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Sorry, Smith, I should have asked first.
It's quite common for a video game to ask your name, if only to give a sensible title to your save file or to help you attempt to dethrone 'AAA' from the top high score slot. Sometimes it even allows you to name your blank-slate Heroic Mime, so all the pretty girls can moan your appellation through the love scenes.
However, some games are aware enough that there are games to actually ask your name and be genuinely interested in the reply. They don't try to foist your name onto a pre-existing character. They don't file down your name and never use it again. They use your name to actually address you, involving you as a 'character', or they use it in a strange Metafictional way in order to involve you, discard you, or just confuse you.
Examples:
- The trope name comes from Metal Gear Solid 2, which uses it in a way that, depending on your interpretation, might be a Deconstruction of the trope. Right at the beginning of the main story, the player is asked their name, sex, nationality, date of birth and blood type. Right at the end, Raiden reveals to Snake the dog tags he's been wearing ever since the Gainax Ending kicked off, and they have the player's details on them. He observes (when Snake asks) that he doesn't know the name, and throws the tags away.
- Earthbound had probably the most emotionally gut-wrenching version. At the end, the characters must fight a boss invincible through standard means, which requires use of Paula's oft-overlooked Pray command. As Paula prays, she calls out to various characters the player met on their adventures, and, to finish the boss off, calls out to the player, and begs them to wish them success with all their heart.
- Which, for the record, you don't have to do. They win regardless.
- And then Mother 3 managed to include one even more emotional. Assuming you can figure out what it is, anyway.
- Patapon has the titular tribe ask your name. After the revelation, they hail you as their god, and address you as 'Oh, Mighty [Troper]!', begging for your help or attention.
- Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil ends with a picture of a book and Klonoa's ring, along with the message "Good morning, (name of save file)." This is not explained.
- The whole idea behind the Klonoa games are that they are meant to take place entirely in dreams, so the end is you "waking up" from the dream.
- Baten Kaitos uses your name (and gender) as the name of a "guardian spirit" which guides Kalas, who will (at times) turn directly to the camera and address you by name. Shame the voice acting has to leave a very noticeable gap where your name is, but you should have already turned it off, right?
- The prequel, Baten Kaitos Origins, contains a different spirit, which is referred to as "he" regardless of which name you enter. Disconcerting, perhaps, for any female gamer, but unlike the first game, the spirit actually has a role in the plot besides simply telling the main character what to do.
- Wario Ware asks for your name and sex, and uses it as the name of the prince/princess Kat and Ana have to rescue on their stage, and the name of the cab passenger on Dribble and Spitz's stage. Wario also addresses you by name in things like the stage select screen.
- Contact for the Nintendo DS is an RPG entirely built around this trope; the characters acknowledge the player as an entity from another dimension whom they are somehow able to communicate with, and who uses a computing device called a "Nintendo DS" to exert a mysterious influence over their world. The player is asked for his or her real name when starting a new game, and remains a main character in the story from start to finish. It's an unusual game.
- Super Mario RPG uses your save slot name as a password. (To recreate a scene from the Donkey Kong Country promotional video, released around the same time, name your slot "Diddy".)
- Fire Emblem 7 casts you as the 'tactician', and the lords will face the screen to address you by name.
- Same for the first Advance Wars (as advisor), but both series dropped the concept in the sequels.
- In Panzer Dragoon Saga, the player is actually a character in the story thought of as a god by many cast members. The ending has the characters address him directly and thank him for his help.
- Douglas Adams's adventure game Bureaucracy has you fill in a form to the software company at the start of the game, setting the tone. The seemingly-irrelevant information it asks for (such as 'least favourite colour', 'last employer but one' and 'ex-boyfriend/girlfriend') are used as names of characters and descriptions of objects. The whole cluster is meshed into an ID number which is essential to solving some of the puzzles.
- In Deus Ex, you are asked for your real name, but all the game's characters refer to you as JC Denton, your codename. As you play the game, you can read newspapers which tell skewed versions of how you accomplished previous missions, while the evil conspiracy reveals your true name (the player's) and brands you a terrorist.
- At the end of the game when you find the cloning lab you were born in, the real name you entered will be used in the records you can access.
- Harvest Moon 64 has one of these in the credits. While most Harvest Moon games only ask for a name for your character to give NPCs thing to address you by, 64 ends its credits with "And now, [player name], thank you very much." This troper, at least, felt very special the first time she saw that.
- To Heart 2 Another Days asks for your name when you start Ikuno's route (which is the only time in the game where you are not Takaki; it's essentially Manaka's scenario in To Heart 2 as seen from Ikuno's perspective) and uses it for one of her two endings, where she returns to the hospital and meets you there.
- Gothic frequently reminds you about how it doesn't care about your name.
- In Metal Combat: Falcon's Revenge, the main character usually only refers to you as "partner", but after you finish the game as both Mike and Carol, you'll receive a code that allows you to enter your name. From then on, the characters will specifically refer to you by name.
- At the start of Black And White you're asked to input a profile name for your save. If you just happened to enter a name that's included in an internal list of common names, then the game will sometimes whisper that name to you throughout. Creepy.
- Especially when interspersed with the other word constantly whispered, "death."
- In the FIFA football/soccer games, you get to name your avatar in manager mode.You can also create a player which along with the FIFA 2009 addition of Be a Pro seasons gives you the chance to have the footballing career you never had.
- An obscure RPG known as Ancient Evil uses this for purposes of Nightmare Fuel Unleaded. One room contains seven crosses, from which hang six decapitated corpses, with the heads piled in a corner. By each cross is a sign naming its occupant (e.g. Gutripper The Warrior.) The final, unoccupied cross bears the name and class you chose at the start of the game.
- While Legend Of Zelda games are normally just straight examples of Hello Insert Name Here, Phantom Hourglass also has an element of this. As part of a Justified Tutorial about the touchscreen, you're asked to sign for a parcel. Much later on, this signature reappears unexpectedly (though if you just put down an illegible scribble, as This Troper did, this effect is rather diminished).
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