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As you all know if you read Thinking Inside the Box, this week's little rant was on all the various floating crap in RPGs, like floating islands and cities and continents and Last Boss Fortresses and so on. Now, Thinking Inside the Box actually started and continues to to be on my site of origin, and a person who commented on this week's rant had an interesting idea that he said I should make a post about. What if the main character were to come from one of those cities that floats in the air of an RPG's world because of its oh-so-awesome-and-ancient magical technology? I mean, sure, we get the romantic interest coming from such places all the time, or minor characters, but wouldn't the entire plot be able to take a more interesting and unique shape if you had your protagonist come from the standard city that floats in the sky and usually knows all sorts of crucial plot twists?

Which got me to thinking--we don't see much variety in protagonist origins in general, do we? I mean, you've got the kid from the small home town/small house near a small town who gets caught up in a huge adventure, the mercenary/soldier who's extremely skilled even for his/her group who gets caught up in a huge adventure, the....the.......you know, I can't even THINK of another background for protagonists that's used more than once or twice. I mean, I can think of a couple that break the mold, like the Exile from KotOR2 or Kalas from Baten Kaitos, and the Vaultdweller from Fallout 1 even actually mostly fits Motoss's idea save that the Vault is in the ground, instead of above it. But in general, we've been playing RPGs for 20 years and there's still only 2 major origins for protagonists.

So what do you think, everyone? What would be some interesting origins for a main character that might give some really unique character development, or could have interesting reflections on the general plot's progression?

Eh, Zidane and Cecil're still heroes who start out as part of some organization. Granted, Zidane's doesn't happen to be a military one, but they're still being charged with a military operation of sorts. It's not that they don't do a good job sometimes with this overused origin, it's just that, well, it might be so much more original and refreshing to see something different.

The amnesia thing isn't done quite enough to really be counted as a major, overused hero origin, I think. (And why'd you list Roxas as original if you think it has? He's that 100%).

There seems to be a mixture of two different concepts here: the "true" origin of a character, i.e. what happened to connect them to the plotline in the first place; and the "apparent" origin, i.e. how we first see the character (and often how the character is aware of themselves at the time). Taking Zidane as an example, he is tied in with the villains in a fairly unusual way, but at the start of the game all we see is that he's, well, an elite member of a small group carrying out a kidnapping.

I suspect that there are multiple reasons for the tendency of apparent origins to fall into narrow categories, all to do with narrative style.

The primary reason, however, is probably the biggest problem facing the designer of an unfamiliar world: how to present information about it to players without just dumping it straight on them with little to no justification in the game world (see Yuna's narration on characters/places in FFX-2 or "Hey, Squall, are you sure you know how to use the weapon you've been training with for five years? Better go over it one more time," for example).

Probably the easiest way to get around this is to make the main character as clueless as the player in some way. He might be from a small village and ignorant of the rest of the world (Fei), he might be from another world entirely (Marche, Tidus), he might be unable to remember anything about the world (the Nameless One, Ryu in BoF4), or at the very least he might be part of some organisation that carries out tasks and thus gets briefed a lot (Squall, Zidane). Notice that Cloud, who lived in Midgar and worked for Shinra for several years, still gets mako reactors and the train system explained to him within half an hour of starting the game, despite repeated assertions that he doesn't care.

As for interesting origins... how about a ruler of a city which is looted and burned at the start of the game? Part of the plot could be travelling through neighbouring countries, trying to convince people to come back and rebuild. You could get resources based on how successful you were in negotiations with other rulers, and so on. Or possibly someone who, at the start of the game, has already found out that he's the destined hero in the prophecy, got the legendary sword, etc... and then the ancient civilisation who wrote the prophecy turns up halfway through the game to say that it was mistranslated. The sword gets given away, and our hero has to save the world while everyone laughs at him for trying.

I haven't played Thousand Arms, so I don't know the exact circumstances of its hero, but the usual "fall-from-grace" scenario is that of a ruler being overthrown by some traitor or other. I was more thinking of the ruler of a city-state kind of deal which is then razed by invading barbarians. Then you could go around trying to get people and materials to rebuild your shattered city while, no doubt, stumbling into saving all the countries in the immediate vicinity, if not the world. (Hey, some things just need to happen.)

The Persona example is quite interesting, since Shin Megami Tensei's hero was an ordinary suburban kid and SMT2's was an elite gladiator. Obviously even present-day/future RPGs can conform to standard origins. smile

You make me wanna cry, Hubby broke my Thousand Arms game a few years ago and we haven't found another copy yet. gonk
Man, I loved that game. Kinda wish they'd bring more of those types of games out here.

Hmm...how about starting out a game where the hero is dead, the Villan won and is in the process of destroying the world (Kefka style). The hero now has to find a way to come back to life and save the world. Unfortunately, being dead, the only way he can really fight would be having to posess the other members of the group (who will of course band together with a ghost for no other reason than the fact that it seemed like a good idea at the time), and all the while having Death randomly show up to try and reap your soul (kinda like how Death would show up in the original Gauntlet games if you spend to much time in one dungeon/area).

One of the cutest things about Thousand Arms is that it's a dating game and you have to date the girls in your group (and a girl in each town) to get your spells or weapon abilities. 4laugh

Poltergeist game? Sounds interesting... (looks at her fatal Frame games that she cannot play and thus force her husband to) ninja

I know, but along with Resident Evil and the Silent Hill games, I'm really bad at making the characters move (literally, Jill died on that first zombie because I had a hard time getting to *then opening!* the door). sweatdrop

Yes. I'm pathetic at survival horror games, and since he hates Fatal Frame I'm gonna have to learn how to play 'em. gonk