Games you love with horrible protagonists

[The Madman]

Going to have to echo the people saying Kratos from God of War.

It's not that I dislike playing as the bad guy, I love playing me a good baddie, it's that the developers for God of War seemed so damned intent on saying 'No no, he's not really bad, he's just misunderstood, he's a hero!' or some such nonsense when in fact Kratos is among the biggest assholes in the gaming genre.

I outright laughed at the end of GoW3 where during the fight between Kratos and Zeus there's this weird pause where a character talks all sadly and stuff and we're meant to feel like there's some sort of character growth or something with Kratos... right up until the fight continues a moment later and you literally paint the screen red with Zeus blood despite everything that just happened, rendering it all pointless.

 

[Dalisclock]

Does the Boss from Saints Row 2 count? Sure, you get to define what they look like and to some extent, what they do, but let's face it, even if you only played the main plot, the boss is a pretty horrible, psychotic person whose only real redeeming characteristic is loyalty to his/her friends. Sure, the antagonists aren't much better, which is the only reason the boss doesn't come off as a total monster(Such as Locking Jessica in a car trunk, which is then run over by her gang leader boyfriend, then telling him to look inside at his dead girlfriend. Pretty awful, though considering she had Carlos dragged behind a truck until he was nearly dead just before that)

 

[Spider RedNight]

I love me some Eternal Sonata but I find Polka to be one of the most annoying, blindly optimistic, chatty, preachy characters in a game I've ever had to suffer with and I've played a lot of games. That whole game is kind of preachy but I love Chopin and the colours are spectacular in that game but... Gooood, POLKA. Allegretto's ALMOST worse but I don't really count him to be the "main character".

This is weird for me to say but I didn't want to play Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel until the Doppelganger came out because I really didn't give a crap about any of the Vault Hunters from that one; Nisha's an annoying sadist, Athena was kinda 'meh' who veered into 'ugh' territory when they pushed their gay agenda down my throat by turning the ONE potentially asexual character gay, Wilhelm was boring and don't even get me started on Claptrap. It's arguable that the main protagonist is Jack which would be fine by me but I'll be honest when I say he wasn't really in enough of the game to be THE main protagonist.

other than that... I don't tend to love games with main characters I can't stand.

 

[Vigormortis]

No one's done it yet? Alright then, I'll pick the low hanging fruit...

This pile of spaghetti. As the game itself said at one point:

"The target exhibits a classic low affect personality, psychopathic disregard for others, narcissistic world view punctuated by self-obssessive disorders."

Spoiler: Massive Prototype Spoilers.

And that's BEFORE he turns into a lump of viral biotissue with not only the excuse, but the means to commit genocide.

And then there's James Heller from Prototype 2. The very essence of the stereotypical "angry black man" cliche.

The writing in those games - specifically the dialog - is so cringe-worthy I usually laugh at how absurdly bad it is whenever I play. Yet, I love the hell out of both games. The game-play is so spectacular and the action so cathartic[footnote]Dem tendril attacks...[/footnote] it more than makes up for the abysmal character writing.

 

[silver wolf009]

No one's done it yet? Alright then, I'll pick the low hanging fruit...

This pile of spaghetti. As the game itself said at one point:

"The target exhibits a classic low affect personality, psychopathic disregard for others, narcissistic world view punctuated by self-obssessive disorders."

Spoiler: Massive Prototype Spoilers.

And that's BEFORE he turns into a lump of viral biotissue with not only the excuse, but the means to commit genocide.

And then there's James Heller from Prototype 2. The very essence of the stereotypical "angry black man" cliche.

The writing in those games - specifically the dialog - is so cringe-worthy I usually laugh at how absurdly bad it is whenever I play. Yet, I love the hell out of both games. The game-play is so spectacular and the action so cathartic[footnote]Dem tendril attacks...[/footnote] it more than makes up for the abysmal character writing.

Just a pity it's cancelled now, and we'll never see a third installment. A pity too, because we still need to find out what exactly Pariah was up to/is.

 

[velcrokidneyz]

All of them.

Okay, okay, I'll try to think of one.

Uhh, ummm. Fire Emblem Awakening's protag is pretty boring. Come to think of it, most of them are. Always bland goody-goodies.

Luso from FFTA2 counts, I think.

Really, Chrom? He is hilarious and shows a wide variety of emotions. I shipped fem Robin with him despite them not being an optimal parent pair. Yes in the beginning I will admit he is a bit bland, but when he is forced to take on the mantle of leadership after certain spoilery events, he takes it well and proves to be a pretty good leader. I respect your opinion regardless

OT: Probably Tiz from bravely default. The other characters I enjoyed greatly but Tiz bothered me so much for some inexplicable reason.

 

[PapaGreg096]

Honestly every non Disney character from Kingdom of Hearts feels like if you took the worst character aspects of shonen anime that were popular in the mid 2000s and decided to make a game series out of it.

 

[Grumpy Ginger]

Joining the Kratos chorus here, pretty good in number one, tolerable in number two and just downright unlikable in number three. I think that while number three was enjoyable the series would have a much better rap if they actually ended the main series at number two and leave what Kratos was going to do with the Olympians and titans as a open question.

 

[Dr. Crawver]

Final fantasy 12. Love this game, like so much. I 100% it twice (accidentally deleted the save the first time) as well as multiple other completed saves.

But seriously, fuck Vaan. Vaan can go die in a ditch filled with snakes, he was an awful lead. I don't even care if you mean horrible morally. Vaan was so bad a twink that in my opinion everything about him is morally horrible. He should not exist. Period.

 

[babloyi]

Whatever you call him from Two Worlds and Two Worlds 2. Aside from the hilarious writing, it was probably the bugs and silly VO that brought to mind some sort of sadistic crazy person who giggled while murdering his enemies and cut off people he was talking to if they went on for too long.

 

[Evonisia]

Snip.

Oh yes, I have played ODST, it's my second favourite behind Halo 2. In fact, I replayed it yesterday now that it's on Xbox One as well. Darn the soundtrack is wonderful in it.

Like I said in my first post, the Rookie manages to be the better protagonist than MChief could ever hope to be.

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

I agree with Johnny Novgorod about Kratos. He could have been characterized much better in GoW 2 and 3, but being an unlikeable asshole works in games with a bare bones plot about causing the end of the world by killing the Greek pantheon. I never felt like I should sympathize with him or anyone else.

Spoiler: Let us get Final Fantasy out of the way. Since it's just about the only series with crap leads that I will play past a few hours.

FFVIII - Squall. While not as bad as the next two in my list, he showed very little emotion for a main character that you're supposed to want to help see their story through to the end. In fact, everyone in 8's player party was either bland or extremely annoying, with Quistis being marginally acceptable. Why couldn't the game have me running around as Headmaster Cid (AKA low-poly Robin Williams), summoning Diablo on fools?

FF 8's character roster is especially jarring, when VII and IX had only 1 or 2 characters in their main party that you would want to fight 100 Grand Dragons to avoid.

FFX - Yep, Meg Ryan Tidus was annoying throughout the whole game. They could have made him far less of an asshole man child. (Would you do things like steal megaphones and binoculars or be out to offend what's apparently the world religion from the start, if you found yourself lost in a foreign culture? They could have super harsh punishments for things as mundane as not bowing to the village cheif or something.) Love the game, but hate how Auron and Jecht were the only consistently good characters. Tidus might even have been an unreliable narrator [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnreliableNarrator] when mentioning how Jecht raised him.

FFXII - Another vote for Vaan. Listen, Square, I know you love to get more sales in your homeland by putting bishie pretty boys on covers, but there's nothing wrong with pulling an FFVI and focusing on several main characters. You almost did it, but you chose to concentrate one of the many orphans the war created and drug another orphan friend of his into the mess, who did even less for the main plot. We had two pirates with heavy back stories, a ousted princess fighting to reclaim her kingdom from a hungry empire (who actually wasn't that great of a protag either), and her falsely disgraced former captain, all of which got less story time than the nobody.

Geez, If you wanted a pretty boy in the party, quick script adjustments could have put Larsa, the youngest son of the emperor, in as a permanent party member. He was practically more important and better fleshed out than Princess Asche.

FFXIII- Everyone. That is all.

Metroid: Other M - Um, yeah, if Samus's characterization is going to be of a near-monotone speaking captain obvious, with poor decision making skills, maybe they should stick with the silent protagonist shtick. I'm filing this under non-canon, with hope that the worst thing about her is her actually sort of interesting inner-monologing during elevator ride in Fusion.

GTA III - Silent Protagonist. In a game about organized crime and revenge. At least most RPGs with mute leads, and the Zelda series, have scenes with their arms waving in the universal "explaning animation," implying that they do have a voice. Claud, that's our vocally challenged gangster here, just blankly stares at the mobster giving him a gig.

 

[vledleR]

GTA III - Silent Protagonist. In a game about organized crime and revenge. At least most RPGs with mute leads, and the Zelda series, have scenes with their arms waving in the universal "explaning animation," implying that they do have a voice. Claud, that's our vocally challenged gangster here, just blankly stares at the mobster giving him a gig.

Originally Rockstar had planned on giving Claud a voice and bigger backstory, but they ran into development hell and ended up putting on the backburner and never got around to putting it in.

 

[Vigormortis]

Just a pity it's cancelled now, and we'll never see a third installment. A pity too, because we still need to find out what exactly Pariah was up to/is.

'Tis a shame. I would have loved to see the story (more to the point, the game-play) moving to another locale beyond New York City. Or, for that matter, some form of multiplayer. The idea of having several players running around the map as Evolved sounds as frantic and chaotic as multiplayer was in Crackdown.

But who knows? Maybe Activision will sell off the IP some day to a dev who can do the series justice.

I doubt it, but a man can hope.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Yep, Kratos for me, too.

I love him as an action game character, since it's so satisfying to watch him wreck shit, but the dude is just the biggest most vile ****. And not in a way that makes him even halfway interesting.

 

[wizzy555]

I've recently thought kratos makes far more sense portrayed as a slave revenge protagonist. He's like the ultimate spoof SJW, dismantling hegemony no matter the damage it causes or how much people hate him

 

[James Elmash]

Spec ops: The line.

I know that was kind of the point of the game, but its still true.

And at least the way I ended up playing the game, Papers Please.

 

[Dalisclock]

Spec ops: The line.

I know that was kind of the point of the game, but its still true.

And at least the way I ended up playing the game, Papers Please.

I wanted to say Spec Ops, but for me it was hard not to feel some sympathy for him. The dude was obviously suffering from a mental breakdown/PTSD due to his experiences in Afghanistan, which only aggravated all the mistakes he made in Dubai.

 

[sageoftruth]

Garret from Thief 1 and 2. He's fun to watch in action, but if I were to step back and look at him as a person, he's completely Machiavellian, and runs from the idea of altruism or non-selfish behavior like it's out to kill him.

In his defense, this could all just be a facade he puts on to convince himself that he perfectly fits his hardened thief persona. After all, he's the one doing all of the narrating. So, perhaps it's just his persona that I don't like.

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

GTA III - Silent Protagonist. In a game about organized crime and revenge. At least most RPGs with mute leads, and the Zelda series, have scenes with their arms waving in the universal "explaning animation," implying that they do have a voice. Claud, that's our vocally challenged gangster here, just blankly stares at the mobster giving him a gig.

Originally Rockstar had planned on giving Claud a voice and bigger backstory, but they ran into development hell and ended up putting on the backburner and never got around to putting it in.

Ah, so that's the reason. It didn't hurt the game overall, but did make the guy we controlled, and what backstory of his we did see, kinda... meh. Tommy Vercetti makes up for it, though.