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I Am Not A Number

Everyone on this list is a number.

OK, maybe that's not quite true. Being designated as a number is considered to be quite dehumanizing, the resulting lack of empathy of those designated as numbers leading to some quite dire atrocities in our collective history. Generally, people with numbers for names are in the search for their original identities or are eager to escape the oppressive bureaucracy that has named them such. Sometimes they're just robots though. Really, either's a cool starting point for a sci-fi-themed game.

List items

  • A blond robot from the future, Zero is Mega Man X's chief rival and noted wild card element in the X universe of games. Inspired by the equally enigmatic Protoman (before we figured out his deal), Zero's usually helpful to the Blue Bomber but not always.

  • Zero's a ninja. Like Zero, in fact. But unlike Zero, Zero is not a robot ninja. Unless he is. Point is, we don't know much about him yet other than he's part of the insane menagerie of the equally insane upcoming multiplayer brawler from Platinum Games known as Anarchy Reigns. With this and PS All-Stars, the new Smash Bros is going to have its work cut out for it.

  • David Cross tends to show up in all sorts of weird places. When you're a universally loved (among our age group at least) hero to the sarcastic, there's no lack of work for your acerbic charms. Zero provides GTA: San Andreas' CJ Johnson with some truly odd remote helicopter missions. His actual helpfulness is questionable.

  • Man... so many zeros. It's like a rap song about aggrandizing one's own bank account. Zero is the cute protagonist of recent Indie semi-hit Warp. Or at least he's cute until he starts exploding people.

  • All right, enough of the zeros. Zero is Jack Skellington's ghostly hound, who plays a minor role in the Kingdom Heart games helping Sora and co. get acclimated with the eerie world of Halloweentown by pointing out the way to go.

  • Just stop.

  • XIII is the amnesiac protagonist of a Franco-Belgian comic book adaptation known also as "XIII", about a shady conspiracy where most of the members only know each other by their number. Yeah, like the Stonecutters. They're also like the Stonecutters in that they control everything, are utterly ruthless and occasionally break into songs about electric cars and Steve Guttenberg.

  • Red XIII is not part of any grand conspiracy that I'm aware of, but he is a sentient creature that was mistaken for an Ancient by Shinra and rebranded in a laboratory, presumably for Hojo's benefit as he seems the type that's able to remember numbers better than he can remember people. Nanaki, Red's real name, is actually the last of a long line of intelligent bestial protectors of Cosmo Canyon. I am still unable to tell if he's a dog or a cat.

  • When he's not spouting random gibberish on our forums, Agent 47 is eliminating targets with the most roundabout and off-beat methods at his disposal. Or he's just butchering assassins dressed as nuns. As someone who is decisively anti-stealth games, I've listened to the last few conversations between Ryan and Patrick about the "soul" of the series and this dissentive new entry with some amount of uncomprehending fascination.

  • Vivi doesn't have a number for his name, but all his Black Mage brethren do. As mass-produced units created by Kuja for Queen Brahne's war, they're effective as soulless fodder. It's only when they each start developing a consciousness that their numerical designations seem a bit tragic.

  • Jade's swarthy Italian AI companion that lives in her wrist device will assist her whenever possible, including a few tutorials and getting you started on Beyond Good & Evil's major side-quest of cataloguing Hillys' wildlife with her camera. Secundo is an Italian variant on "second", suggesting she might've upgraded it at some point in the past.

  • The characters of Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, which I've really been meaning to get around to playing, have names that are in some way playing on their roles as various numbers in a Cube-like conspiracy. I'm trying to learn as little about the game as possible before playing it though, because it sounds crazy.

  • This has become something of a trope in Square-Enix games recently, and I'm not just talking about the previous examples of Red XIII and the Black Mages of FF9. You also have Organization XIII of Kingdom Hearts and the card-related names (including a lot of number puns) of the cast of Final Fantasy Type-0, previously XIII-Agito. The game sounds interesting, but is as of now Japan exclusive.

  • Talking of interesting PSP games that aren't leaving Japan any time soon, the third Valkyria Chronicles' recruits are all numbers. I don't know too much about the game, but I assume there's some Spec Ops anonymity involved.

  • I'll get in trouble with a certain moon monarch and random liquids if I neglect the Dark Warlords of the Fire Emblem franchise. Though they pop up in a few of the entries of the long-running strategy series, six of them receive names in this Japan-only late-period SNES game. Their names are based on the German language words for 1-12, since there's twelve of them and Japanese game developers just love gratuitous German (see also: the subtitles for the Xenosaga games).
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