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What game franchises have forgettable casts of characters?
- Thread starter Rapscallion
- Start date
Pretty much every FF after 2 or 3 have a very memorable cast. I don't like many of their recent titles but I'm not gonna sit here and say that Balthier, Lightning, Yuna, Fang, Noctis or Pronto weren't memorable.
Well that's not true, in FFX there's Tidus and Yuna and Auron. And the blue dude that was really terrible in combat. And the antagonist ... wait who's the antagonist again?
Their personalities are Earth, Fire, Wind and Water.
(That Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age are just freaking awesome RPGs despite this is amazing)
Not an entire game franchise, but I have a feeling even fans would (desperately) struggle to name the assassins in No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle, with the exception of a few like Captain Vlad and Margaret Moonlight. The cast of 2 is so underwhelming when compared to 1.
well, i certainly have no memory whatsoever of the supporting casts in origins & odyssey. but i do, indeed, remember characters like leonardo davinci, & edward 'blackbeard' thatch, & charles dickens from the earlier games, so there's that...
Ys VIII is a weird one in that there are six members of the party in a 50+ hour game, but four of them you can write their motivation, background and story arc on the back of a stamp, they just fill roles or JRPG cliches. Laxia feels hard-done-by in that her job is to be female lead until you meet Dana, then she gets dropped. The others are literally 'I'm a sailor', 'I'm a messenger but won't tell you who for until we meet them in act 3 and it's completely mundane', and 'I'm a plucky kid with a missing carer, guess I'm the annoying tagalong now'.
Even Adol doesn't really have an arc. He's a heroic, legendary explorer at the start, which actually makes a cool change as it explains why others rally around and respect him in a survival situation, but it doesn't really give him anywhere to go or anything to learn other than unpacking the plot via chopping up the local flora and fauna. It's not so much that it's Dana's story, hell that's on the box, but everyone else is just there. Which is kinda fair as castaways, but also really boring given that there are several NPC village members with way more interesting backgrounds. It just feels like they picked cliches like 'there needs to be a young woman we can sexualise early on because Dana arrives too late' and 'there needs to be a kid' and 'there needs to be a mysterious guy' without ever really feeling a need to tie them into the plot despite the length of the game.
I can name exactly two characters from the Tomb Raider reboot universe: Lara and Lara's friend Jonah. After three full games that's the entire cast.
Nah, I remember them. You literally have to sit through extensive cutscenes for each one lol.
I'd say Chrono series, because of Cross' (and radical dreamers), expanded cast. Maybe I can name 3 characters from Cross.
Obviously Chrono Trigger has a great cast, nothing to say there.
Obviously Chrono Trigger has a great cast, nothing to say there.
I like Assassin's Creed as a series but it has dozens of seemingly disposable and forgettable characters. I'm not sure why this is since the protagonists stand out. Maybe since they come out so frequently that it all becomes a blur (historical character is actually wacky!).
I was kinda of thinking about this myself the other day.
With the tales games the worst offender imo is easily tales of hearts.
Remember the main female character in that, i think her only defining feature was that everyone comments that she has a nice pair of legs.Main guy is just protagonist 101. And then everyone is else is ????. I actually dont remember at all who the antognist of the game is.
With the tales games the worst offender imo is easily tales of hearts.
Remember the main female character in that, i think her only defining feature was that everyone comments that she has a nice pair of legs.Main guy is just protagonist 101. And then everyone is else is ????. I actually dont remember at all who the antognist of the game is.
Yu Yevon and Sin, pretty easy to remember because they keep saying it, as the religion backdrop in the game.
If you mean Seymour, he's easy to remember because of his plain first name and 'iconic' weird character design.
So y'all just...didn't play 12 huh?
You're not supposed to remember the characters,.but the monologues. fear is what gives men wings I'm inside a videogame something something drugs are bad
Other than the villains in Far Cry 3, 4, and 5... pretty much every game Ubisoft has put out since Beyond Good and Evil.
I only remember Balthier and Fran, everyone else is pretty forgettable.
Golden sun is a weird call. If we're just talking 1 and 2, main cast is just 4 characters that are pretty easy to remember.
Dragon quest.
Dragon quest.
Not that I'm saying they're memorable but jonah becomes a character because they killed everyone else.
Except Sam but people were shipping her with Lara and ewww we can't have that we want Lara to be a strong independent woman but also available for waifuing from the playerbase
It's fascinating too how part of the fandom was convinced that Pokemon Master was going to be the "true 2019 Pokemon game" because it focused on the trainers which was what "the fans wanted".
Honestly... Tactics Ogre Let Us Cling Together. I have the hardest time remembering characters and names from that game, despite liking it a lot.
There's Denam, Catua (did I even spell that correctly?), Vyce (ditto?), the winged dude, two Lancelots I believe, that one woman who was added in the remake and doesn't join you unless you fulfill a shopping list of conditions (Raveness?), a blind samurai dude (Hobirim ?) and finally a brother-sister duo named Ogma...? Ozma...? I don't know.
It makes some sense because it's less about the characters and more about the geopolitics. But still.
There's Denam, Catua (did I even spell that correctly?), Vyce (ditto?), the winged dude, two Lancelots I believe, that one woman who was added in the remake and doesn't join you unless you fulfill a shopping list of conditions (Raveness?), a blind samurai dude (Hobirim ?) and finally a brother-sister duo named Ogma...? Ozma...? I don't know.
It makes some sense because it's less about the characters and more about the geopolitics. But still.
The photo guy? The recipe guy? The guard? The flamboyant antagonist? They're easily memorable characters even for casual gamers.
Don't lie to us, nobody could ever forget JARED
I still cry every time
That's unfair - Ezio, Edward, Bayek and to a lesser extent Shay are all very likeable and memorable protagonists in the AC games. There are also some side characters which weren't all great but definitely memorable, such as Al Mualim, Leonardo Da Vinci, Achilles, Uncle It's-a-me-Mario, Cesare & Rodrigo Borgia, Blackbeard... Ubisoft is definitely getting really bad at writing memorable characters, but this started only a few years ago.
I have beaten most mainline Zelda games several times but could not tell you the names of most of the secondary characters in basically all of them. Outside of some notable excellent characters like Groose, Saria and maybe Urbosa I would honestly have to look up the names of most everyone else not completely central to the story like Midna or Ganon.
If you can't remember the "leading man" from FF12 then the game is not the problem man
I think more outside of Ezio, like I remember Mario (literally because he goes "it's a-me Mario" when Ezio runs into him), his family (because Ezio's Family is AC's main theme) and the historical figures (like da Vinci), but I can barely remember most of the original characters. I think AC2 established some of the Isu who still pop up in new AC games too, but I'm not 100% sure AC1 didn't.
FFXII is full of memorable characters, even the guess party members like Larsa, and especially their villains who are pretty distinct from the usual FF villain. The main protagonist is not all that memorable at all.
Balthier and Fran were great, they carried the game.
Van and Penelo were ok, I don't understand the hate for Vaan but he felt really forced as the protagonist.
Ashe was one of the worst leads in the franchise and I barely remember the other guy.
