Alternatives to The Chosen One

[UniversalWolf]

It seems like every game I play has a plot that involves the player character being singled out to save the entire world from destruction at the hands of The Forces of Darkness™.

It's really starting to annoy me.

I'd like to ask for ideas on alternative storylines that would still be sufficent to keep a game interesting and drive it forward. Feel free to give examples if you can think of any.

 

[The Vault Dweller]

Ya know I'm really glad you brought this up.

I always hated the "Chosen One" reasoning for your character becoming a hero/villain since it makes you feel like you were just lucky or randomly picked and not actually saving the world by choice and effort. However in the past I have tried to think of alternatives to such story and it's really hard to come up with a reasonable one.

The best I can think is that the main character is born substantially richer/skilled/hard working and after many years becomes a big-shot adventurer who then takes on saving the world. Problem with that story is while it's plausible it doesn't seem to warrant an interesting backstory.

I'm sure with the large fanbase here and many of them good writers that some of them will think of something.

Sincerely,
The Vault Dweller

 

[Eyenixon]

The members of these forums have most likely gotten sick of me mentioning it, but have you played Ultima IV? The entire story of the game is based on you becoming the "Chosen One".
You aren't a hero at all, rather you're just one amongst many who has taken up the challenge to venture into the Underworld, become truly virtuous, and be given the title of Avatar.

The game actually ends with you finally ascending to the title of Avatar and becoming the hero that you would actually start out as in most other games.

Oh, and just a spoiler to illustrate how funny this "ascension to Avatarhood" is.

[spoiler:0c426c9cd6]After retrieving the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom, you cause a catalyst that raises the Underworld onto the surface as a giant volcano, your mission to retrieve the Codex starts to destroy the world of another sentient race known only as the "monsters" gargoyles to you or anyone else on Britannia, you effectively doom an entire race, the rest of the games after IV are mostly just the Avatar fixing what he fucked up, what a hero.[/spoiler:0c426c9cd6]

 

[Dragula]

Arcanum had a great opening, you ended up on a god damn blimp and survived. And then lunatic priest tells you you have to follow him.

 

[Seelix]

The best I can think is that the main character is born substantially richer/skilled/hard working and after many years becomes a big-shot adventurer who then takes on saving the world. Problem with that story is while it's plausible it doesn't seem to warrant an interesting backstory.

The Witcher kinda works that way a bit. His part in what we can call 'world's fate' doesn't seem as accidental as for example nameless hero's in Gothic series. But Geralt's only borrowed into game from books where he is rather completely shaped as a character and as part of the created world.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Arcanum had a great opening, you ended up on a god damn blimp and survived. And then lunatic priest tells you you have to follow him.

I've said this here before, but the biggest flaw I found with Arcanum's opening is that the blimp's home port does not appear on your map at the beginning of the game, suggesting that neither the player character nor Virgil know anything about the place. So...how did they get on the blimp?

But back to the topic, an interesting take on the "Chosen One" cliché would be that you are actively trying to prevent yourself from becoming the Chosen One - maybe because you know that fulfilling your task means certain death. An example would be the virgin that discovers that (s)he is about to become the sacrifice to the Volcano God. (At least the solution to that one is simple.)

Sometimes all that is needed to make an old cliché work is to approach it from another angle.

 

[Dragula]

I've said this here before, but the biggest flaw I found with Arcanum's opening is that the blimp's home port does not appear on your map at the beginning of the game, suggesting that neither the player character nor Virgil know anything about the place. So...how did they get on the blimp?

Well, Tarant is not on the map either and is one of the biggest cities?

 

[alec]

Arcanum had a great opening, you ended up on a god damn blimp and survived. And then lunatic priest tells you you have to follow him.

I've said this here before, but the biggest flaw I found with Arcanum's opening is that the blimp's home port does not appear on your map at the beginning of the game, suggesting that neither the player character nor Virgil know anything about the place. So...how did they get on the blimp?

Virgil was not on the blimp.
And the home port obviously does not appear on the worldmap because it would fuck up the story and probably the game: you'd be tempted to go there asap (and you actually can get there pretty fast if you know how). That would completely fuck up your main quest.

How is that Arcanum's biggest flaw? It's a game design choice, and a logical one at that.

 

[Flop]

There's also the variant where you're just trying to save your own ass, Snake Plissken style. Bloodnet comes to mind, although it's been ages since I've played it, so I don't actually remember whether you end up saving the world as well as yourself.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Virgil was not on the blimp.

Fair enough, I didn't remember that part well enough to be honest.

And the home port obviously does not appear on the worldmap because it would fuck up the story and probably the game: you'd be tempted to go there asap (and you actually can get there pretty fast if you know how). That would completely fuck up your main quest.

How is that Arcanum's biggest flaw? It's a game design choice, and a logical one at that.

Pay attention when reading, I said that it was the biggest flaw in the opening steps of the game, not the entire game.

I'll just re-post my 3-year old point from the other time I said it:

# Another part about this game that irked me...all this time spent on creating a believable and atmospheric world, and yet they miss a detail so big you could fly an airship through it. The game starts with your character aboard an airship, the first of its kind, on its maiden voyage. It crashes, you meet Virgil and head out into the world, etc...

Except...the city from which the airship set out from, Caladon, is strangely absent from your world map. Not only does Virgil come from Caladon, and could therefore easily put it on your map, but so did you, because the airship set off from there! Also, when you finally get to Caladon, it's like you've never been there before! If you were never in Caladon, how the fuck did you get aboard the airship?

---

From a game progression point of view, this is logical. But that's it. Any other point of view shows this decision to be utterly stupid. The only way it makes sense, is if the airship was not supposed to be from this land at all. You could get away with Tarant not being on the world map if your main character came from a remote rural area, or had never been there in his/her life. But not this.

One further note: I said back then that I would never play Arcanum again. I may change my mind about that. So many fan-made improvements and additions have been made to the game that it might warrant another playthrough. Besides, even a glitched Arcanum is better than most of the tripe we're being served as RPG's these days.

 

[alec]

Except...the city from which the airship set out from, Caladon, is strangely absent from your world map. Not only does Virgil come from Caladon, and could therefore easily put it on your map, but so did you, because the airship set off from there! Also, when you finally get to Caladon, it's like you've never been there before! If you were never in Caladon, how the fuck did you get aboard the airship?

---

From a game progression point of view, this is logical. But that's it. Any other point of view shows this decision to be utterly stupid.

One word: backgrounds.

For instance the Bandit background: "You are a gun-toting bandit. You ran afoul of the law and reached the IFS Zephyr just one step ahead of the authorities."

Nowhere in that background does it say that you were from Caladon, does it? While running from the law, you might have stumbled upon this city, not even knowing its name, you just saw a means of escape: the blimp, ready to go. So you got aboard just in time and off you were.

Another example could be the Frankenstein Monster background:
You were reanimated by a mad scientist from various body parts he found at gravesites, but somehow you escaped from the laboratory. You are very well constructed (Strength +4, Constitution +4, Electrical Resistance +30%, Poison Resistance +20%), but you are very slow (Dexterity -6) with a damaged brain-larynx connection (you use dumb dialog options) and a susceptibility to fire (Fire Resistance -20%). You also start out with no money whatsoever.

Let's even say that the mad scientist's laboratorium was located in Caladon. So what? How the fuck would you know it's Caladon? You were made from dead bodyparts for Christ's sake and you aren't the most intelligent one in Arcanum either, are you? The Feral Child background with its -6 to Intelligence and you being abandonned in the woods and raised by wolves, would also explain why you don't know about Caladon. And there are more backgrounds that would explain you not knowing anything about that city. All you'd know is that you boarded a blimp and crashed down.

As for Virgil: if you played the game and paid attention when playing it ( ), you should know that he is very reluctant to tell you anything about his past until you trigger certain events in the game.

Nevertheless, you do have a point, I agree. It's not the best start to an otherwise excellent game, but when roleplaying certain characters it works perfectly. You could always imagine you're suffering from amnesia, you know, crashing and stuff.

 

[TheRatKing]

I think Planescape's beginning was good. You wake up, thinking to yourself, what the fuck? Then a skull comes bobbing up to you. You are never the chosen one, you just are solving your own personal quest of finding out about your past.

 

[UniversalWolf]

The members of these forums have most likely gotten sick of me mentioning it, but have you played Ultima IV?

Yep. I liked that game very much, but it still suffers from The Chosen One syndrome. Games like Ultima IV, the two Fallouts, and Arcanum use The Chosen One device, only with variations.

A key element is that you end up saving The World/Civilization/Flowers and Bunnies Everywhere from a horrible fate at the hands of some individual or entity out to destroy it/them. You're either The Chosen One or you effectively become The Chosen One by winning. Either your coming is spoken of in prophecy, or your reputation persists long after you're gone. The trick is going to be removing that element without destroying the player's motive to continue progressing the story.

One route could be to change the goal from Saving The World™ to a more personal object, or at least a more tangible one. That's a difficult proposition because it takes skill to make the player care about an object that isn't grandiose.

This makes me think of The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco, which has a story that I could envision working as a game. There's a sinister plot, puzzles to be solved, and a hidden malefactor who is revealed in a final confrontation. The striking difference is that the object of the quest is not something that leaves the destruction or survival of the world hanging in the balance, but something far more intellectually and emotionally charged.

I don't want to give anything more than that away, even in spoiler tags, because ruining the ending to The Name of the Rose would be a crime. Those of you who have read it know what I'm talking about.

The point is that if you can make a quest object more mundane and yet more personal than Saving The World™, you also eliminate the need for The Chose One, because you don't have to be The Chosen One in order to achieve a more modest victory.