Games where You're Not "The Guy"

[【Ｏｂｓｉｄｉａｎ Ｐｉｌｇｒｉｍ】パラダイス・]

Literally Morrowind, outcluding main campaing. It is really worth sayin that in Oblivion and Skyrim in every guild campaing You came out as Choosen One after one quest, while in Morrowind You are usually normal employer, not any kind of The One. Maybe that's because someone thought "hey, If main hero is already Nerevarine then he can't be 10 other choosen ones at same time".

I think that Dread Delusion can somehow fit here. Of course we are main hero, badass etc, but choosen by accident.

And, of course, Silent Hill and Dead Space series. In both we are normal guy with bad luck

 

[Ross_Я]

Space Rangers.
On normal difficulty it is quite possible for the coalition to defeat Mahpella/Dominators without your participation. You can fuck off to side quests or space piracy or whatever.
On easy difficulty it will probably happen too fast for you to enjoy the game.
On harder difficulties you are expected to interfere, but you are either way treated as one of the rangers and not as a special cookie.

Every GTA game I played sets main characters in a world that will carry on without a hitch if any of them died.

Also, racing games. Pretty much all of them. Ridge Racer series especially emphasizes this feeling that you are just a driver. Car manufacturers close and buy each other, teams and various organisations hold rivalries and run shady businesses, but that all happens in news, in rare cutscenes and on the background. You? You drive.

 

[turntableToothache]

View: https://youtu.be/szi24FesVYQ?si=lvHVYszky57TqPhB

 

[Redwood]

kenshi? that game has autistic amounts of grinding

 

[Caffeinated_nerveape]

I think DJ Peach Cobbler mentions Darkwood in that video. It is another great "Eastern Europe"-like.
If you've seen Annihilation(2018), you know half to maybe one third of what to expect. Mandaloregaming did a vid on it

Rain World is a Metroidvania survival platformer that pits you against a fully simulated, chaotic ecosystem. One that considers you at the bottom of the foodchain. The platforming has a low skill floor, but can be very complex and expressive if you learn how it works. If you're willing to put up with some patently bullshit gotcha's every now and then, it is an easy recommend.

 

[Dolfin]

Most good games where you're not The Guy will probably be games where there's no The Guy anywhere, i.e., games without a main plot. Kenshi (Steam link), mentioned a hundred times already, is a lot like this: your characters are all on the same playing field as everyone else except with a very patient human steering them away from horrible AI decisions (like gleefully throwing themselves into unwinnable fights) and towards the next painful-but-not-lethal learning experience. Any number of them can die with no impact on the world, and as long as you have at least one living character, the game continues.

I think Avorion (Steam link) is like this if you disable the story events; I haven't gone far enough to really say what the difference is. The most obvious difference is no one'll help you get across The Barrier to get the rarest ore and find out what's at the center of the galaxy, that's left up to you. Having other captains under your leadership in either case is contingent on your ability to pay them. Again, the primary advantage you have over CPU ships is your ability to design ships and to use better tactics than "hold the fire button."

 

[alix]

View: https://youtu.be/7W5iM-7ueKs

 

[Svind]

Literally Morrowind, outcluding main campaing. It is really worth sayin that in Oblivion and Skyrim in every guild campaing You came out as Choosen One after one quest, while in Morrowind You are usually normal employer, not any kind of The One. Maybe that's because someone thought "hey, If main hero is already Nerevarine then he can't be 10 other choosen ones at same time".

Excluding the main quest is kind of funny when you're the definition of The Guy in multiple ways in that game. In fact I would say you're The Guy in everything except guild quests where you're just some schmuck which is funny if you do guild quests after the main quest. People do often talk about Oblivion in topics like this because you're not supposed to be the main character etc. but the game literally starts with the emperor going "Oh you're the one from my dreams" so I don't think it counts.

It's really hard to find video games where the player character isn't in some way special (barring obvious ones like simulators in which you're just some dude operating a vehicle or something), easier in other forms of gaming (board games, RPGs etc.) Most examples that come to my mind are multiplayer games, even then in most you're some sort of The Guy. Classic WoW was great with this, especially if you played a human. You're not a chosen one, a champion or a hero. You're just some dude who took up arms to defend his homeland because the entire army fucked off to fight somewhere else and other factions are filling the vacuum. In classic WoW you were a witness to characters greater than you accomplishing heroic deeds, that feeling is lost nowadays.

In the realm of single-player and non-sim games, F:NV almost had this until Lonesome Road fucked it all up (worst DLC, game would be better off without it). The Stanley Parable could maybe count because you're playing as just some office worker dude?

 

[Prufrock]

In the realm of single-player and non-sim games, F:NV almost had this until Lonesome Road fucked it all up (worst DLC, game would be better off without it). The Stanley Parable could maybe count because you're playing as just some office worker dude?

Arguably you are far more 'the guy' in The Stanley Parable than in most other games, since the narrator 'writes' Stanley as the protagonist in his story, so absolutely 'the guy' even though Stanley has no particularly extravagant skills or assets in-universe aside from his own alleged free will, but I digress.

Still a really fun game, that one.

It could be asked whether any game could not be about 'the guy' since whoever is chosen as a protagonist is immediately elevated in some regard over his peers by the nature of being the/a perspective character. Perhaps multiplayer games would be an exception, such as Battlefield/Battlefront, since the perspective is shared equally amongst large quantities of players, none of whom are given (or are supposed to be given) particular preference by the game or narrative itself.

 

[Antogoos]

Papers, Please comes to mind. You're merely a pawn involved in conspiracies far greater than you. The most you can do is approve or deny entry into Arztotzka.

 

[Andy Kaufman]

Only skimmed the thread so there might be some among these that were already mentioned:

CDDA

Dwarf fortress: Adventure mode has a "peasant"preset during character creation but even if you take the "demigod" preset any stab, cut or arrow that goes through your skull and hits the brain kills you and you always start as an utter nobody.

Age of Decadence, the CRPG that filtered even me because even when I rolled a fighter I'd always lose the 2nd fight the game threw at me.

Underrail

Seconding Kenshi and Starsector as one of those "from rags to riches" games where you start as a nobody but can get powerful.
Also casting my vote for Morrowind where you can chose to become "the guy" but have to jump through a lot of hoops for that and aren't him by default.

Exanima

Rainworld

Rimworld

Ostranauts

Battlebrothers

Barotrauma

Voices of the Void