My wife brought home a game today to play. Dragon's Dogma. It didn't take long before it fit the mold of just about every other game these days. Actually it's pretty much a Dragon Age clone. But what I finally noticed is that games today have too many create-a-character protagonists. And while that might be more customization to you, it ultimately leads to a bland and very forgettable protagonist.

I remember back in the day when you had very memorable characters. And they wouldn't have been if they were just a hollow shell with a malleable face. From Dragon Age, to Saits Row, to just about every other game today, you are expected to build a character to your liking and throw it out into the world. Where most likely you'll have moral decisions that will define the characters "personality" by the end of the game. And what are you left with afterwards? Look back on any game that's had a create-a-character protagonist and try to compare how memorable that character was to any title that had a fixed character.

Even when said create-a-character has quite a bit of dialog like, say, Shepard from Mass Effect. Silent protagonists such as Link, Gordon Freeman, Crono, Mario, and Samus (before Other M *shudder*) say WAY more by remaining silent than Shepard ever did over the course of three games.

Personally, I find it very lazy on the game creator to implement a system like this as they avoid having to do any creative work for their fictional characters and just leave it up to the player. Can you imagine how forgettable characters such as Yuri from Tales of Vesparia or Jade from Beyond Good and Evil would be if they followed the same formula as games today? Maybe one day developers will put more creative thought into their characters other than just giving you a cardboard cut out for you to draw on and drag through the story.

THANK YOU.

I had someone basically go on this tirade about how they were done with JRPGs, and WRPGs were the only way to go. In Western games, this seems to be THE trend now. For Saint's Row? That game is off the wall anyways, but you are so right especially on Mass Effect- which if I say that elsewhere, I'm gonna catch flack for it. It's part of why I still haven't finished it. I get making choices, etc etc, roleplaying, and it is fun to an extent. But when you're calling the shots, the character does seem to have the charisma of a cardboard cutout honestly. I started watching an ME3 playthrough on Youtube, and it still hasn't improved to me. Such flat, flat voice acting all-around.

I love chatter between characters, though. And I don't hate Western games or anything, I just think there's a way to go for charisma and customization.

The create a character has always been a primary aspect of the Western RPG, games like Fallout, Elder Scrolls, Mass Effect and Dragon Age. The Fallout and Elder Scrolls games have both been around for atleast 20 years, and they have always used the create a protagonist feature, and I don't expect the WRPG genre to ever change this much.

I'm not trying to say that create-a-character is a new thing. By all means, no. But it's becoming a bit too common these days. In fact, it's running rampant. Even BAD characters like Lightning from Final Fantasy XIII are more memorable than any of the character you listed in your post. And it's not just RPGs. You've got games out there like Saints Row where you can actually choose to have the spoken dialog for that character sound like inaudible zombie mumbles. That right there is a testament to how throw away all these characters are.

And it's not like western games can't do it right. Nathan Drake from the Uncharted series is probably one of the best protagonists created in the past decade. And he's all American. This is the direction it needs to go if you want to have an interesting protagonist.

Hmm.. I think I'm somewhere in between in this matter.
I love to be able to create my own character if the game lets me choose pretty much every decision in the game. Dragon Age was probably the first game that made me feel as if I was my own character. But when I think of the characters of that game, I obviously don't think of my character, I think of my companions.
I can't speak for other type of games like Saint Rows (never played it) but the way I saw Dragon Age, is that you knew as much or as little of the story and it's characters as you cared to know since you could simply ignore everyone.

Now, that doesn't work for every game, so I don't expect to be able to create my protagonist in any game I play. I guess it just depends on the game?