Games you didn't want to play because of the main protagonist

[Guitarmasterx7]

I was watching a trailer for Beyond: Two Souls, which looks pretty interesting and I'll probably pick it up at some point regardless of this, but the thought of playing through a game as a character voiced, acted, and modeled after the pregnant girl from "Juno" is really unappealing to me. A while ago I was talking to a friend who said he didn't want to play MGS4 because he didn't want to be an old man, despite the game looking good.

So is this a normal thing? Has a game protagonist ever put you off or made you reluctant to buy a game that otherwise would have seemed good to you?

 

[shrekfan246]

I don't think so.

I liked Raiden.

I liked Nero.

I don't think Nathan Drake is insufferable.

Marcus Fenix may be a pretty generic gruff grim growly guy, but Gears of War was never exactly Star Trek.

Master Chief doesn't really have any personality (at least in the games) but that never really took away from the narrative.

Yeah, I'm struggling to think of an instance where the protagonist made me reluctant to buy a game...

 

[Genocidicles]

Metal Gear Rising. I got tricked into playing Raiden once before. I'm not playing as that androgynous douchebag again thank you very much.

As well as that, if I'm lead to believe a game lets you customise your character and that turns out to not be the case then I tend to lose interest really quickly.

 

[Lilani]

Marcus Fenix looks too...lumpy. Always avoided Gears of War because of that.

 

[aguspal]

No, and I honestly have quite a hard time to belive that some people actually do this...


But, everyone has weird quirks so I guess its fair enough.

 

[Images]

Marcus Fenix looks too...lumpy. Always avoided Gears of War because of that.

I'm with you on Marcus Fenix, not for his lumpyness. I just found him generally unappealing. Its wrong when you are actually happy to see your character get killed over and over. I just found him to be a bit of a knob.

 

[Anthony Corrigan]

I was watching a trailer for Beyond: Two Souls, which looks pretty interesting and I'll probably pick it up at some point regardless of this, but the thought of playing through a game as a character voiced, acted, and modeled after the pregnant girl from "Juno" is really unappealing to me. A while ago I was talking to a friend who said he didn't want to play MGS4 because he didn't want to be an old man, despite the game looking good.

So is this a normal thing? Has a game protagonist ever put you off or made you reluctant to buy a game that otherwise would have seemed good to you?

For me that game is unappealing not because of the protagonist but because of the creator, he put me off when he came out and said effectively 'females can't play shooters and males can't care about story in games because they are to brain dead to care about more than mindless shooting'

Screw you, I LOVE narrative driven RPGs, my favourite games are the stories in Bioware games and Ultima games
My sister in law on the other hand is only interested in playing COD death match and killing as many people as she can in rapid succession

Then his comment that were parodied by Jim in this cemented my dislike of this prat

 

[aguspal]

Its wrong when you are actually happy to see your character get killed over and over.

...


Oh it is?...

Who would have guessed! I usually cant stop laughting when I, and by proxy whoever I happen to be controlling at the time dies in an over the top way (think resident evil, or really any sort of 3RD person crap).

 

[Anthony Corrigan]

Half life, what a prat that Gordon Freeman is

Just kidding

 

[Images]

Its wrong when you are actually happy to see your character get killed over and over.

...


Oh it is?...

Who would have guessed! I usually cant stop laughting when I, and by proxy whoever I happen to be controlling at the time dies in an over the top way (think resident evil, or really any sort of 3RD person crap).

Oh no, I get it when its insane death like in the new Tomb Raider (Wonderful grisly deaths there) but with Fenix even just crumpling in a heap would make me grin. I REALLY didn't like him.

 

[jehk]

Transistor. I've totally created a back story for Red based on this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTik6sYT_BE

EDIT: Whoops. *Didn't* want to play. Should have known. Whatevers. I want to play this game because of the protagonist.

 

[Zhukov]

The Batman Arkham games.

I played them, but Batman himself is easily the least enjoyable aspect of them.

Try cracking a fucking smile once in a while you miserable, joyless, gormless, constipated, uninteresting, zero-dimensional prat.

Oh, also, that Riddick game, Assault on Dark Athena. There's a point where Riddick finds an escaped prisoner, a little kid, hiding in the ventilation. He promptly starts growling baaaadaaaassss one-liners at her. What an arsehole. I promptly stopped giving a damn about what happened to him.

 

[Brown Cap]

Dragon Age. I felt like nobody really cared about what you did, or who you were. I felt like a pissant.

Uncharted. It's like Yahtzee said - Drakes' a friggin' psycho.

 

[Chester Rabbit]

Kratos God Of War 3 - I cannot support this character. Oh god is he just...the worst most selfish least heroic most terribly written character I have ever come across in a video game.
And what?s worse is the thought that people or the next generation are going to believe that this is what a protagonist should look like. Uuugh it just fills me with ra- God damn it Kratos...


Duke Nukem (Forever) - I was all onboard thinking, come on guys the game may not be as great as we hoped but we get to play as the Duke again. Then I saw the "I guess you're, fucked heheheh" scene and yep. Turned me off of that game like that.

 

[Anthony Corrigan]

Duke Nukem (Forever) - I was all onboard thinking, come on guys the game may not be as great as we hoped but we get to play as the Duke again. Then I saw the "I guess you're, fucked heheheh" scene and yep. Turned me off of that game like that.

I thought about that but thats really not what turned me off, Duke was always an immature kid in the same way that Bond is and always should be chauvinistic because he's BOND. Some of that game was distateful but what REALLY turned me off was falling off the ledge and then waiting 10 min for the stupid thing to reload, at that point skyrim was just coming out and so I went and played that

 

[RogueportJack]

I second Duke Nukem from DNF. God, what a fucking dinosaur, and the gameplay is among the worst I've ever seen for an FPS. I can't believe anyone finds him funny.

 

[1Life0Continues]

Ezio.

In AC2 he was brash, insufferable, arrogant, completely unlikeable and totally conspicuous. He was no assassin. I understand that was kind of the point, but I took great pleasure in his death every single time in that game, and when the credits finally rolled, I uninstalled the game and have never looked back.

That character was the sole reason I never played Brotherhood or Revelations. Almost everyone I speak to says he gets better in those two iterations, but I don't care. I loathed Ezio with such a fire, that I will never pick up or play another Assassin's Creed game, ever again. I got AC3 for FREE and gave it away to a friend.

I'll happily be labeled petty for this, I don't care.

 

[Akytalusia]

hm... i can't think of anything off the top of my head... but i imagine if i were ever to come across a game with an irredeemably offensive protagonist, i could imagine myself avoiding it, sure.

edit: oh, wait. i just thought a few examples. but i'm not gonna mention them. let's just say i won't touch certain kinds of eroge with a 10 foot pole because of this.

 

[Hero of Lime]

While I can't think of one that I actively avoided, I suppose I would be a lot less inclined to play as new Dante in the new DMC game. He seems so insufferable plus I wasn't a big fan of original Dante to begin with and the new one looks like a slightly more annoying one to me. That being said if someone gave me a free copy of the game, I'd play it, but I won't go out of my way to try it anytime soon.

 

[Snowblindblitz]

Star Ocean: The Last Hope.

His name is Edge Maverick.

And that should tell you how fucking stupid the cast in that game is. My wife played, and the battles are fun, the game mechanics engaging, but that whole cast can jump off a cliff. Whoever wrote them is a terrible.