History Main / PlayerAndProtagonistIntegration

* ''VideoGame/{{Runescape}}'' has AnAdventurerIsYou, but the adventurer takes some personality during some quests and other activities. Later on, they gradually gain a personality, albeit in a generally non-linear order due to quests unrelated to ongoing questlines and not being requirements for some future quests or questlines. They also have a significant difference in personality between ''Runescape 3'' or ''Old School''. ''[=RS3=]'''s Adventurer, now known as the World Guardian, is more world-weary and in line with what you'd expect of someone with such a title, due to them feeling the full force of the beginning of the Sixth Age and return of the gods. ''OSRS'''s Adventurer isn't as fleshed out due to the lack of quests[[note]]''OSRS'' went seven years without a quest due to its nature[[/note]], but they're generally more down to earth. They also absolutely cannot stand King Lathas of the Elf questline, as shown by Dragon Slayer 2.

* ''VideoGame/{{Runescape}}'' has AnAdventurerIsYou, but the adventurer takes some personality during some quests and other activities.

** ''VideoGame/PokemonMysteryDungeonRescueTeam'' takes the You are You approach when the PC is a Pokemon. Apparently the player [[spoiler: agreed to get LaserGuidedAmnesia and get turned into a Pokemon. This makes IChooseToStay ending an EsotericHappyEnding.]] The second game drops any possibility that the PC is you but still keeps the personality test.

** The UED Commander in the first game's ''Brood War'' expansion is all over the place, since it's played like You are You but you rapidly switch wich sub-faction you're in. You either aren't playing the same character the whole time, or at the crux of the story you double-cross ''yourself'' and deliberately ignore crucial information.

* ''{{VideoGame/Contact}}'', where You Are You, except when you're a Controller for the protagonist Terry, except you're actually Advising him, except you're not, and--[[MindScrew aaaaahhhrgh!]]
** This is actually a very important plot point, [[spoiler: especially during the ending when he actually ''gets sick of you controlling him'']].

* Toyed with in ''VideoGame/DrawnToLife''. [[AGodIAm You're acknowledged as the Creator]] and then control a Featureless Protagonist mannequin, whom you almost immediately customize to how you wish it to look. The rest of the characters repeatedly acknowledge the player as a higher power, while also considering the mannequin as a separate character, who they also know is the player. [[spoiler: This is revealed in the ending to be AllJustADream of a coma patient, making the player not only an advisor, a Featureless Protagonist, but also part of an entirely separate character.]]

** When the game starts the player is told a story of a child who fell into the land of monsters and must [[HelloInsertNameHere "name the fallen child."]] The player then controls the child, who acts like a typical HeroicMime; while the [[StoryBranching Neutral path]] plays this trope straight, the Pacifist "True" ending reveals that [[spoiler: the child you've been controlling is named Frisk, regardless of whichever name the player chose for them, [[note]]If the player names the child "Frisk", the game enters a hard mode that ends after the first level.[[/note]] so in this instance, the player is a Controller. The fallen child named by the player is actually the first child who fell down into the underworld some years ago; the opening story was referring to this child and not Frisk.]] This ends up being used to explore a different aspect of the trope through the [[spoiler:Genocide route where it turns out that the spirit of the First Child was summoned from the grave and possessed Frisk when the player named the child in the beginning, and killing the monsters of the Underworld corrupts them and gives them more and more power until they eventually break free of the player's control entirely and destroy the game world. In this case, the Fallen Child is both a narrator who reflects the choices of the player, a being working together with the player in collusion, using Frisk as their plaything, and an AbstractApotheosis of the very compulsion that pushes gamers to LevelGrind and strive for OneHundredPercentCompletion.]]

* ''VideoGame/{{Tearaway}}'' is an interesting take on this: the player is cast as a divine being called a You; you not only control the messenger Iota/Atoi, but you can use the touch-screens on the Vita to interact with the paper world in various ways.

* In the main ''Roleplay/DestroyTheGodmodder'' games, the players are by default controlling their real-life VideoGame/{{Minecraft}} accounts, unless they create their own in-universe main characters, in which case the players play as 'those' character's Minecraft avatars. This also applies to spinoff [=DTG=] games taking place in other video game or forum-based universes such as VideoGame/{{Terraria}} and ThisVeryWiki. The two notable exceptions are the original MSPA session and its upcoming reboot, in which the players usually are hapless [[Webcomic/{{Homestuck}} Sburb players]] or multiversal travelers, with no distinction between avatar and controller.

* VideoGame/Deltarune starts with TheVoice helping you create an avatar [[BaitAndSwitch that immediately get discarded]] [[spoiler: and you take the role of the SOUL.]]

* ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid2SonsOfLiberty'' heavily deconstructs this trope. You are the Controller for a new character in the series named Raiden, a whiny rookie who underwent extensive "virtual reality training" (meaning, he played a lot of video games) wherein '''he''' was the Controller of a simulacrum of the protagonist of the last three games. Though Raiden fancies himself a badass because of that, as he goes about his mission he clearly has identity issues and is using his fabricated self-image to indulge in {{Escapism}} and [[TakeThatAudience avoid confronting his own personality]]. [[spoiler: Which is exactly why his superior officers, who are revealed as the bad guys, chose him for his mission: they needed a weak-minded dupe longing for escapism to test whether they could control the human race through censorship and information control. As they insinuate that ''Sons of Liberty'' itself is the culmination of their efforts, the fourth wall crumbles and the line between player and protagonist blurs into non-existence. You realize you were never playing the game; it was playing '''you''' the whole time. But there's a spot of hope: after defeating the final boss, Raiden looks down at his dogtags, which [[AddressingThePlayer have the player's name on them]], and then throws them away, symbolically resolving to no longer be a controllable character.
** Which only lasts until ''VideoGame/MetalGearRisingRevengeance'', in which Raiden is once again under the player's control. But this time he doesn't seem to mind. Or even notice.

* In ''VideoGame/MaxPayne'', you are generally the Controller but at some points, Max will demonstrate the awareness of your presence: in one level, you can make him shoot a loudspeaker playing annoying music and he will thank you for that. Later, in a nightmare, Max realizes for a moment that he is the player character of a Third Person Shooter (but ignores it later).

* ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid2SonsOfLiberty'' heavily deconstructs this trope. You are the Controller for a new character in the series named Raiden, a whiny rookie who underwent extensive "virtual reality training" (meaning, he played a lot of video games) wherein '''he''' was the Controller of a simulacrum of the protagonist of the last three games. Though Raiden fancies himself a badass because of that, as he goes about his mission he clearly has identity issues and is using his fabricated self-image to indulge in {{Escapism}} and [[TakeThatAudience avoid confronting his own personality]]. [[spoiler: Which is exactly why his superior officers, who are revealed as the bad guys, chose him for his mission: they needed a weak-minded dupe longing for escapism to test whether they could control the human race through censorship and information control. As they insinuate that ''Sons of Liberty'' itself is the culmination of their efforts, the fourth wall crumbles and the line between player and protagonist blurs into non-existence. You realize you were never playing the game; it was playing '''you''' the whole time. But there's a spot of hope: after defeating the final boss, Raiden looks down at his dogtags, which [[AddressingThePlayer have the player's name on them]], and then throws them away, symbolically resolving to no longer be a controllable character.]]

* ''VideoGame/TheExperiment'' has you both as an Adviser and a You Are You. The main character is a young woman who is stranded in an abandoned lab and you are someone who is sitting in a Mission Control room and helping her find her way out.

* In ''VideoGame/{{OFF}}'', both the Batter and the Judge very clearly refer to the player as an entity completely separate from the Batter, making you an Adviser. [[spoiler:At the end of the game, once the Batter's [[OmnicidalManiac true nature]] becomes apparent, you can even betray the Batter to help the Judge take him down.]]

* ''VideoGame/DragonBallFighterZ'' plays with it as the characters are aware of the player's presence as a separate entity and of their ability to "possess" certain characters' bodies, making this both Controller and You Are You.

** When the game starts the player is told a story of a child who fell into the land of monsters and must [[HelloInsertNameHere "name the fallen child."]] The player then controls the child, who acts like a typical HeroicMime; while the [[StoryBranching Neutral path]] plays this trope straight, the Pacifist "True" ending reveals that [[spoiler: the child you've been controlling is named Frisk, regardless of whichever name the player chose for them, [[note]]If the player names the child "Frisk", the game enters a hard mode that ends after the first level.[[/note]] so in this instance, the player is a Controller. The fallen child named by the player is actually the first child who fell down into the underworld some years ago; the opening story was referring to this child and not Frisk.]] This ends up being used to explore a different aspect of the trope through the [[spoiler:Genocide route where it turns out that the spirit of the First Child was summoned from the grave and possessed Frisk when the player named the child in the beginning, and killing the monsters of the Underworld corrupts them and gives them more and more power until they eventually break free of the player's control entirely and destroy the game world. In this case, the Fallen Child is both a narrator who reflects the choices of the player as well as a being working together with the player in collusion, using Frisk as their plaything.]]

* ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemElibe Fire Emblem 7]]'' uses the "Advisor" system: the Tactician is a separate "character" whom the Lords (Hector, Eliwood, and Lyn) occasionally address, but is never shown in any detail (sometimes appearing as a generic sprite on the field during cutscenes, but in no level of detail and never under circumstances where it could be controlled) and has no relevance to the plot. The only affect of the Tactician's presence is that you can select an "affinity" at the start of the game, and units with matching affinities will receive a small boost in stats. Most ''VideoGame/FireEmblem'' games make use of a lesser variant with no physical representation of the player, or the "you" approach: The reason for this game being different is due to the fact that it was designed as the first ''FE'' game to be released outside Japan.
* In a similar fashion to the above ''VideoGame/FireEmblem'' example, the first ''[[VideoGame/NintendoWars Advance Wars]]'' game on the Gameboy Advance puts the player into the role of advisor for whichever [=CO(s)=] are in command, and occasionally has the characters refer to you directly in the campaign mode. Again, this feature was never used again for the sequels.

* ''VideoGame/SpecOpsTheLine'' is all about sneaky fourth wall breaking, with one of its key components being the relationship between [[PlayingThePlayer the player and the game's protagonist Captain Walker]]. At the start the player is The Controller, but as the game goes on and [[FromBadToWorse things go wrong]] several characters have lines with double meanings that could address the player or Walker or ''both''. One notable instance has a character saying "you didn't give us a choice" to Walker, but the camera angle makes it look like he's looking out of the screen at you. [[spoiler: By the end of the game [[ProtagonistJourneyToVillain Walker's gone off the deep end]]. It's all down to personal interpretation whether you just watched like you would with any other story, he's an extension of you and [[HeroicWannabe you messed up]], you [[JustFollowingOrders followed him on his journey]] to try to fix things, or you ''forced'' him to press on and [[YouBastard do those awful things]].]]

* '''You Are You''': The player explicitly ''is'' the protagonist. At its purest level, this involves the implication that the 'game' is actually some form of communication software, controlling actual events elsewhere in the world in real time--''{{Uplink}}'' being a prime example. The NonEntityGeneral will often fall into this, as in ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquer''. Less extreme examples might include a number of puzzle games where you're given a cursor to influence the game world, but there's no actual character you're interacting with.

* '''HeroicMime''': The protagonist has a personality, borne out by how others interact with them, but their lack of specific dialogue allows the player to imagine how they speak, if not how they act. [[Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda Link]] is a classic example of a HeroicMime done this way--it's clear he ''does'' talk, we just don't see the exact words. His actions, however, are largely fixed.

* Most of the ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquer'' games go out of their way to pretend it's really communications software, with the installation program referring to itself as installing EVA, the interface used in game. A notable exception is ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerTiberianSun'', where the player is simply a controller, and the protagonist of the original game is retroactively given a concrete identity.

*** And ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedIIILiberation'' and ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedUnity'' are framed as Abstergo-published games that are intended as Templar propaganda, but get hijacked by Assassins who contact you with the bits Abstergo cut out (''Liberation'') or an entirely new set of data they want analysed (''Unity'')

** The game goes one further: [[spoiler:near the end, Briggs is captured by the Seven Deadly Sins and strapped to a table... but they don't notice his "earthly guide". Detatched from Briggs, you must complete the final puzzle of the game, a TimedMission to save him before he's sacrificed.]]

** When the game starts the player is told a story of a child who fell into the land of monsters and must [[HelloInsertNameHere "name the fallen child."]] The player then controls the child, who acts like a typical HeroicMime; while the [[StoryBranching Neutral path]] plays this trope straight, the Pacifist "True" ending reveals that [[spoiler: the child you've been controlling is named Frisk, regardless of whichever name the player chose for them, [[note]]If the player names the child "Frisk", the game enters a hard mode that ends after the first level.[[/note]] so in this instance, the player is a Controller. The fallen child named by the player is actually the first child who fell down into the underworld some years ago; the opening story was referring to this child and not Frisk.]] This ends up being used to explore a different aspect of the trope through the [[spoiler:Genocide route where it turns out that the spirit of the First Child was summoned from the grave and possesed Frisk when the player named the child in the beginning, and killing the monsters of the Underworld corrupts them and gives them more and more power until they eventually break free of the player's control entirely and destroy the game world. In this case, the Fallen Child is both a narrator who reflects the choices of the player as well as a being working together with the player in collusion, using Frisk as their plaything.]]

* ''VideoGame/ArNosurgeOdeToAnUnbornStar'' plays with this in that the Controller model is [[LiteralMinded taken literally]]. There are two primary protagonists. One is a recently-created robot who the player is in complete control of, picking his responses to all dialogue, but the other is an established character in the story who for the most part responds on his own during dialogue. As the game progresses, the player slowly but surely starts establishing more control over him as he seems to slowly lose full awareness of what's going on around him. [[spoiler:It turns out to be a result of "Interdimend", a manner in which the actual player can interact with another dimension via a "seventh-dimensional terminal" (i.e. your [=PS3=]) to take control of someone in that dimension. The longer someone in the target dimension is connected to Interdimend, the more complete control the terminal's user exerts over them, until the point that the original person no longer exists as a separate entity.]]

* '''Advisor''': The protagonist has a personality of their own and, in-universe, their own free will. They explicitly acknowledge the player as another entity from whom they are taking advice. They may consider you to be either a generic 'voice in the head', a spirit from a vaguely defined 'other world', or [[AGodIsYou some kind of deity]], or they might just come straight out and [[NoFourthWall break the fourth wall]]. Naturally, the latter option tends to be reserved for more humorous games. Probably most common in {{Adventure Game}}s, in which they are InformingTheFourthWall.