I play two playthrough and they do the same thing, they are not the main character.
I feel like being a deuteragonist AND being the playable and point of view character combined makes Chai into the protagonist. It just feels like being the pov character should be taken into consideration when determining the protagonist. but im not sure how well that scales with classic literary criticism.
I greatly disagree if you're trying to imply that not having a choice over how the story plays out means it's not really a game. You definitely have meaningful choices in the gameplay, as you can have a favorite gun that you use the most, try and stealth whenever possible, try and use everything in your inventory on the final encounter, sneak past a group of enemies, etc. One encounter can go tons of ways, and this is especially true in The Last Of Us 2 where the game is much wider and freer in it's environments. But from a story perspective? Cinematic doesn't mean that it's just a movie with gameplay in between. Cinematic games are meant to make you feel like you're living in a movie. You care when the opening sequence occurs because you've lived as Sarah. You care about Ellie at the end because you've been with her for most of the game. You care more about her every time she tells you about an enemy you didn't notice or throws a brick to stun somebody. You feel like she has your back when she gets a gun later in the game. When she gets unexpectedly grabbed by an enemy, you aren't wasting a second to go break her free. You feel exactly what Joel feels the whole time. Which is why when they try to kill her at the end, most players are on board with stopping them. "You are NOT taking another daughter away from me..." is the feeling the game is pushing you towards since the beginning. The Last Of Us pushed the medium forward because it was the first time a game intertwined story and gameplay so well that what you did in gameplay impacted how you felt about the story. Sure, there weren't a dozen paths and endings that you could've chosen to make the story different (games have been doing that for years.) But the gameplay itself was designed to get you to feel more attached to what was happening in the story. It's why the show (while still amazing) doesn't hit quite as hard. Because the gameplay wasn't there to inform and heighten the story like it is with the game version, you don't feel quite as attached as you otherwise would be. I think the main reason the game broke so much ground in getting people to view video games as a serious medium was just how differently the story was made in the first place. No glorified violence. No sexualized female characters. A serious story about a man losing his daughter, and then eventually deciding to love again. Before this, games didn't usually ask you to take them too seriously. This felt mature and realistic and got adults to see it as more than just a little fun escape, but a serious art form. This is the quality that games like God of War, Spider-Man, and RDR2 have copied. For me, that's a good thing. I like being "along for the ride" as you put it. But I can see how games with story choices can be exciting too. It's just that with so many choices, it inevitably leads to them all being less focused than one unified story would be. Sorry for the essay, genuinely tried to make this as brief as possible while making my point.
I finished the first game (chapter 5) a few weeks ago, and will probably be taking a few months, or maybe even a year or 2 break until I pick up the next game, which is really letting me appreciate it
“They all saw a cat” is a children’s story that could have easily inspired some of stray. At no point is the story about the cat, but it instead uses cats to show how different animals perceive their world. The cat is cute and fluffy to the boy, but depicted in harsh, frightening black and white for the mouse. The cat’s mobility is a storytelling device in the story, as it comes across creatures large and small. The art is beautiful and it won a few awards ❤❤❤
this is the story of joel and ellie, and you are simply there to help make it happen. it wouldnt be better as a film or a show because you dont fill in those shoes and physcially do it all. and the fact that you cant make out of character choices and what not is the best thing because it would break the story, immersion and the characters
I think you’re focused too much on the semantics between gameplay and the story. Joel doesn’t die a million times, YOU died. Unless you count roguelikes, there’s no games where you actually “die”. It doesn’t ask you “what would you do in this situation”, it says “Joel did this”. It’s a story. You’re not supposed to view it as a diety, “pre determined”, because when you play it, it hasn’t happened yet. I think your critique of The Last of Us is less of a critique of The Last of Us, and more of a critique on stories in a whole. Nothing besides DnD would fit the mold that you’re looking for, not even a game like Balder’s gate 3(since you can’t do “anything”)
A game I would like to mention is Little Nightmares 2 (Spoilers for the whole LN series). You are playing as Mono, who seems to be the main character, especially when you find out he has the ability to teleport through TVs which is a very big MC thing to do. But something I think not enough people realize is that the story doesn’t seem to revolve around Mono as much as it does Six. Six, who is often labeled as Little Nightmares 2’s antagonist (which is incorrect because it is revealed that Mono is the antagonist in a time paradox), is the main character throughout Little Nightmares 1, Little Nightmares 2, and Very Little Nightmares. The playable characters LN1’s DLC, VLN and LN2 (The Runaway Kid, The Girl in the Yellow Raincoat, and Mono) are just side characters to Six’s adventure who help her achieve her goal and all end up meeting terrible fates.
