Decoy Protagonist / Video Games

Decoy Protagonists in Video Games.

---

• Ace Attorney:
  • Athena Cykes is this for the first case in Dual Destinies. She's initially set up as the lead of the defense team for the case, but before gameplay even starts, she shuts down from a traumatic flashback, and Phoenix arrives just in time to take over the trial, while Athena becomes his co-counsel upon recovering.
  • In Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice, Phoenix has his name in the title and is the first character you control. However, he ultimately takes a backseat to Apollo Justice, who has a far more personal stake in the game's events and is the player character for the final trial. Of course, Apollo has his name in the title too...
• Agarest Senki has Leonhardt himself. He is the protagonist of the first generation, but when you finish his chapter, he gets to be sealed in a pillar with the three Love Interests. Then his son Ladius gets to be the protagonist of his chapter but also gets sealed after his chapter is done with his three Love Interests. Same thing happens to Thoma and Duran in the third and fourth generation. Duran's son Rex then becomes THE TRUE protagonist for the rest of the game itself.
• In the first few stages of ANNIE: Last Hope, players are misled into thinking Jack, the titular character's policeman fiancée, is the hero, since for one-third of the entire game they're playing as Jack who goes around shooting zombies and crabs left and right while Annie fills in the typical Damsel in Distress role. But Jack gets knocked out after the monster truck boss, leading to a two-month Time Skip where they're now playing as Annie, the actual protagonist, for the rest of the game.
• Haytham Kenway of Assassin's Creed III is playable through the first three memories, which ends with him having an affair with a Native American woman. The kicker is that he turns out to be a Templar and the game's antagonist. The true protagonist is his son with the Native American woman, Connor.
  • In a sense, Desmond Miles is this for the Assassin's Creed franchise as a whole. The original premise was that Desmond was the real hero of the franchise, with his adventures 20 Minutes in the Future as the framing device for Assassin's Creed I-III. However, even by Assassin's Creed II he was being heavily overshadowed by Ezio. Following Desmond's death at the end of III, the near future setting was de-emphasised in Assassins Creed IV and essentially abandoned in future games as the franchise pivoted to the historical adventures of past assassins.
• Done twice in Baten Kaitos, first when it's revealed that Kalas is The Dragon, and Xelha takes over, and then second when Kalas experiences a Heel–Face Turn and rejoins your party.
• BioShock Infinite: In the Burial at Sea DLC, Booker once again serves as the hero of Episode 1. Then, at the end, it's revealed that he isn't a Booker but a Comstock who regressed back into his old identity, and he gets killed by a Big Daddy, leaving you to play as Elizabeth for Episode 2.
• Bomb Rush Cyberfunk: The tutorial has you play as Faux, one of New Amsterdams "big three" as he's broken out of prison...and then his head gets cut off when you get into the game for real. From that point on, you take control of Red, an Amnesiac Hero born from a cybernetic head grafted onto the rest of Faux's body, hoping to get back the latters head for awnsers about the formers past. Although that doesn't mean Faux is entirely out of the picture other than a MacGuffin...
• Brown Dust II: The story takes place through Lathel's perspective at first, slowly chronicling his descent into darkness as he continues fighting the Cocytus, though it becomes slowly evident that Justia is the real protagonist, especially once he dies in Bloody Rhapsody and is replaced by a Homunculus version of himself.
• William Carter in The Bureau: XCOM Declassified. The real protagonist is an ethereal you are directly playing as, who is controlling Carter.
• Despite the name, the titular Cadence in Cadence of Hyrule doesn't see a lot of playtime in a normal playthrough. You play as her during the tutorial section, but after the player chooses between Link and Zelda to control, Cadence bids that character farewell and becomes a recurring NPC trying to return back to her own world. She does rejoin the party for the final dungeon though, and it is possible to make her playable again before that if you find her on the overworld enough times.
• The Caregiver: You start the game playing as Tomita Sachie. After you complete the first night, the P.O.V. switched to Kuramoto Naomi.
• Castlevania: Symphony of the Night starts with you playing as Richter Belmont in a re-enactment of the final battle of Castlevania: Rondo of Blood. After you defeat Dracula, a plot dump happens and the view switches over to the real protagonist, Alucard.
• Chained Echoes: The prologue does everything it can to keep the player guessing who the main character will be. Is it the young prodigy they're directly controlling with wishes of personal freedom? Is it The Mentor who stays back to overhear plot-relevent dialogue at one point? Is it the captain of their mercenary company who might be the Sole Survivor as the mission starts to go rapidly south? Some combination of the above? There's even a Commander Contrarian who's a Guest-Star Party Member despite not getting dialogue portrait privileges to emphasize the other three. Then the characters unwittingly set off a Fantastic Nuke, putting themselves at ground zero of a blast that kills tens of thousands, and the narrative switches to completely unrelated characters a year later.
• Like every other Choices: Stories You Play book, Most Wanted starts with you picking your main character's look, hm, that's weird, its only choice is your gender. Well, you roll your eyes at the minimal customization, pick the character's gender and name, play a scene, flirt with another character...only to die five minutes in and spend the rest of the book playing as cops trying to crack the case.
• Clive Barker's Jericho starts off with Devin Ross as the only controllable character, who dies within less than an hour of playing the game and then commands his team from beyond.
• The opening cutscene of Company of Heroes shows a group of American soldiers landing on Omaha Beach. They bravely charge the beach only to get mowed down to the last man. Then a second landing craft comes in, and it's these guys who turn out to be the protagonists.
• Inverted in Cookie Run: Kingdom. In the Odyssey story, it initially appears as if Clotted Cream Cookie will be one of the main villains of the story; however, come Chapter 2, and Clotted Cream Cookie is then shown to be explicitly a hero and ally, with him working together with everyone to defend the Republic from Dark Enchantress Cookie. The real main villains are the aforementioned Dark Enchantress Cookie, Custard Cookie, and Mille-Feuille Cookie.
• Crysis: Nomad? Alcatraz? Nope. It was Prophet's story all along.
• The first four games of the Cube Escape series are each narrated by a different character, with the woman in Seasons having the biggest number of expected protagonist traits (tragic backstory, desperately trying to complete a nigh-impossible quest, a Sequel Hook that implies that her story isn't quite over yet...). It isn't until the fifth game, Case 23, that Dale Vandermeer is introduced as the detective investigating the aforementioned woman's (supposed) death and becomes the most focused-on character in future games.
• Danganronpa:
  • More like Decoy Deuteragonist. Sayaka Maizono from Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc is played up throughout Chapter 1 as the main female lead, becoming Makoto's sidekick and potential main love interest. It turns she started manipulating Makoto to become the fall guy for when she killed somebody after Monokuma's video shows her that her bandmates might possibly be in danger, but when she actually tries it, it backfires horribly and she ends up as the first victim. From that trial onwards, Kyoko Kirigiri starts becoming a much more important character, and by the end of the game her status as true deuteragonist and Makoto's real love interest is solidified.
  • Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony has the Ultimate Robot K1-B0, or "Keebo". He is designed to resemble Makoto Naegi down to the Idiot Hair, mentions him as someone he looked up to, has a name that could be read as "Hope", and was put in the first official video and in the first official artwork along with Kaito and Maki to fool the player into thinking he is the main character. Then comes the Tokyo Game Show 2016 trailer, showcasing Kaede Akamatsu as the main character (with her even saying as much in the trailer herself)... and then Kaede got executed in the game's first case, from then the protagonist position is shifted to Shuichi Saihara. Then, in Chapter 6, it's somewhat subverted when you briefly take control of Keebo during the trial... and then subverted the rest of the way when it's revealed that Keebo was technically the protagonist all along, just not from your perspective. The game is a Meta Sequel set in a world so obsessed with Danganronpa that they turned it into a reality TV show where teenagers happily sign up to get mind-wiped, implanted with new fictional identities, and murder each other for an audience of millions. Keebo was built as the protagonist of the current season whose eyes serve as the camera the audience is watching the show through, and his "inner voice" that guides him is just telling him the results of audience polls about what he should do next. His Idiot Hair (the distinctive feature of all Danganronpa protagonists) is even the antenna through which he recieves this information.
• Dead Space:
  • In Dead Space 3 you start off playing as a new character named Private Kaufman. After the breathtaking opening, Kaufman is murdered and the game shifts to another time and location where the real main character, previous protagonist Isaac Clark, is introduced.
  • In Dead Space: Extraction, you first play as a mining employee, who first notices the necromorphs showing up. At the end of the first level, he's killed and his mantle of PC is taken up by the leader of the expedition that killed him.
• Doki Doki Literature Club! does this is a weird, spoilery, meta way, as it does a lot of tropes. You'd think the Player Character, through whom the player interacts with the world, would be the main character. Heck, "Main Character" or "Protagonist" is what he's typically referred to in outside media about the game (in the game he's named by the player). But the player character becomes increasingly less responsive to the events around him as they become weirder, leaving only the player to notice what's going on and follow the actual plot... and in the climax, the character is put aside entirely as the game involves the player themselves directly in the plot. Thus it's the player who's the protagonist of the overall story, both through the character and without him. It's even possible, given the right conditions, for the game to address the player by their real name — without ever asking what it is — even if it's different from the character's.
• In Don't Be Afraid, you first start out playing as Jamie in The First Toy, a prologue for the game. He manages to get through many of Franklin's traps, only to be caught and killed by Franklin himself in the end. The full game has you playing an entirely different character named David instead.
• Dragalia Lost: Zethia is a decoy deuteragonist, as she can be see right alongside Euden and Notte in most promotional material. She’s also the first one to join Euden on his journey. However, very early on in the game, Zethia ends up getting kidnapped, thus making her a Damsel in Distress for most of the game. For the rest of the game, Zethia is mostly absent, save for the occasional Day in the Limelight. The game is actually about how being separated for all of this time has affected Euden and Zethia’s relationship, because even though they went on different paths, they’re still closer than ever.
• Dragon Quest V:
  • The Chosen One is not the main character, but his son.
  • Prince Harry is a decoy deuteragonist. Early on, the game makes it appear like Harry is going to be longstanding party member with the Hero. The prologue of the game even have the two getting captured and forced into slavery together. Harry ends up getting Put on a Bus early into the Second Era, after retaking his Kingdom.
• Zigzagged throughout Dynasty Warriors 7 and 8, where each kingdom is given their own story campaign. Sima Yi is presented as the face of Jin, but he retires roughly a third of the way into Jin's storyline. His eldest son Sima Shi takes over from there, but dies by the second third of the game, leaving Brilliant, but Lazy younger brother Sima Zhao as the true protagonist of Jin. Likewise, Wu's storyline starts with Sun Jian as the leader until his immediate death, followed by eldest son Sun Ce until his near-immediate death, leaving Sun Quan as the leader of Wu for the majority of Wu's storyline. Liu Bei eventually dies and leaves his son Liu Shan in charge of Shu, but he's alive for 3/4 of Shu's storyline, while Cao Cao of Wei is the only leader to live all the way through his kingdom's storyline.
• In Everlong, the main character Brad was... well, the main character, until he suddenly vanishes as the evil spirits within him took over him, causing him to because Brainwashed and Crazy, take a Face–Heel Turn and end up being killed by the Big Damn Heroes. Downplayed in the latest version of the game, where he breaks out of his brainwashing and rejoins the party. However, Glen still takes most of the spotlight for the rest of the game.
• Happens in Fallout 4 if the player chooses a female character. The opening narration is provided by a man, but if you choose to play as a woman, then he is killed early on, and the player character and true protagonist is his wife.
• In Faraway Story, Pia starts as the main character and seems to fit the role of an Atelier Series protagonist learning to become strong and independent. However, she's killed by the Dark Lord at the end of Part 1, forcing her mentor, Ellevark, to turn back time and prevent its resurrection. In the partially complete Part 2, Ellevark is the main character who has to re-recruit all of the party members. Pia rejoins in the fifth chapter, but can no longer be selected as the controllable character and Ellevark is still the default character on non-combat maps.
• Fatal Frame
  • Fatal Frame began with Mafuyu Hinasaki entering Himuro Mansion to find his missing professor and group. He's only playable for the intro chapter and then focus turns to Miku finding the camera he dropped. Mafuyu spends the rest of the game wandering the mansion like a spectral image and finally decides to stay with Kirie at the Abyss.
  • Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse lets the player control Madoka Tsukimori for the prologue chapter. She gets a worse deal than Mafuyu, as she's playable for less time than he is before being killed off by ghosts. Madoka becomes a hostile spirit on Rougetsu Island that the actual protagonists needs to fight.
• Fate/EXTRA has one of the most tragic uses of this in videogame history. You spend the prologue playing as an average high school student who quickly gets swept up in the Holy Grail War. Depending on how many optional scenes you unlock, he manages to discover several secrets that are crucial to the future plot. Then, when the time comes for his trial in the prelims, he fails miserably. As in, he isn't even able to get a single attack before the enemy Servant effortlessly cuts him down. The prologue ends with the dying student tearfully begging that someone, anyone will remember his name and who he was. The most tragic part is, thanks to how Eliminations in the War work, no one ever will. Not even the player. His name is never revealed, so not even the player can remember him, so he dies as alone as any video game character can ever be: cut off even from the player. Massive Player Punch when you realise this.
• Fate/stay night opens with a man recounting the point where his Servant, a blue-armored woman, was summoned, but then promptly switches to Rin Tohsaka's narration as she attempts to summon her Servant in preparation for the Grail War. She remains the viewpoint for the first three days (about two hours of gameplay), and, as a likable, manipulative Deadpan Snarker is a fairly classic Urban Fantasy protagonist. Then she and Archer get curb-stomped by a blue-armored woman... and we rewind three days, go back to the start, and see the events leading up to that from the point of view of the mage who summoned that woman, Shirou Emiya, previously a minor supporting character.
• Final Fantasy appears to love using this, or rather, Decoy Hero trope:
  • Final Fantasy VI zigzags this trope. While the first character we control (or rather, mind control) is Terra, and she is the most interesting character, it is Locke that is framed as the protagonist of the story. This later ends up as an aversion as the game adopts an ensemble cast by the end of the story.
  • Final Fantasy VII: While the protagonist is clearly Cloud, the initial hero is set to be Aerith, with her being the first character to appear in the game, as she is the All-Loving Hero, who alone has the capability to stop Meteor, due to being the last Ancient in existence. But after Disc One, it is clear that she is not the universe main hero of the story.
  • Final Fantasy IX: During disc one, Zidane, in universe, is nothing but a thief that helps the Princess escape the clutches of the Evil Queen. As the story progresses, Dagger is the one primed to be the hero of the story, being the summoner and all. This is later flipped once more of Zidane's nature is revealed and he is the ultimate hero of the story.
  • Final Fantasy X: While the game takes place through Tidus's viewpoint, Yuna is the clear hero of the story. Being the summoner, on her way to a dangerous pilgrimage to save the world from Sin. Tidus mostly feels like a contemplative Tag Along Kid with a sword. This is later flipped once the party meets Yunalesca.
  • Final Fantasy XII has no less than three fakeout protagonists:
    • One might initially expect the brave and handsome young Prince Rasler to be the main character... but he doesn't even make it past the opening cutscene.
    • Reks, a level 3 soldier, is this as you briefly control him through the castle, and fight empire enemies in attempt to save the king during the prologue. The prologue ends with his death.
    • Vaan, Reks's brother, is the first proper character the player is given control of, and is depicted as your typical male Final Fantasy protagonist. Except his role in the story is, relatively speaking, very minor, as the plot actually revolves around the widowed wife of the aforementioned Rasler, Ashe, who is both The Chosen One and The Leader, while the position of The Lancer in the team alternates between Basch and Balthier. Vaan is there until the end, but he's more of a Tagalong Kid than anything else.
• In the Fire Emblem series:
  • Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War takes this up to 11. Sigurd is a decoy for his son, Seliph. Moreover, most of Sigurd's army dies with him, making your entire army a decoy. The Big Bad pulls a huge win making the chapter a hopeless level.
  • In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Byleth has to choose between Edelgard, Dimitri, and Claude as their co-protagonist for the rest of the story. However, in Chapter 11, Edelgard is revealed to be the masked Flame Emperor who has been acting as the Big Bad up to this point. If you don't fulfill the requirements to unlock the option to defect to her side or refuse to join her at the moment of fate, Byleth remains loyal to the Church of Seiros. This makes Edelgard permanently abandon them and become The Heavy from that point onward, thus leaving Byleth as the sole protagonist for the rest of the route.
• The opening stage of Fobia: St. Dinfna Hotel is set in the 1960s, where you play as a prisoner named Luis trying to escape the titular hotel (and familiarize yourself with controls). Luis was captured automatically at the stage's end and presumably killed, and the game then skips to 2009 where the real main character, Roberto, shows up.
• Game of Thrones (Telltale): Ethan is built up as one of the main characters as Lord of House Forrester, but he is murdered in cold blood by Ramsay at the end of the first episode. Rodrick takes his place as lord after turning out to have survived the massacre. You even play as Ethan until he is killed.
• Gears of War 4 places heavy emphasis on JD Fenix being the game's new protagonist; he's the son of the series' previous protagonist Marcus Fenix, and the two get plenty of bonding moments throughout the game as if the latter is passing the torch. Also given plenty of prominence in the game itself is Kait Diaz, who slowly usurps JD as the franchise's real new protagonist; 4 also devotes time to the relationship between Kait and her mother, the game ends with The Reveal that her grandmother was series antagonist Queen Myrrah, and this cumulates with Gears 5 featuring Kait front and center as the main playable character.
• At the beginning of GLITCHED, FROG Inc assigns you to Conrad, who plans to leave the town. You control him as he interacts with people around Betwixit at night. He can optionally help Lenny with getting back into his house and buy Snap Candy from Slick Rick. Conrad even shows some paranoia that someone might be watching him. By the time he meets up with Gus, however, he gets corrupted by the glitch. The player then saves the real protagonist, Gus, from the glitch and assumes control of him from there.
• The Prelude to The Godfather game starts with you playing Johnny Trapani, but he gets gunned down within minutes. The real player character is his son after a Time Skip.
• Gone Home has you play as Katie Greenbriar, a college student who's just gotten home from a trip and finds her family's new house completely empty. As you investigate the house, it turns out the story is mainly about Katie's younger sister, Sam, and her falling in love with another girl.
• Götzendiener begins with an archetypical fantasy hero confronting an archetypical fantasy demon king to rescue an archetypical kidnapped princess... and then the hero succumbs to his wounds. Turns out the princess is to rescue herself.
• Done brutally in Halo: Reach where SPARTAN B-312, AKA Noble Six, has the same combat rating as Halo's protagonist Master Chief John-117 and, like John, is also chosen by Cortana to be her carrier. Unfortunately, Six dies on Reach.
• Hatoful Boyfriend does this. In the first, sole human student Hiyoko Tosaka is the protagonist for the entirety of the otome segment. Then the Bad Boy's Love true ending story starts with her murder and the game switches over to Ryouta Kawara, who was previously her best friend and one of the titular boyfriends. The swap is marked by a change in the interface: the background of the text box no longer says the game's name, but says Hurtful Boyfriend instead.
• In Heroes Must Die You is the playable character in the opening but is killed by Lord Murder at the end of the level. His friend Storm takes over from there.
• Higurashi: When They Cry: After Keiichi has been the main character for three arcs, his spotlight is taken away for the rest of the series, with three arcs devoted to Akasaka, Shion, and Rena. The eventual main character? Rika Furude, a True Companion who had received the least attention prior to the reveal. Keiichi still plays a critical role, though, as a source of inspiration and courage.
• Hotline Miami features a hitman as its protagonist for the majority of missions, but it's the boss at the phone station who solves the mystery behind the answerphone messages. Given that Richard is an Unreliable Narrator, one assumes that Biker survived their encounter, and went on to kill the villains. The sequel shows that both storylines are canon, with Jacket and the Biker having survived their encounter and both storylines progressed independent of one another.
• In Hybrid Heaven, you begin the game as Diaz. Except you are not Diaz, you're just in his body and get yours back about an eighth of the way through the game you are really the real Johnny Slater. Diaz is, in fact, a major villain.
• Icarus Proudbottom's World of Typing Weekly seems to be another typing adventure starring the eponymous character. At the end of the first episode, however, Icarus is apparently killed, and the rest of the series focuses on robot detective Mark 22 and his investigation on the mystery behind the murder.
• Supergirl in Injustice 2. The game's opening cinematic focuses on her surviving the destruction of Krypton and one would be lead to believe she is the main hero since the trailers hyped her as the redeeming replacement for Superman, who went evil in this universe. Instead, she is the focus of Chapter 9 where very little happens to advance the plot, except her own character development, and the plot really is about Superman and Batman trying to settle their differences once and for all.
• In the Flash game Innkeeper available on Kongregate, the player takes the role of Manuel, a young man whose lifelong dream is to build an inn to bring tourism to the island where he lives. His family agrees to help out. The most supportive member of his family is his mother Nanay, who acts as the receptionist. Once the inn becomes a big enough success, their rival visits them and expresses disbelief that his chain of inns is losing business to someone who doesn't even exist anymore. Manuel was Dead All Along, having died at a very young age. His mother Nanay had a breakdown and eventually deluded herself into thinking Manuel was still alive. Nanay was the real protagonist all along trying to fulfill her late son's dream.
• In Kentucky Route Zero, Conway is the first character the player has control over, and his job starts the plot. However, the game soon becomes about an ensemble of characters, and Conway dies and leaves at about three-fourths of the game, leaving his friends to complete the job.
• In Killer7, the titular group are seven split personalities all within a crippled man in a wheelchair named Harman, who is the protagonist. Then the ending comes, which reveals that the leader of the seven personalities and the only one who is shown to normally exist seperately of Harman, Garcian, is actually the one with the split personalities under his control, and Garcian himself is the split personality of the ruthless assassin Emir Parkreiner, and he killed Harman and the recessive six personalities, gaining Harman's power of invoking those personalities and carrying the weapons of the recessive six in his briefcase. Their counterparts created by the US military work similarly. Handsome Red, the supposed leader of the Handsome Men, fights Harman, the supposed leader of the killer7. The last of the Handsome Men-killer7 duels is between Handsome Pink, the real leader of the Handsome Men, and Garcian, which foreshadows Garcian being the true protagonist.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • Kingdom Hearts II: Roxas. Provided the cover art isn't a giveaway, anyway.
  • Likewise in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, Ven resembles Sora and Roxas in several ways, but the plot actually revolves more around Terra, and Aqua does the more traditional heroic deeds. She's also the only one playable during the Final and Secret Chapters, affirming her role as the real protagonist.
  • In Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance], for the most part, Sora and Riku share heroic deeds pretty evenly. Then in the last world, Sora is almost corrupted by Xehanort and falls into a coma. In the end, Riku comes to the rescue by facing off against Young Xehanort, then freeing Sora's heart from the darkness by destroying the Armored Ventus Nightmare in a Battle in the Center of the Mind. Notably, Sora's arc in the game is him falling into Xehanort's plans while Riku's arc is him coming to terms with his past actions and his character growth since them.
• In L.A. Noire for the last three missions, control is switched over to Cole's fellow marine Jack Kelso, who investigates the Suburbian Redevelopment Group as Cole is stonewalled by the corrupt police department. Cole is later killed in the final mission, and a flashback of Kelso ends the story. This makes it one of the rare occurrences where the decoy protagonist is playable most of the game. However, the story is really how Cole's drive as a marine and a detective spurred Kelso to do the right thing and that Jack had a lot to learn from his rival, who was neither his friend nor his enemy.
• If one hadn’t paid attention to the marketing for The Last of Us, Joel’s daughter Sarah comes off this way in the prologue. You play as her for about ten minutes while she tries to figure out what’s happening. You take control of Joel once you leave the house but the narrative is still shown through her eyes. She gets shot about ten minutes later and then there’s a twenty year Time Skip.
• Infamously leaked in The Last of Us Part II. While Ellie is playable for the first half and final levels of the game, the player assumes control of Abby at the halfway point, finally seeing the reason behind her killing Joel and how Ellie's vengeful killing of her friends affects Abby.
• Juna Crawford in The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV takes up the mantle of protagonist for the first 30 hours of the game before Rean Schwarzer comes back to take the mantle. This is because at the climax of Cold Steel III, Rean lost control of his powers after he inadvertently kills the Nameless One, causing the curse to spread throughout the entire country and beyond. He is then captured by Osborne (along with Celine) and new Class VII woke up two weeks after the incident. Juna then finds out about Rean's real father but she's angry at old Class VII's inaction of not doing anything while Rean's captured so she rallies everyone to try and look for him.
• The Last Sovereign: As part of its skewering of H-RPG tropes, at the start of the game the player is put in control of Kai, who is designed to resemble a generic JRPG hero. Kai proceeds to spend the next couple of maps demonstrating that he is an utterly contemptible human being and then gets unceremoniously killed, at which point Simon becomes the new POV character.
• You start off LISA: The Hopeful as wisecracking gunslinger Beltboy, aided by reluctant nerd Lanks and brutish footballer Cyclops. Play your cards wrong and the former gets shot in the eye, forcing one of the latter two to take over for him.
• The Imperial China chapter of Live A Live has the Earthen Heart Shifu as the playable character for the majority of the chapter, and is the representative of the chapter on the cover art (both the original's and the remake's), but by the end of the chapter, it's whichever of the Shifu's 3 disciples who's chosen by the player that proves to be the real protagonist of the chapter, being the one who fights and defeats the chapter's Arc Villain, as well as being the playable character for the Dominion of Hate chapter, rather than the Shifu. This can also be seen in the chapter's title (which, like other the chapter titles, serves as a brief description of the role of the chapter's protagonist), "The Successor", referring to the disciple rather than the Shifu.
• Lobotomy Corporation is a peculiar example in that the true protagonist is the same character as the decoy, but not the same in personality. You start the game as Lobotomy Corporation's new manager, going by the nickname of "X" and inheriting the position from "A". They are a Featureless Protagonist with limited dialogue options, representing a generic stand-in for yourself. However, it turns out that you are "A" (better known as Ayin), having lost his memories only to recover them around the game's halfway point. The story takes some dramatic turns following this reveal, as Ayin's characterization is properly fleshed out unlike his previous alias.
• Master Detective Archives: Rain Code starts off with the protagonist Yuma Kokohead get on a train with five other Master Detectives who introduce themselves and are all invited to the Nocturnal Detective Agency in Kanai Ward. It's revealed that they were told that only five detectives were invited, (making the train party six including Yuma) which leads everyone to believe that there's an impostor among them. Given who created this game and it's being played out very similarly to Danganronpa, you'd expect at least two of the Detectives won't be joining you being the victim and the murderer. All five get murdered by a hitman who replaced one of the real Detectives on the train, leaving Yuma the Sole Survivor and shortly after meets up with his actual teammates of Kanai Ward.
• In Megadimension Neptunia VII, Neptune and Nepgear shared the spotlight of the protagonist role at the first arc till Neptune is out of the picture to give more screen time for the Ultradimension version of Neptune. At the second arc, it's Neptune, Vert, Blanc, and Noire and when all the routes converge, Neptune's at the spotlight again. By the time the Heart Dimension arc happens, Hyperdimension Neptune realizes that the spotlight has been at Uzume and adult Neptune while she gets stuck with being a side character. As the self-proclaimed "Protagonist of Protagonists" of the Neptunia series, she doesn't take it well.
  Neptune: This is protagonist fraud at this point! I'll take this to court! I'll sue and I'll win!
• Metal Gear:
  • Infamously done in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. The game starts with you playing as the familiar hero Solid Snake and investigating the creation of a new Metal Gear - Metal Gear RAY. However, the tanker he is aboard is sunken about an hour into the game and he is presumed dead. After a Time Skip, you control Raiden, a rookie FOXHOUND operative, through the main portion of the game.
  • This is Played for Laughs in "Metal Gear Raiden: Snake Eater", which served as a follow-up to the original teaser for Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. In this video, Raiden (after discovering that he will not be the protagonist of MGS4) travels back in time to kill Naked Snake in order to prevent Solid Snake from being born.
  • Played with in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. The player is led to believe that the protagonist Venom Snake is the same character as Naked Snake (The Hero of Snake Eater, Peace Walker, and Ground Zeroes), only for him to turn out to be a brainwashed decoy who underwent facial reconstruction, while Ishmael (a character who helps out Venom Snake in the prologue) was the real deal. In a way, Venom Snake is his own decoy protagonist. Extends to the original game as well, with the revelation that Venom Snake will eventually become the "Big Boss" from the end of the original game, while Naked Snake doesn't show up until Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. In the end, Naked Snake decides that both himself and his decoy Venom Snake are the "real" Big Boss.
• Modern Warfare:
  • Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare has Sgt. Paul Jackson, who seems like he's going to be a second protagonist for the entire game until he's killed by a nuke. After this, the story focuses entirely on Soap's squad (with a flashback from Price in the middle).
  • Joseph Allen in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, who is killed off in his third playable mission after leaping the Moral Event Horizon. Also implied with Gary 'Roach' Sanderson, whose role as a playable character seems to be to show off how badass 'Soap' MacTavish has become. Confirmed when Roach had a metaphorical bridge dropped on him so the rest of the game could be told from Soap's perspective.
  • Practically exaggerated in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3; the game has four decoy protagonists. The first is Andrei Harkov, bodyguard to President Boris Vorshevsky and his daughter Alena. After Vorshevsky is attacked by Makarov's men, it looks like Harkov's portion of the story will be focused on protecting them which immediately ends after he gets a bullet in the head and Alena is abducted one mission in. Next is Derek 'Frost' Westbrook, who's the decoy decoy protagonist. His missions aren't of any critical importance to the A plot, but he doesn't die along with the rest of his squad by the end of the game. The most traditional decoy protagonist is Yuri, who used to be Makarov's partner until his Heel–Face Turn. (Guess what happens in the end?) And then there's Soap, who was the original protagonist in the first two game's after the decoy protagonists were killed. But in this game, he dies before you even have the chance to play as him. So who's the real protagonist in the series? Captain Price. You only get to play as him in three missions in the entire trilogy.
• Mother 3 starts with a brief prologue where you play as Lucas, and also control Claus for the first battle of the game. (After the first main chapter, Claus is never seen again until the end of the game, except for as the Masked Man.) The first main chapter has you play as Flint as he looks for his wife and kids, and then for Claus a second time. (Again, Flint is never seen again until shortly before the game ends.) Chapter 2 focuses mainly on Duster, who actually is one of the core protagonists, but not the main one of those four. Chapter 3 is about Salsa, who afterwards, is only seen again at Chimera Laboratories. From chapter 4 onward, after the three-year skip, you play as Lucas, the boy you started the game as.
• Muramasa: The Demon Blade: Zigzagged. While the story selection screen claims Momohime's story is about her, she has little involvement with it directly. The real focus of the story is on Jinkuro who has possesed her body and is referred to as 'Momohime Jinkuro' during this time. However Momohime's spirit still tags along for the journey. In all three endings she ends up getting back in her body one way or another and thus playable instead of Jinkuro, making all the endings mostly about her. This is especially subverted in the second ending where their souls fuse together becoming an amnesiac girl known as Oboro. She has Momohime's kind temperment but Jinkuro's unparalleled skill in swordplay, and when she discovers this goes on a quest to discover her true identity.
• Murder House begins with you playing as a boy named Justin who's trapped in a mall with a serial killer dressed as the Easter Bunny. Even if you find the janitor who then runs for help, the killer kills Justin, after which the game undergoes a timeskip and puts you in the shoes of the actual protagonist, Emma.
• In NieR: Automata, 2B is the primary protagonist for Route A, while the remaining routes are told mainly from 9S and A2's perspectives. She's briefly playable for the beginning of Route C, but she later asks A2 to Take Up My Sword right before dying, after which A2 and 9S become the protagonists.
• Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors has Junpei. Notably, he's still the main character, but just before the final puzzle it is revealed that you have been playing as Akane, not him, for the entire game.
• Nintendo Wars: In Advance Wars: Days of Ruin, Will is the first character to be introduced, but Captain Brenner is the main playable CO for a good portion of the story until his Heroic Sacrifice, after which Will becomes the protagonist and eventual de-facto leader of the unit when Lin realizes she's so coldly analytical and focused on their eventual goal that it's turning their troops against her.
• At first, the titular character of OMORI seems to be the game's protagonist. But once the tutorial is over, the game suddenly introduces a new playable character in the form of Sunny. As the game progresses and the player alternates between the two, it becomes more and more clear that Sunny is the true protagonist of the story, especially once it's revealed that Omori is the embodiment of Sunny's subconscious.
• In Othercide tutorial, you play as a pregenerated character named "Mother", the Big Good of the game. After this level, she's demoted to Mission Control. The actual playable character are an Amazon Brigade of summonable characters named the Daughters.
• In PARANORMASIGHT: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo, players follow Shogo Okiie during the first story route, he is front and center of the box art and the advertising, and he even resembles the typical black-haired everyman protagonist common in Japanese media. However, he mysteriously dies in the end of his route and the game moves on to the three actual protagonists, with Shogo being unrelated to the main story and only becoming relevant at the very end of the game.
  • That said, Shogo does resume his role as a protagonist in the end of the story, with the player having to use the knowledge they acquired until that point to return to a point of the timeline before Shogo died and have him stop the Big Bad (whose identity was unknown until then).
• Persona 2 starts out with five protagonists: Tatsuya, Michel, Ginko, Maya, and Yukki. However, Yukki ends up being a decoy protagonist for Jun, a.k.a. Joker, who joins your party near the end of the game.
  • Persona 3 is a weird example, as the Main Character wasn't originally this, but after the Updated Re-release added a Playable Epilogue, the role of Main Character switches over to the Deuteragonist, Aigis after the protagonist's death at the end of the game.
• To some, it isn't immediately apparent that you're playing as Chaz in Phantasy Star IV, rather than Alys.
• Rock of Ages 3: Make and Break initially has you lead over your army as Odysseus, famed Greek war hero and protagonist of The Odyssey. Then he gets Squashed Flat by the titular rock and it falls upon Elpenor, the youngest of his crewmates, to guide the others back home.
• Scorn has "Prologue Guy," the character you play as during the prologue section of the game. He's introduced to show off the world and the puzzle mechanics of the game, and also to introduce the game's vague plot of reaching the top of a mechanical tower. Just as he starts activating some of the mechanisms, the room he's in floods with mysterious goo that seemingly kills him (or turns him into the Parasite that latches onto Scorn Guy later) before switching over to "Scorn Guy," the actual protagonist.
• Silent Hill:
  • Harry Mason seems to be the protagonist of Silent Hill at first, but as the game goes on it becomes clear that the main focus is on Alessa Gillespie. Harry actually has very little importance to the plot, until he kills Alessa. In two of the endings, at least.
  • Silent Hill 4 has two examples of this. You start the game playing as Joseph Schreiber, gone mad from The Room's influence. After the prologue, you start playing as Henry Townshend... who still turns out not to be the protagonist, as most of the game focuses on Walter Sullivan. Though you still play as Henry the entire game.
  • Happens again in Silent Hill: Origins. Travis crashes his car at the edge of the titular town and stumbles right into the tangle of events surrounding what happened to Alessa (though of course he does have to deal with his own problems as well).
  • And again more famously in Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. The game switches back and forth between a first-person therapy session set in the present and third-person gameplay starring Harry Mason, making it look like Harry's reminiscing of Silent Hill while under therapy. The end reveals that the patient was Cheryl, Harry's daughter, and that the third-person PC was but a figment of Cheryl's imagination, distraught over her father's death many years ago. The therapy sessions weren't meant to cure Harry's trauma, but Cheryl's denial over Harry's death.
• In The Silver Case, the promotional material makes it seem like Sumio is the primary protagonist, but he a side character at best and turns out to be the main antagonist of the third case, for which he is arrested. On top of that, neither of the two player characters—yourself and Tokio—are the protagonists either, as they don't actually accomplish anything by themselves or really get a grasp of the plot until the end. Instead, the main focus of the plot, and the one who drives it all forward along with his personal change, is Tetsugoro Kusabi.
• At first glance, Sonic Battle is about Sonic and his friends messing around with Emerl, a cool robot that mimics their combat abilities. As the cast rotates babysitting Emerl and he starts developing an emergent personality, it gradually becomes apparent that Emerl is really the protagonist. The majority of Cream's and Shadow's chapters near the end of the game are played as Emerl, and the final chapter is his solo attempt to stop Eggman's plot. The very final battle of the game, however, has the player control Sonic to fight Emerl after Eggman causes the latter to go berserk.
• Star Shift Rebellion: The party leader is initially Mari, who leads the team in raiding a Molarian ruin. After the party defeats Chronus-13 and reprograms it to be loyal to the Outer Rim Coalition, Chronus-13 will be the party leader and viewpoint character.
• StarCraft touts Jim Raynor as the tough space marshal but he just becomes an Unwitting Pawn in his own campaign. He stays on for the rest of the game as a side character. The real hero turns out to be Tassadar, the Protoss Templar who was introduced as a minor adversary.
• StarCraft II: Zeratul is the only major Protoss character in both StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, and StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, even having his own four level mini campaign. In StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void, you play as him both in the prologue and one of the first two levels, before Amon Mind Controls most of the Protoss, and Zeratul dies saving Artanis Artanis then becomes the main character for the rest of the game. While Artanis was the leader of the Protoss in StarCraft, there was a 12 year Sequel Gap, and any new players will only know him from his appearance in one of Zeratul's missions set in a Bad Future. Word of God is that the dev's originally planned to make Zeratul the protagonist, but then decided that he was too much of an Ineffectual Loner to become leader of the entire Protoss race.
• At the beginning of Star Fox Adventures, you play as Krystal who investigates the destruction of her people in the Krazoa Palace. After releasing the first Krazoa Spirit, she gets sealed in a Crystal Prison and you play as series protagonist Fox McCloud for the rest of the game.
• The title of Star Wars: Jar Jar's Journey Adventure Book suggests that this retelling of The Phantom Menace will feature Jar Jar Binks as the central character, and it initially seems this way with the game starting with him telling the story, which starts at his introduction scene from the movie. However, Jar Jar is only the narrator for the first three pages, after which he becomes the same comedic side character he is in the film, while the rest of the story focuses more on the other characters.
• In Star Wars: Rogue Squadron 2, you start out playing as Luke Skywalker for two and a half missions, but when Luke's Snowspeeder gets shot down in the Battle of Hoth he gets replaced by Wedge Antilles, on Hoth and in subsequent missions. As we know, this is because while Luke survived, he didn't regroup with the others, so it was up to Wedge to lead Rogue Squadron.
• Steambot Chronicles does a variant of this trope. In the optional tutorial stage, you play as Mallow, the hero's childhood friend.
• Newcomer Sakito Asagi in Super Robot Wars: Original Generation Coffin of the End is the protagonist for the first 30+ chapters of the game. When you finally rescue the four elemental lords, Masaki takes over as the protagonist while Sakito gets Demoted to Extra, save for one subplot.
• Super Mario
  • Super Mario 64 DS: In a surprise twist of events, Yoshi becomes the first playable character, as Mario ends up captured by Bowser, alongside Luigi and Wario. Yoshi must defeat Goomboss to save Mario, who is the only one that can access the final "Bowser in the Sky" level to take down Bowser once again.
  • Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story: It's a Mario & Luigi game, so of course Mario and Luigi are the heroes, and you do control them at the start (with Bowser once again as the tutorial boss). As the game progress however, it's all too clear that this becomes more of Bowser's story, with the vast majority of Mario and Luigi's plot (including the Final Boss battle) take place inside Bowser's body helping him reach his goal outside. Sure enough, the last enemy (Dark Bowser) defeated in the story is from Bowser, not the Mario Bros.
• Super Smash Bros.:
  • Super Smash Bros. Brawl: Mario can be seen as this in The Subspace Emissary, as he is the face of Nintendo and becomes the leader of the Smash characters taking on the Subspace army. However, it's all too clear that Kirby gets the most attention and does most of the work (definitely helps he's Masahiro Sakurai's prized creation), explicitly shown when he's the one finishing off the Subspace Gunship and being the only playable character in the last third of the Subspace levels. As a matter of fact, you can skip Mario entirely to beat Tabuu and completely the main storyline.
  • Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: Interestingly enough, the dynamics are reversed in the World of Light adventure mode. Kirby is the only Smash fighter to escape from Galeem's attack, easily making him the first playable character. However, Mario is quickly saved and more cutscenes from the adventure mode feature him as front and center, not Kirby. It's all too clear that the face of Nintendo once again becomes the leader of all Smash fighters in their quest to stop Galeem and Dharkon.
• In-Universe version in Tak and the Power of Juju, where everyone thinks the warrior Lok is The Chosen One destined to defeat Big Bad Tlaloc. Considering whose name is in the title, it's pretty obvious to the players who the hero actually is.
• Total Overdose pulls this twice. The first level is an older man... who is neutralized mysteriously. Then it's his son, who gets laid up in the hospital. Then it's the twin brother who takes up the guns and starts shooting everything.
• Reimu, Byakuren, and Toyosatomimi no Miko from Touhou Shinkirou ~ Hopeless Masquerade are this. The game's premise sets up the three as the main protagonists, trying to gain the faith of the Human Village for their own religions, but in actuality the incident turns out to be the cause of Hata no Kokoro who's on a quest to find her lost Mask of Hope, which her interactions with the other characters help her develop as a Youkai.
• The Turing Test features an unusual form of this. After Ava finds out from the audio logs that the crew believed that TOM, the AI sent to oversee the mission, was controlling them via their implants, a short while later Ava enters an area where there are signs on the walls declaring "YOU ARE BEING CONTROLLED", "DRONE", and "TOM'S SLAVE". The crew urge Ava to enter a Faraday cage through an area full of EM radiation, designed to mess with Tom's control over Ava. Sure enough, just like you might expect, your control over Ava during this section wanes, as you aren't free to choose your own path and Ava will start gradually wandering along in a certain direction if you don't press any buttons. As Ava approaches the cage, your vision gets more and more full of artifacts and glitches out, finally cutting out entirely when Ava enters the cage. Cue you looking down on Ava from a camera above. Turns out that the AI wasn't taking control over Ava - the AI was losing control of her. And you, the player, are not playing as Ava - you're playing as TOM, the AI.
• In Umineko: When They Cry, Bernkastel actually attempts to hijack the whole setup through her game piece, Erika, effectively weaponizing this concept.
  • Battler also weaponizes it in EP 5. During the final battle against Dlanor, he argues that because he isn't the detective this time around, he has the right to lie and obfuscate facts as an observer. He's a subversion overall, though, as he fights to remain as the protagonist and ultimately earns it.
• Telltale's The Walking Dead initally has player taking control of Lee Everett as he struggles to survive in a world where the dead roam the streets. After Lee's death at the end of the first season, subsequent seasons focuses on Clementine, the girl Lee was taking care of, as she continues to survive using the skills Lee taught her.
• Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne, Maiev and Kael'Thas start as the main characters of the Sentinels and Alliance campaigns, respectively. As the campaign progresses, both are overshadowed by Malfurion and Illidan.
• The prologue of Watch Dogs: Legion is played from the perspective of Dalton Wolfe, who is attempting to stop a bombing of the Parliament building. He succeeds at stopping that one, but then Zero Day appears before him, detonates the other bombs planted around London, and guns him down with a drone while the rest of DedSec London is purged. The rest of the game plays out from the perspective of any number of London civilians that are recruited into what's left of DedSec.
• In WWE 12, when the player first starts the "Road To WrestleMania" mode, the first person they plays as is John Cena, who's about to wrestle The Undertaker. Cena comes out... only to get Brouge Kicked by Sheamus, who starts the first of the game's three stories.
• In the XCOM: Enemy Unknown tutorial Delta squad members all have names and talk to each other and command but 3 of them die before the mission ends. And the fourth might be well put in the locker by the player (or die) from the following mission onwards.
• The prologue of Xenoblade Chronicles 1 introduces Dunban, a legendary hero who is the only one who can wield the legendary Monado. Then there's a Time Skip, and he's retired after losing the use of his right arm because he wasn't actually the true wielder of the Monado. We then meet Shulk, the game's actual protagonist, who can not only use the Monado but can also unlock many of its hidden abilities that Dunban couldn't. Unlike most examples of this trope, not only does Dunban not die, but later into the story takes further levels in badass and becomes a powerful party member in his own right, using a katana with only his left arm to fight.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna ~ The Golden Country: Lora is introduced as the central character of this Prequel expansion to Xenoblade Chronicles 2, but her character arc reaches its conclusion relatively early on and for most of the expansion onwards she's actually there to fuel her Blade and love interest Jin's personal development, particularly chronicling her part in his Start of Darkness to a member of the Big Bad Ensemble of the base game. Meanwhile, Mythra, who initially appears to be Demoted to Extra from her role as a major female protagonist in the base game, is shown to still be just as important once her conflict with her fellow Aegis Malos rears its head and the actions she takes during the Final Battle directly lead to the mindset she has at the start of the base game and what she needs to overcome.
• Yesterday starts you playing as a young, idealistic man named Henry White, the heir to a multi-million dollar fortune who wants to use his money to help the homeless. He gets captured by a crazy bum named Choke who talks to mannequins and wants to subject Henry to a witch trial (either he dies like a good person or survives like an evil and is shot), only to be saved by his friend, who kills Choke. Then, it's revealed that Henry is a serial killer who tortures hobos for fun, while Choke is an immortal who keeps coming back to life as a young man with no memories.
• Yggdra Union starts out with a Princess Protagonist running for dear life from an enemy army, accidentally costing the leader of a band of thieves his fortress, and begging him to help her take her country back. Although you start out playing as thief Milanor and this looks like your classic Luke-and-Leia setup, Princess Yggdra becomes the player character very shortly after. Milanor himself remains a completely static character until the penultimate chapter, and is shunted into the role of mentor and sidekick. (The player does take control of him during certain points of the story where Yggdra isn't where the action is, however.)
  • Milanor's presence in the story at all, compared to his relative unimportance to the plot, is probably due to the need for a surrogate for male players—who might be uncomfortable at the idea of playing a game from the perspective of a (very feminine) girl.

---