Games where you briefly play as another character?

Does anyone know of which games let you play as another character briefly. I'm pretty sure they did it in mass effect 2 and I knew a few others but can't remember them now. This might be one of my favorite things that can happen in a story campaign and more games with it would be rad!

Man, this might be spoiler galore. You might want to give folks some warning.

Max Payne 2, Arkham City.

Halo 5 when you briefly play as Master Chief... :(

Witcher 3. The other character was way more fun and interesting than Geralt

Damn, ME2 was what I was going to say :P Anyway, have a look over here.

Why am I not surprised that this exists! The False Protagonist wiki page is also awesome. Although, the first page is missing The Witcher 2 and 3; whereas the second is missing Assassin's Creed 3, I guess?

Deadly Premonition when you play as the raincoat killer while listening to "Amazing Grace" on loop.

@beachthunder: thank you! I dunno why I love this so much but I do!

Playing as Ciri is what comes to mind for me. Pretty fun considering she has that blink ability.

One of my favourites is in Final Fantasy XII. You start by playing as Prince Rasler betrothed to Ashe during a key battle in the games war. The player fights on the battlefield with Basch by his side (effectively his loyal knight and bodyguard). Inevitably, by standing with his men rather than retreating when their army is slaughtered, he's struck down and dies. In the next player controlled scene, you take the viewpoint of Vaan... So you switch from a courageous Prince willing to stand with his people on the front lines of an army, to a thief spending his free time stealing from rats in a sewer.

@musclerider: I just started playing deadly premonition I hope that's true lol

The Last of Us

@dixavd: I played a bit of 12 after the dude at GameStop told me he put over 250 hours in it from what I played I really liked it. Seems like a super underrated ff

The Last of Us (as Ellie), Mass Effect 2 (as Joker), Devil May Cry 3 Special Edition (as Virgil), Ninja Gaiden Sigma (as boobs), Grand Theft Auto V (as Chip), Splinter Cell Blacklist (as Briggs), Final Fantasy X (as Yuna), Dark Souls (as a vase).

There are tons more that I have played but just don't remember right now.

In MGS 2, you briefly play as Snake.

In the Call of Duty games, it is common to play as different protagonists. The most famous example is Call of Duty 4, where you play as the former president, Sgt Jackson (the guy that gets killed by the bomb), and unknown SWAT team member trying to rescue someone from a plane.

In Kingdom Hearths 2, you play a (seemingly endless) prologue as Roxas, a character that looks a lot like Sora, but it totally is not (wink, wink)...

In Arkham City, you briefly play as Catwoman, but only if you bought the game new or bought the DLC. I am including it, because her missions intertwine with Batman's.

Eternal Darkness is an entire game where you keep briefly playing as different characters.

I wish more narrative games were structured like Eternal Darkness - it was quite a cool perspective on the story.

In World of warcraft you play as another character in a couple of hundred quests. In Hitman you mostly play as another character but i dunno if that qualifies :)

All the CoD games have you play as different people, sometimes in different time periods or different parts of the world.

In Ico, you play as Yorda for the last sequence.

Medal of Honor, I know in the second game there are sequences where you play as Jimmy and Manon a female French resistance partner.

@dixavd said:One of my favourites is in Final Fantasy XII. You start by playing as Prince Rasler betrothed to Ashe during a key battle in the games war. The player fights on the battlefield with Basch by his side (effectively his loyal knight and bodyguard). Inevitably, by standing with his men rather than retreating when their army is slaughtered, he's struck down and dies. In the next player controlled scene, you take the viewpoint of Vaan... So you switch from a courageous Prince willing to stand with his people on the front lines of an army, to a thief spending his free time stealing from rats in a sewer.

I am pretty sure you play as Vaan`s brother Rex in the opening, not Rasler. I don`t think he`s ever in your party.

In Final Fantasy VIII there are the sequences where the entire party is swapped with Laguna, Kiros, and Ward. Which can be a bit weird from a gameplay standpoint as Kiros and Ward inherit all the magic and junctions from the party members with Squall at the time, but they have their own unique stats.

@freedom4556: I played around ten hours of that game and really liked those parts a lot!

@kingbonesaw: really? That seems crazy they wouldn't just be coy about it

I'm going to go way back in time and bring up Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean. That moment and the reason for controlling someone else for a while was pretty interesting. I'm not sure I would say it is my favorite twist of all time, but it's definitely a twist in a game I'll never forget.

Edit: Chrono Trigger is another good one with a memorable reason for not controlling Crono for a bit. Which conveniently there is an endurance run of on the site for anyone who doesn't know what I'm talking about.

You're right, thanks. After all these years I got this blonde pretty-boy, Prince Rasler mixed up with this blonde pretty-boy, knight Reks. I honestly remembered the opening battle as playable with Rasler (all my memories of Reks' section are this) and then totally forgot Reks even existed as a character. This probably says a lot about how much I cared for Vaan since his brother's death as knight (supposedly at the hands of Basch) is one of his driving forces through the story. I remembered Rasler because of his recurring appearances before Ashe, but had little memory of Reks. Good thing that Remaster is coming out this year so I can fill in the gaps.

@mezza: I will always be around to shout 'YES!' when people rep Baten Kaitos.

@imhungry: It'll always be on my list of I wish I could play this game again games. A new game would be nice too, but I gave up on that awhile ago.

Resident Evil 4, where you play as Ashley. (by far the worst part of the game) Watch Dogs 2 did it a couple of times and Ori and the Blind Forest in it's intro.

I've also been playing Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass and you play as a Goron kid for a little bit.

Kingdom hearts 2 riku is playable in one fight, only if sora gets hit by a certain move, and sometimes if you die in the main game you'll switch to mickey

The intro to Symphony of the Night, where you play als Richter Belmont

Max Payne 2 Mona Sax

The part towards the end of Phoneix Wright: Trials and Tribulations where you briefly play as Miles Edgeworth was by far my favourite bit in that (or any other) Phoenix Wright game.

Does DLC count? Because there's a few games where for one or more of the DLC you don't play the main character from the base game; Dishonored, for instance.

Knights of the Old Republic II. Lady bounty hunter.

Uncharted 4

Onimusha 2

The game had minor relationship mechanics where giving certain characters gifts (acquired through spending money dropped from defeated enemies) would win them over as friends. Towards the end of the game the main dude becomes incapacitated and whichever buddy liked you most became the playable character on a mission to save him.

It's been a while since I've played the game but I seem to remember that happening only once and for only about a half hour or so. While the buddy mechanics were neat they were quickly dropped and never mentioned or used again.

Magoichi was the correct friend to pick, by the way. Anyone saying differently is clearly a monster.

@mezza: They totally do it in Cross again when you (sorta) play as Lynx.

Also Red Dead Redemption but I guess most people know about that one by now. And I believe Mega Man X3 was the first one where you could briefly play as Zero. I think a few JRPGS knock your protagonist out of commission for a little while maybe 3/4ths of the way through the game. FF7 does this.

This is a spoiler-rific thread! Here's some that come to mind:

• The Last of Us: Play as Sarah and Ellie
• Uncharted 4: Play as Nathan's brother and Nathan's daughter (also young Drake, which sort of counts?)
• Resident Evil 4: Play as Ashley
• Red Dead Redemption: Play as John's son
• Deadly Premonition: Play as the Raincoat Killer and Emily
• Final Fantasy X: Play as Yuna
• Metal Gear Solid 2: Originally play as Snake, but switches over to Raiden

• MDK games
• Jet Force Gemini
• Giants: Citizen Kabuto

Shoutout to the games that let you play with villains for a bit

Final Fantasy 8: Seifer and Edea are playable at select points in the story

Final Fantasy 4: Kain betrays you after the intro

It's a neat feeling when a villain is 10x as powerful as you are, or if a villian is at a similar strength at the start and grows in power until you finally have to fight him / her.

Apart from that game.. i have no idea which other games do this :D

I just found this wikipage that OP would enjoy

Max Payne 2 were you play as Mona for moments.

It's common in brawlers, which usually have multiple playable characters as unlockables already, as well as rival human characters.

In Bayonetta, there's a brief section near the end where Bayonetta is incapacitated and put on a rocket into space. Her rival, Jeanne, was just freed from mind control, and you play a really cool section as her driving her motorcycle up the side of the rocket and the debris as it takes off into space.

It's not exactly brief, but you play several chapters in Asura's Wrath as brother-in-law/rival/regretful villain Yasha. Essentially, when he turns on the villains, while Asura is lost in a berserker rage, you play as him.

After getting to the end of the game world as Nero in Devil May Cry 4, you have to play the stages backwards as Dante. Nero thought he was a villain for attacking his church, but his church turns out to be a cult of demon worshippers and they end up kidnapping Nero and taking him back to the first stage. The first time through, Nero didn't manage to kill any of the demons littering the land. Dante completely destroys them, with his usual swagger and style, and then frees Nero and allows him to take on the final boss. Considering Dante is the main protagonist of the series, it's nice to see him outclass the new kid.

Devil May Cry 4 would probably have been more brief if they hadn't made so few stages they felt they had to pad them out by having you go through them twice.

I'll assume you intend only to list charaters briefly played as, rather than games that simply feature multiple, equally represented main characters.

The big one missing from the thread that I can think of is Hotline Miami 1.

Kotor 2 was mentioned, but Kotor 1 has it somewhat prominently at the midpoint of the game. You even get to choose who you switch to.

It happens quite frequently in the Syphon Filter series, but only ever for one-off missions.

In Quantum Break you briefly play as the antagonist from time to time.

I love games with multiple Protagonists. One's I've recently played off the top of my head:

John Romero's Daikatana Game boy color version (Great game btw)

The Banner Saga

Xenoblade Chronicles

Any Metal Gear Solid game because its 90% cutscene and 10% actual game.

"Ba-zinga"?

Don't forget the part where you play as Emily with some of the greatest BGM of all time playing on a loop and being interrupted every 5 seconds of walking to listen to Kaysen tell you all about Deputy Willie. Man I need to watch the ER again.

In life is strange during the dream sequence you very briefly play as Victoria.

In Watch Dogs 2 you briefly play as wrench and sitara when you're getting ready for a mission near the end.

Max Payne 2

The Force Unleashed has a Darth Vader prologue section.

In Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader you're Luke for the first 3.5 missions, switch to Wedge during Hoth and never switch back. Also bonus levels as Han, Lando, and Vader.

The Joker sections in Arkham Knight.

in the remake of Yakuza 1 they added a new section where you play as the protagonist's sworn brother after he's sent to jail. seems like a cool way to fill in some story gaps from the original and flesh out the plot.