Summary
Unlike passive mediums like TV shows or books, video games are an active medium, and as such, the player is expected to act with a certain level of competence from the get-go. A great way to ease players into their adventure (without relying on the moreworn-down “amnesia backstory” trope) is by making the protagonist a “fish out of water.”
A fish out of water character finds themselves in an unknown place or time, whether by choice or by fate and typically reacts as one might expect to a completely alien environment. They are likely to get looks from the local population that mirror that internal disorientation, at least until they find their way.
6Ichiban - Yakuza: Like A Dragon
Thrown Into Mundane Modernity
After taking the fall for a crime that he didn’t commit and serving a long sentence in prison (similar to Kiryu),Like A Dragon’s Ichiban finds himself in the same city he grew up in but a brand new world. Technology, culture, and even the criminal underworld have changed, something that he regularly comments on with a mixture of bafflement and bemused surprise.
WhileLike A Dragon’s wild-haired protagonist isn’t exactly flung into a fantasy realm, Ichiban is a fantasist and models his life, fighting style, and perception of the world on video games, specifically the classicturn-based games of the 90s, which probably adds to his distorted view of life and his overall eccentricities.
After arriving at the Federal Bureau of Control in search of answers about her missing brother, Jesse Faden finds herself wandering the halls of a mysterious building packed with supernatural forces and senses-defying phenomena.Over the course of a single day, Jesse is expected to navigate the living maze filled with interdimensional interlopers without even a half-hour orientation or health and safety huddle.
While she is overwhelmed at first, Jesse takes her new role like a champ and quickly adapts to each nightmare-inducing challenge, thanks to a sentient sidearm and the borrowed abilities of the Bureau’s expropriated Objects of Power found throughout each ofControl’s levels.
While the player character inMorrowindis defined by the player, they all have a few immutable qualities binding them together. For one, as the local population of Dunmer constantly reminds them, they are outlanders, even if they have direct Dark Elf lineage. Additionally, going by the kinds of questions the player can ask of NPCs, they are canonically at a loss tolocal Morrowind loreand even recent history.
The most obvious and straightforward example is the dialogue delivered by a key character early on in the main storyline. Caius Cosades, Master of the Blades, tells the player that they look inexperienced and that they should acclimate to local customs and culture with the Fighter’s Guild, Mages Guild, or some other organization before they carry out the rest of Emperor Uriel Septim VII covert mission.
Anyone familiar with aGhibli animated productionwill recognize the art stylings and the “spirited away” trope typical of the legendary studio inNi No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. After a tragic accident, Oliver, a young boy in fresh mourning his mother, is brought to a parallel world by his mother’s magically animated doll.
As a young child, Oliver takes this unlikely turn of events in stride, but as such, he is still naive and must learn to find his footing in the magical world. Although Oliver can travel back to his hometown, he is compelled to run, fly, and swim through this new world by the chance to see his mother again.
The “fish out of water” trope could easily be applied to any of the protagonists in theFalloutseries, but none more so than in the case of Nora fromFallout 4. As a departure from the design philosophy seen previously inthe post-apocalyptic role-playing series, the player’s character (either wife or husband) is voiced and has a canonical backstory. Before the bombs dropped, Nate was a military veteran, and Nora worked as an attorney at law.
Nora is (if the player chooses the lawyer of the family instead of the combat-hardened soldier) frozen in time and promptly sent up to an irradiated wasteland. Although it is never stated whether she had any experience with firearms or combat, Nora is unlikely to find anything familiar about a flaming, chaotic wasteland, with her degree (and its usefulness) long turned to ash. At least the various vault dwellers were given an advanced warning about the state of the world above.
After seeing him getting swallowed by a gigantic gravity whale and thrown a thousand years into the future, players have plenty of reasons to relate to Tidus. While his beloved underwater sport, Blitzball, still remains, everything else about the whole planet is completely foreign to him.
Driving this home is Tidus' first encounter with other humanswho speak a foreign tonguethat he can only slowly learn to understand over the course of the whole game. Because Tidus' narration punctuates the game, players get a first-hand account of his cultural (and existential) shock as he struggles and occasionally blunders through his new world.
