Are you Tired of “The ONE”

“THE ONE” story line, where you are the chosen one. The ONE with special unique abilities. Only you can save humanity. ONLY YOU HAVE THE POWER.

THERE is an evil threat and ONLY YOU CAN STOP IT.

Xzibit A

well i can list out a ton of examples but you get the jist. I've grown tired of the ONE person.

Haha, I thought this about the Xbox One.

Every video game ever, when you really break it down.

Nah, not really. If it's done well, it can be fine. Also, it's not fair to relegate "the one" as just whoever the important character is in the story. Shepard, for example, is not a chosen one. He's only in that position because of actions that he has taken in the past. Just saying, "I'm tired of this character being the most important character" is ridiculous. Of course you're going to be important to the grand scheme of things. You're the main character. That's why they exist. Sure, there will always be stories where you're more of a schmo, and more low key, but for the most part, you'll always be the important one.

Yeah kind of. I think the AC series would have been more enjoyable without Desmond. They could have completely ignored him and the rest of the science fiction nonsense and said "We're going down the long family tree of these Assassins and their struggles throughout history with the Templars." and it would have been more enjoyable and understandable.

What about games where you play as a group? Or you destroy the world? Or both?

No, because I'm not sick of it in any other media (films, books, ect) and you'll find it a hell of a lot more there.

I can't see anyone making a game where your character isn't at the centre of attention.

The only other alternative I can think of would be a multiply character structure, like Heavy Rain, but that's a lot harder to pull off.

Absolutely. I hate being the "child of destiny".

Though Shepard isn't really destined to be the hero, he just happened to fall into that role.

I knew the Xbox One was a Christ figure.

It seems that videogames are more likely to do that than some modern movies are. I just saw the new Riddick trailer, so maybe I'm just thinking about that.

I want a story where a separate side-character is the hero, and then he gets eaten by a dragon or something. You're just trying to steal back what's yours, and don't really care if the world goes to shit.

Shepard doesn't fit that description at all.

@razielcuts said:

The right man, in the wrong place, can make all the difference in the world.

SO TIRED OF THIS MOVE!!!

As a big fan of messiah complex drivel à la Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club, Rant, etc.), no I'm not tired of *The One* stories. It'd be neat to get less grand stories told with much more care though. I don't know, a love triangle turned ugly between mediveal royality maybe? Wars et all.

Rockstar is great a picking such material.

Would you really like to play a nobody in a video game? Or someone akin to the speechless sidekick in White Knight Chronicles?

Personally I'm fine with "The One" plot device.

If it's done in a way that your character is essentially called "the Chosen One" and is the only one who can save the world, it does annoy me quite a bit. If it just so happens that your character manages to succeed but isn't necessarily predestined to do so, I have no issue with it.

Now that I look at it, that's quite a thin line, I suppose. I would really say that it depends on the game how much it bothers me. For instance, I found it extremely dumb in Mass Effect 3 but had no issue with it Metro: Last Light.

I guess this is an adjunct but I'm really tired of saving the country/planet/galaxy/universe. I don't always feel like I need to save something.

Yeah, I get tired of that "All Story" myself so yes?

If not me, then who?

No, but I am tired of it being really shitty. Didn't care that much in Mass Effect 1 or 2, but in 3 it started to bother me and AC3 was really fucking terrible. The problem is not that story, although its really down to personal taste, if you stop liking something you stop liking it, but for me its less about the "the one" thing and more about how well written and executed the story is.

No I'm not because there are so many ways you can implement that idea. The problem is that a lot of games are lazy when it comes down to it and thus end up not being very interesting. Especially ending such a story is difficult (Matrix, Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed), but if it's done well it's probably one of my favorite story tropes for games, because most games are about levelling up somehow anyway and conflicts on a large scale are easier to buy into.

I'm all for games that try to get down to a more personal level and a smaller scale though and thought that for example "The Walking Dead" did a pretty good job with it.

I wouldn't mind playing a game where I was just a supporting character of a king who was making shit happen and he was the one. That'd be fun. But I can't say I've ever played a game and said to myself, "Man, I wish I had been less important to that outcome."

Is your mind broken? At the end of AC2 when you get all that hokey stuff with space lady I was like ZOMGIZFUGGINZMAZIN!!!!!! All the mumbo-jumbo is what made the game for me. When you complete the film sequence.... wahhhhh the appple!! If there's no prospect of robots or lasers in games then I'm not interested, though. Skyrim - nope. Orcs is for dorks. Dragons is for... pffft something lame.

The One was a pretty bad movie.

The Matrix was great.

Gordon Freeman is cool i guess.

But really, a "Chosen One" destined to be the one because some dumb prophecy said so is pretty stupid most of the time. The Matrix still rules though.

Lust looking at my steam list...

DMC Devil May Cry, In the end of that game, Dante says that he did not save the world, the human did.

Bioshock Infinite was not about saving the world, it was about

getting your kid back, nothing really changed in the long run. Except that Elizabeth ( might? ) have never been born ( but even this is contradicted by the end and by what is said in the game )

I want to say yes, but then I remember Fallout 2... so no.

http://www.kongregate.com/games/armorgames/help-the-hero

It wouldn't be very exciting.

Both yes and no. The annoyingly formulaic "the one" is often boring, but it can be done well too. As someone ells here said, Shepard didn't start out as the savior of the universe. He was never Messiah, and other people could have done what he did. But characters like Desmond are born into it, destiny and all that jazz. It was interesting to a point until it feel victim to all the cliches. So I'm not sick of the classical "the one", but game series that rely on it too heavily without granting it some other justifications that being similar to Jesus's story (for relatable reasons) often ends up like shit. The AC Desmond story being the prime example here.

@thedudeofgaming: Cute, but not quite what I meant. I meant like, soldier in the army, not gopher

@bemusedchunk said:

SO TIRED OF THIS MOVE!!!

CUT MY LIFE INTO PIECES!

I'm not the biggest fan of being "the one", but as long as it makes for a fun game. Then whatever.

Somebody should make a game , where you are not "the hero" but just a party member and no matter what you do, the hero will always get all the credit, make all the decisions and get all the women/men.

Also, he will give you orders during battles and you have to follow them, no matter how stupid they are, or you won't get any XP

Actually, one of the ironies of this thread is that Dragon Age II totally had an anti-Chosen One story, and it wasn't save the world stuff either, and people HATED that game. One of the primary reasons I saw(from a story standpoint, not counting the gameplay) was that it wasn't "epic" enough compared to the Darkspawn war stuff in Dragon Age Origins. Which was much more Chosen One-y. Also, people felt you didn't have enough agency in events, and that too many things happened outside of your actions that you couldn't control. Which is kind of most of what those that get so mad at this trope ask for. Heh.

Keep in mind I loved DAII, I just always found this aspect of the game's reception hilarious in retrospect.

I think small stories very personal stories can be very powerful. I think one of the most moving games of this generation was Journey, it was about something...I'll leave it up to the players...but it was a personal journey. At the end that little journey person isn't god, s/he hasn't saved anyone, s/he died, and the cycle starts anew. Small and very personal.

The same could be said of Heavy Rain. It is the story of four people who touch their lives of dozens of others...Ethan Mars, Scott Shelby, Madison Paige, and Norman Jayden. All of their stories are about family and their private struggling against less than perfect lives. Even if you wanted to say, the story of a serial killer is big, they way the way present the story it is in the backdrop of a big city people die every day, people are killed every day, even all the deaths of children over several decades by Shelby are shown as insignificant in a big world. One of the most sad and disturbing parts of the game for me was the baby Emily and her mother Jennifer Bowles who you find soaking in the bloody bathwater of her suicide attempt. You have to revive her, you have to take care of teh baby, and you can't help but feel helpless when you have to leave the two of them to struggle on.

That's not saving a colony. That no defeating the invaders. That not saving the whole universe. But saving a mother and a baby has a lot of meaning too....especially when you killed her son, made her husband run away, and stole all the evidence that implicated yourself to the crimes.

I'm fine with the plot device as long as it's used well. Remember, tropes are not bad.

No, not Till All Are One.

It may be my absolute adoration for history that makes me believe that, to be fair. The best moment in the series for me was in 2 when you attented the Venetian Carnival. The all-story stuff was goofy but I think the story would have been more interesting if they'd focused on the historical stuggle between these two factions.

@mariachimacabre: Ahhh. I've got two friends with history degrees, one of them off at Oxford doing some fancy post grad thing. He does play games but hasn't played any of the Creed games. I'd like to get him to play it and see if he'd prefer it straight up or with the technobabble. The other one does tell you historical tales but in an interesting way. He's too busy womanising to play games.

This is the only exception

Absolutely. It's one of the reasons I fucking love Dragon Age II despite some repetitive-ass repetition. All games don't need to be about huge, world changing events that your character is inevitably in the center off. There's so much potential for amazing personal stories that are more interesting than this generic bullshit, but it seems like everyone is to afraid to really break the mold.