The Unchosen One / Video Games

Unchosen Ones in Video Games.

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• Ancient Domains of Mystery: The Eternal Guardian was instructed by his god to guard the way further down into the Caverns of Chaos until the arrival of the chosen one bearing the Ring of the High Kings. Normally this is the Player Character. If the player character elects not to obtain the ring and to kill the Eternal Guardian instead (good luck with that), and then saves the world or otherwise beats the game, this makes them the Unchosen One in relation to this prophecy.^note Although in relation to Khelavaster's prophecy, they're apparently the Chosen One regardless.
• In Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura, this trope gets...really complicated. See, you're The Chosen One, the reincarnation of the local Crystal Dragon Jesus, and a prophecy foretold your emergence near Shrouded Hills and subsequent world-saving from the ancient evil, Arronax. Except that the prophecy was a lie to begin with, created by Arronax-worshippers to keep everyone distracted from the actual work of keeping Arronax properly sealed. And Arronax isn't at all behind the actual world-threatening catastrophe that's about to return to Arcanum, and is using said Arronax-cult as a pawn. On top of all this you can't be a literal reincarnation of Nasrudin, since he isn't actually dead yet. Yet you end up fulfilling the role of the Living One anyway and dealing with the threat that's hijacked the role of Arronax, should you choose to do so. One character even asks, if you play the role of The Chosen One, whether it even makes a difference whether you're actually Nasrudin's reincarnation.
• Subverted in the Baldur's Gate series as a whole. It is implied in the first game that your character, good or bad, is just saying Screw Destiny, and that's true enough in regards to their divine parent's plans. But in the last installment, when it's time to finally put an end to the events foretold by the prophecy that's been haunting their lives, it's revealed that it actually comes with a clause saying that the protagonist is the one who can prevent it and save the world a lot of strife (again, even if they choose the evil option).
• Chicory: A Colorful Tale: Normally, wielders of the brush are chosen by a predecessor, but Pizza just picked it up in order to help Chicory. Chicory eventually reveals they let them keep the brush because they were Unchosen, not wanting to perpetuate a cycle of great expectations that already gave her intense grief.
• After accidentally time-traveling to the Bad Future, the protagonists of Chrono Trigger decide that the End of the World as We Know It is not in fact someone else's problem, even though they and their children would be long-dead when the apocalypse does occur. It's not until near the end of the game, long after committing themselves to the quest, that they even start to consider that there could be a higher power choosing them and guiding their actions.
• In City of Heroes the player can unlock the ability to play as one of the generic Arachnos mooks by getting a Supervillain character to the max level. The mook character follows a special storyline apart from the normal missions in which they repeatedly try to become a Destined supervillain, only to realize by the end that they had already done so the second they hit level 2.
• Dex is a strange blue-haired girl who wakes up to assassins trying to kill her, and discovers she has a superpower; the ability to remote hack from her mind without any cyberware whatsoever. Except she quickly augments herself with cybernetics anyway, and the superpower has recently manifested in a small but substantial percentage of the local population, called Crows, because they're all test tube babies, their superpower had to be refined over MANY disturbing failures, and they're all the genetic descendants of the most powerful woman in the solar system who spawned them for her own benefit. And every Crow past a certain age has also been hunted down by assassins — she's the one who survived.
• Diablo:
  • Applies to all of humanity, as explained in Diablo III. Because of their odd origins, humans are the only ones whose destiny is not set out in the Scrolls of Fate — making them the only ones capable of Screwing Destiny. So when Destiny foretells the fall of the High Heavens, it's a good thing that some humans are around to fix things...
  • Taken a bit further, most of the protagonists are 'chosen' by something or someONE — the Wizard is outright driven by a prophecy, the Monk was selected by the Elders of Ivgorod, the Witch Doctor follows the voice of the Spirits, the Barbarian is a descendant of Bul-Kathos, the Crusader is a chosen of Akarat, etc... however, the only reason for any of this is that they are amongst the first to develop full-on Nephilim powers. In other words, they're nothing special — pretty soon, ALL humans will have similar powers.
  • The Demon Hunter is a definite Unchosen One, especially in comparison to the other classes. They arrive in Tristram for the sole purpose of killing demons — there is no prophecy or divine mandate guiding them. Similarly, their order has no grand history or patron deity, but instead is bound by a shared hatred of the demonic. The difference between the protagonists shows up in Reaper of Souls when each class meets a ghost who aids them. For the other classes the ghost is a mentor, ancestor, and even a spirit guide. The Demon Hunter instead meets their sister, whose death as a child drove them to the order.
• Digimon Survive: As a Deconstruction of Digimon Adventure, the human children in this game entered the alternate world because are chosen...as Human Sacrifices by the local monsters/Kemonogami. It's actually a recurring story where children are dragged into that world and sacrificed, with a lucky few being escorted out by partner monsters.
• Lohse from Divinity: Original Sin II is notably the only one of the player characters who are not chosen by a god. While she was at one point, the gods ditched her due to the demon currently occupying her mind, a fact that the demon in question uses for all its worth. If you play as her, you can personally call the gods out on this when you meet them.
• Dragon Age: Dreadwolf: Invoked in the trailer where Varric points out that, this time, the Player Character is this. No prophecy or destiny or marked hand. Just a regular person deciding to do something about the world they live in.
• Dragon Quest:
  • In Dragon Quest V, you are not the chosen one. Your son is. When you eventually find The Chosen One and the special equipment, you can bench him and go beat the Big Bad yourself.
  • The Arc Words of Dragon Quest Builders are "You're Not a Hero" to the Builder. In this Alternate Universe to Dragon Quest, the Hero fell and accepted the Dragonlord's Deal with the Devil. The Builder's job is to set up all the MacGuffin so a new Hero can come. They don't have RPG mechanics where they can level up killing monsters. This does not stop them.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Played straight in Daggerfall. Once you pick up the Totem of Tiber Septim, it tells you that you aren't allowed to control it, and only the various nobles and other powers around the Iliac Bay would be allowed to control the Numidium. In a Dummied Out ending, if you try to take the Totem to the Mantella yourself, the golem goes berserk, kills you, wreaks havoc around the Iliac Bay, and is destroyed.
  • Morrowind leaves this as an open interpretation with regards to the prophecy of the Nerevarine; it is completely possible that the Player Character is merely an extraordinarily lucky or determined mortal of no actual importance who, through sheer coincidence and/or their own tenacity, winds up perfectly fitting the prophesied description of Nerevar's reincarnation through comparatively mundane means. The player even have the option to play into this interpretation by selecting the right dialogue options, making them a Nerevarine who's fulfilling the prophecy because they think it's the right thing to do, not just Because Destiny Says So. Most notably, the Big Bad begins the final battle by having a polite conversation with the player, and at one point he asks them if they really are Nerevar reborn. One of the possible answers is to claim to be a self-willed hero making your own fate. Of course, that aside, the Nerevarine were undoubtedly Chosen by Azura, but it's implied that's been true for several of the "False Incarnates" over the years, and that the player is only the "true" Nerevarine because they are the only one to actually succeed. The Big Bad will approve if the player responds this way, claiming that the Nerevarine's tale will show the gods their limits.
    • If you try to go Off the Rails in-game, the Railroading mechanic to make characters essential wasn't present until Oblivion, and the player was literally free to kill any major plot character, with only a message that you have doomed the world as a result. But even then, two separate paths exist to get you back into the endgame from this state: You can either acquire enough reputation through other quests that the game basically recognizes you anyway, or you can Screw Destiny by killing Vivec (a fight that is harder than the final boss), and manually reactivate it with the help of Yagrum Bagarn, the last living Dwemer (keep in mind the game gives you no help here, since you are Off the Rails), and then take a permanent loss of over 200 health. But it is possible.
  • In Oblivion, you aren't the chosen one; Martin Septim is, though at the beginning it is slightly hinted that fate did want you to become wrapped up in the series of events. Dialogue in Skyrim would seem to indicate that you are actually the Hero of Another Story when it comes to Oblivion's main questline, and that your own story is actually the Shivering Isles expansion.
  • In general, this is a running theme within the universe; due to the malleability of fate and reality itself, forces powerful enough to make prophecies are often just exerting their influence, and their "chosen ones" are all actually this trope propelled by divine propaganda... Unless they become successful enough that, pretending or not, the universe has to recognize that they were in fact fated to succeed.
• Zak in Evil Islands in an odd case. He is originally hailed by the villagers as The Chosen One by sheer coincidence, and most energetically by the village elder — but then it turns out that the prophecy is more or less a scam, the village elder is actually a spy for The Empire, sent there in search of a fallen meteorite. Naturally, he becomes a hero anyway.
• Fallout: New Vegas:
  • While in Fallout 3 and 4 your character had sort of a destiny, in Fallout: New Vegas, your character, the Courier, is nobody special beyond being a skilled courier. Your entire story is mainly an accident given Uysses was supposed to deliver that package, but backed out as he wanted you to do it as a sort of revenge against something you don't even know you did. By total happenstance this puts the Courier in the position to help various factions and give the Mojave to specific people or ultimately thrust it into total anarchy.
  • When you talk to Major Dhatri, he asks for your help in taking on several fiend leaders. The only reason you're doing it is because the last mercenary (who is coincidentally still inside Camp McCarran) admits to being afraid being burned alive or raped.
  • Motor-Runner is similar. You can be tasked with helping a ranger get Motor-Runner, and when you find the ranger he is too injured to keep fighting. You can help him back on his feet and both of you take Motor-Runner, or you can do it by yourself.
  • The Sunset Sarsaparilla Star bottle caps have a tragically ironic connection to this trope. Legend speaks of a cache of unknown riches and/or goods buried in the bottling plant that can only be unlocked by having enough of these special star caps, resulting in people are brutally murdering one another for them caps all over the Mojave. When you get access to this cache, you find a man who beat you there and then slowly suffocated in an airtight vault after finding... plastic toy deputy badges. A fun novelty reward for a Pre-War kid who collected enough star caps. Not so fun for a post-apocalyptic badass who fought long and hard hoping for a big payoff at the end. Your reward, however, is the extremely powerful unique Laser Pistol you find on your predecessor's corpse, so at least it was worth it for you. There's also a good amount of regular bottle caps in the vault, which ironically would have been worthless back in the day, but are worth quite a bit now.
  • Old World Blues only happens by accident really. You were never meant to have conscious thought, you can only think because your robo-brain is connecting to your real brain.
• Fate/Grand Order: Ritsuka Fujimaru was just a generic nobody with no special heritage or knowledge of magecraft. While they tested successfully to possess high compatibility as a Master for Servants, the main reason they were hired by Chaldea was to fill a quota with them technically being the last Master candidate, meant mainly as backup support and a spare body in the event something went horribly wrong. When everybody else is killed or incapacitated by a bomb, they step up and save the world several times. Several people comment how insane it is that a nobody could do all of that.
• Final Fantasy:
  • In Final Fantasy VII, Cloud absorbs the memories and skills of the more competent, heroic, and glamorous Zack, who got shot before the game started, and would have been a much better candidate for an Eastern RPG hero. By the time Cloud unpacks his memories, the angle of his Arch-Enemy Sephiroth who is also his Evil Counterpart is dispensed with, and Cloud continues on his quest 'without pretending' out of a genuine desire to save the world (from a mess he was partially responsible for).
  • Benjamin, the protagonist of Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, gets this twice. First, the wise old man who declares him to be the knight of The Prophecy later says "it was really more of a guess." And at the end, the final boss reveals that the prophecy itself was just a story he made up for lulz. Doesn't deter Ben or Phoebe from taking him down.
  • In Final Fantasy, the party are the chosen ones known as the Warriors of Light destined to kill Chaos and end the Stable Time Loop they're trapped in. However in Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, the party are an entirely separate group of adventurers who decide to take up the mantle of the Warriors of Light themselves and try to kill Chaos in an earlier version of the loop. Turns out they were chosen, just not in the way they expected.
• From FromSoftware: The player characters from their "Soulsborne" games are all only special because they don't die when they realistically should. The running theme of the franchise comes down to the idea of even the smallest being being able to affect immense change through dogged determination. To wit:
  • In Demon's Souls, you come to Boletaria due to the promise of treasure and the power of the Soul Arts, only to get lashed to the Nexus for your troubles. By the end you've killed every powerful Demon and Archdemon in the land and have either lulled the Old One back to sleep or usurped Allant's position as its emissary.
  • Dark Souls plays with this. While you start from nothing, you are soon told a prophecy about an undead in your position who would ring the bells of awakening, and Frampt and Gwynevere proudly declare you the Chosen Undead. However, this turns out to be a sham. The "Chosen Undead" is just whatever undead was lucky or and determined enough to get this far, and the supposed prophecy is set up by Frampt and Gwyndolin to find some poor sod to replace Gwyn in the kiln of the first flame, a fate that will entail burning alive forever. You were never the chosen one, you were just the idiot who fell for it.
  • In Dark Souls II, you don't even have the distinction of being a "Chosen Undead", you're just a nameless Hollowing schmuck who came to Drangleic because you heard there was a cure for the Undead Curse there. By the end you've meted out peace to old King Vendrick; slain the four Great Ones who are reincarnations of the lords of old; acquired the crowns of the Sunken King, Old Iron King, Ivory King, and Vendrick himself; killed several Children of Dark (and potentially an Ancient Dragon); proved yourself to Vendrick's twisted brother Aldia; and either become the true monarch of Drangleic, for good or ill, or abandoned the throne to search for another way to end the curse with no guarantee of reward just like Vendrick and Aldia before you.
  • In Bloodborne, you came to Yharnam searching for a cure for your illness and something called Paleblood, only to get thrown into the deep end of the Yharnam hunt and its horrors. By the end, you are the most powerful Hunter in the city that has slain countless beasts and Eldritch Abominations, gone through at least three different dream worlds, and have either found an escape, become the new watcher of the Hunter's Dream, or have been transformed into an Old One yourself so you may preside over the Dream and the Nightmare.
  • In Dark Souls III, you are somehow even worse off than being an Undead; you're an Unkindled. In a previous life (undeath?), you tried to Link the Fire, but were unfit to do so and just got immediately incinerated for your trouble. You and the other numerous Unkindled represent not Plan A, not Plan B, but Plan C. The Chosen One who was supposed to Link the Fire refused. Several previous Lords of Cinder who Linked the Fire were then resurrected to Link it a second time, but all but one of them also refused. The Unkindled are resurrected as a last, desperate attempt to stave off the darkness, even though there's little chance of them succeeding. Things are so bad, there's nothing left to lose in trying. By the end you've returned the errant Lords to their thrones, dismantled an entire religion dedicated to spreading the Abyss, given final justice to the old gods of Anor Londo for what the Cathedral of the Deep did to them, and either Linked the Fire to prolong the world just a little bit longer, let the First Flame die out for good so that a new world may someday rise from its ashes naturally, combined the First Flame with the Darksign to usher in an Age of Humanity and rule as the Lord of Hollows, or simply murder the Fire Keeper so that you can have the last dying embers of the First Flame all to yourself like a crackhead who needs his fix.
    • The True Final Boss of the series, Slave Knight Gael is also one of these, not unlike the countless undead that have come before them. They were a worthless thing only fit to be fodder for their betters, but through sheer dogged determination and an unwillingness to give into despair he became a Deity of Human Origin by becoming the Dark Soul's avatar in the way the Soul Of Cinder was for the First Flame. Everything was pointing to Gael being a footnote in your story, but he winds up becoming one of, if not the most important being in the entire series.
  • Elden Ring: The player is one of the Tarnished, old exiles who have been revived from death and recalled to the Lands Between with the goal of becoming the Elden Lord. There are many, many Tarnished, and many of those Tarnished are far more storied and accomplished than the player: the game explicitly says they are a nameless Tarnished of no renown, who died without accomplishing anything. So while they have the right to try, nobody truly expects them to become Elden Lord. And even the idea of the Tarnished being "chosen" to succeed the Elden Lord is thrown into question later, when the player achieves what they set out to do but the Erdtree still refuses them entrance to become Elden Lord, which throws the various seers of the game for a loop and leaves them wondering just what the hell is actually going on. Naturally, by the end of the game, the player has slain monsters and demigods aplenty, and even defied the will of the gods themselves to forcibly enthrone themselves as the new Elden Lord, ushering in a new age of the world. Which ending you choose determines what kind of Lord you will be... from one who restores the lost order, to one who alters the order of the world, or even to one who just burns the world to ashes.
• Get in the Car, Loser!: Grace wanted to become the new hero of legend so much that she stole the Sword of Fate and convinced the others to join her on the road trip. However, the Divine Order doesn't consider her the one chosen by fate to wield the sword and believe she's trying to fight the Machine Devil too early. Despite that, she ultimately succeeds and gains the approval of the previous wielder. As Angela states, fate itself yielded to Grace.
• Jack from Ghostrunner is actually a basic model of Ghostrunner with no inherent special abilities that some of his fellow cyborgs were lucky enough to possess. Even his number code (number 74) is unremarkable.
• A rather low-key example due to her late arrival and consequent lack of character development, but Princess Himi of Yamatai in Golden Sun: Dark Dawn qualifies. Because of a prophecy, her adventurer brother Takeru is away from home searching for the Warriors of Vale when the Grave Eclipse happens, and Himi takes it upon herself to join our heroes and save the day, over her father's protests.
• Justin, the protagonist of the first Grandia, was never The Chosen One. The spirits who do the choosing are eventually forced to accept him.
• In the "R:1" .hack// games, Aura originally chose Orca of the Azure Sea to be her champion. About 5 seconds after that, Skeith the Terror of Death put his player into a coma. Fortunately Orca was showing his friend Kite the game. Given she makes herself Kite's partner almost immediately after that, BlackRose could also qualify.
• The player character of Hollow Knight. The Knight is a vessel who tried to crawl out of the Abyss to be selected by the Pale King for their quest to seal away Radiance. Upon reaching the top, they fell back into the Abyss after finding out that a different one had been chosen. The game begins as they surface an indeterminate amount of time later, seeking to complete their task after being called back to Hallownest by either the Hollow Knight or the Radiance.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • Sora is one through chance. Riku, his best friend, was chosen to wield the Keyblade, but because he jumped at the wrong call, the Keyblade went to Sora, the closest candidate at the time, after which Sora goes off to save the worlds. He then earns his position as key bearer by winning the Keyblade back from Riku after understanding The Power of Friendship.
  • In Birth by Sleep, it's revealed that of the original trio of Sora, Riku, and Kairi, Sora was the only one incapable of wielding the Keyblade. Although he would eventually awaken Ventus' Keyblade due to having his heart inside him, that is after the fact that he managed to become the wielder of the Keyblade through his own strength of heart.
  • This has become a recurring theme throughout the series. Despite the many Keyblade Wielders floating around, the three biggest heroes — Sora, Aqua, and Mickey — are all this trope. In Birth by Sleep, Aqua was simply an extremely skilled Keyblade wielder who wanted to look after her friends, and yet she was ultimately responsible for derailing Xehanort's plans and leaving him incapacitated for 10 years. Likewise, with Mickey, nothing so far has indicated any kind of prophecy or "choosing" surrounding him; he seems to have been just an ordinary (mouse) guy who formed an adventuring team, became a King and later a fully fledged Keyblade Master, simply because he wanted to help people.
  • Xigbar calls attention to this in Dream Drop Distance, claiming that Sora himself is nothing special if his strength comes from his connections to other people. Sora doesn't let this faze him, proclaiming that even if he wasn't the Keyblade's first choice, he is "proud to be a small part of something greater; the people it did choose." Master Xehanort himself describes Sora as a "dull, ordinary boy", yet also calling him a sort of Keyblade wielder he'd never seen before.
• In Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, everything runs on You Can't Fight Fate. Except for The Fateless One, who is Immune to Fate due to being resurrected by the Well of Souls. Which is good because there is no Chosen One destined to defeat the invading Tuatha Deohn.
• The Exile from Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords is an ex-Jedi Knight who was kicked out after serving under Darth Revan and becoming a war criminal, who returns to Republic space after a decade of walking the galaxy only to find all the other Jedi dead or in hiding and a new faction of Sith hunting them down as they're the only Jedi they could find.
• La-Mulana:
  • It comes off at first that there's just a Chosen One based on all the tablets that Lemeza comes across in the ruins, but it turns out to be this trope instead when Lemeza finds a tablet basically stating "If you managed to make it this far, then we choose you". So it's both tropes at the same time.
  • In the Shrine of the Mother, Lemeza's father, Shorn/Shawn Kosugi, leaves you a message, stating that he made it to the centre of the ruins of La-Mulana, but was unable to give the Final Boss a true form, since he was never deemed worthy to hold the Medicine of Life by the Four Sages/Philosophers.
• In Last Scenario, Hilbert is initially portrayed as The Chosen One thanks to Heroic Lineage. However, Zawu was lying, and he is in fact completely normal. This doesn't stop him from smashing the Big Bad's schemes down hard and helping to end the infighting between the 3 or 4 countries that are the focus of the game. As Alexander put it, his Heroic Lineage is real not because Hilbert is Alexander's descendant (which he isn't), but because he chose to follow Alexander's footsteps.
• In League of Legends, Nami decided that when the prophesied Tidecaller didn't show up to fulfill their prophesied duties she would do it herself.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • Link in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker is not immediately recognised by the gods as The Hero. He's not descended from any previous Link, and there are reasons to doubt that he's a reincarnation of the original Link like every other Link in the series is (namely, the fact that the Ocarina of Time Link didn't actually die in the current timeline). He started his quest solely to rescue his little sister at first, only accepting the quest as a whole later when learning he'd have to do half those things to save his sister anyway. In re-empowering the Master Sword after it was weakened and reassembling the Triforce of Courage, the gods eventually come to acknowledge Link as the "Hero of Winds."
  • Unlike Link and Zelda, Groose in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword has no real "destiny" to speak of — a fact supported by how unlike those two, he isn't reincarnated in (chronologically) future games to continue fighting Ganon. Still, he does what he can to help Link, stop Demise and save the surface world.
  • The Big Bad of the series Ganondorf is a dark Unchosen One. His theft of the Triforce of Power has ultimately left him as bound to it as the other two pieces are to their intended Chosen Ones. Although it's Zig-Zagged by the fact that even though he wasn't originally intended to receive it, in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess it's somehow bestowed upon him even though he never entered the Sacred Realm in the Alternate Timeline.
  • In the Updated Re-release of the Spin-Off Hyrule Warriors, Distaff Counterpart Linkle is the Unchosen One who adamantly believes that she's her generation's incarnation of Triforce of Courage wielder. As several other characters can testify to, she definitely is a hero, just not the hero. To add insult to injury, she never gets to meet Link himself.
• Though she's certainly The Chosen One for a lot of other legends in Arcadia, April Ryan turns out to not be the next Guardian in The Longest Journey. Her job turns out to just be finding the new one, which is pretty important in itself.
• Mass Effect:
  • Shepard was a completely ordinary soldier ^note  Technically, Shepard is an N7 which is the most elite among the Alliance marines’ special forces who basically tripped into knowledge of the oncoming danger to the galaxy, and chose to dedicate him/herself to preventing it. In the sequel, this leads into Shepard becoming an actual Chosen One for a vast conspiracy group (still heroic, but working for some decidedly Anti Heroic people) and into him/her becoming a galactic legend.
  • And in Mass Effect 3, it turns out that humanity as a species is this. Javik, the last living Prothean reveals that the asari were chosen by the Protheans to lead the galaxy against the Reapers; to that end, they mildy tampered with their genome, influenced the development of their early civilisation and even left behind a working Beacon, all to give them a headstart in leading the next Cycle. However the asari ended up squandering their gifts, with the Beacon making them such a Higher-Tech Species, they became technologically stagnant. Ultimately, they did the exact opposite of what the Protheans had expected, choosing to retreat to their homeworld rather than fight the Reapers, leaving humanity to lead the charge.
  • Mass Effect: Andromeda: Ryder wasn't the first human Pathfinder, their father was. Then he dies saving Ryder after the disastrous first-landing in Andromeda, and transfers the link to SAM to them, which can't be removed without killing Ryder. Pretty much everyone, Ryder included, is aware the job shouldn't be theirs, and it takes a hell of a lot of effort on Ryder's part to prove they were a good choice.
• Played with in Ōkami — Amaterasu, Goddess of the Sun, is acknowledged by all the other gods and spirits as the one to restore the beauty of Nippon, but as far as the human world is concerned, the inept and lazy Susano (and Nagi, his ancestor) are the legendary heroes. Played with still further when Susano reveals that he knows he's the Fake Ultimate Hero — and then, when the chips are altogether down, summons up some heroism and delivers the final blow without any help from Ammy.
• Panzer Dragoon:
  • Kyle at the start of the first game, as the blue dragon's original rider is killed by the dark dragon, and he just happens to be there to see it. The unnamed rider gives him his mission as his dying wish, then keels over. This also leads to the rather unfortunate side-effect of Kyle being the one rider just about everyone seems to forget, since his place in the series is seemingly nominal at best when compared to the other protagonists. However, some DO note that for the dragon to fight at maximum capacity, it needs a rider; without Kyle, it could never have accomplished its mission.
  • Somewhat averted with the crossover comic Sonic the Hedgehog/Mega Man: Worlds Unite, where Kyle and the Blue Dragon represent the franchise and help the heroes take on Sigma, although his inclusion may be due to the fact that the first game represented the franchise in Sonic & All-Stars Racing: Transformed. Noticeably, Kyle has no dialogue in the story.
• In Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers:
  • It turns out that you aren't the one chosen to go to the Hidden Land and save time after all: your partner is. However, because of The Power of Friendship, you're allowed to go too.
  • You and your original partner were this before you lost your memories. The two of you were born into a Crapsack World and just decided to fix it.
• Toyed with in Portal. Chell is chosen because she is the unchosen one. Her evaluation indicates that she should not be used for testing, as she is incapable of quitting and accepting defeat. Rattman puts her into the testing for this very reason, hoping that she will be able to defeat GLaDOS.
• Rondo of Swords has the main character, Serdic's double. He's pretty much dragged in the whole mess by the destruction of Bretwalde in the beginning, which also results in the death of the real Chosen One, Prince Serdic, who's the only one who can properly wield the holy sword. Eventually he has to choose whether to fulfill Prince Serdic's final wish of restoring Bretwalde (which requires him to ascend as Emperor wielding the holy sword... which results in him having to kill Princess Marie to purify the sword) or fulfill the Prince's request to protect his sister (which forces Marie to become the Queen, and causes the double to gain the name 'Altrius' after a legendary hero and become her bodyguard). Either way, he's pretty much just at the right (or wrong) place at the right (or wrong) time.
• In Septerra Core, the Big Bad Doskias believes he's the Chosen One on account of being the direct descendant of the world's Crystal Dragon Jesus. Instead, the person who ends up saving the world is the heroine, Maya, who doesn't have any sort of special destiny or lineage, but manages to become Septerra's savior through sheer determination. Also, not being a homicidal douche, unlike Doskias.
• Almost all main characters of the Shin Megami Tensei, with a few notable exceptions, are normal humans that just end up being at the right place at the right time.
  • The Hero of Shin Megami Tensei I is a Badass Normal high school student that has no magical powers whatsoever, he compensates by having the ability to recruit demons. By the end of the game you've killed at least one, if not both, of your best friends, one of them being the actual Chosen One of a cult. At the end of the game itself, you've either slain Archangel Michael, general of the army of Law, or Asura, general of the forces of Chaos. As shown in the sequel, he canonically killed both.
  • The protagonist of Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey is just a well trained American/Japanese (depending on which version you play) soldier chosen to be part of the Strike Team sent to investigate the Schwarzwelt. He's a completely normal human with no affinity for magic, equipped only with the adaptive Demonica suit and the Magitek weapons made with the materials from the Schwarzwelt itself. By the end of the game, not only have you killed several god-like entities in the form of the Mothers, but also either destroyed the Schwarzwelt itself or changed the world forever with the power of the Cosmic Eggs.
  • The protagonist of Persona 3 is (sort of) The Chosen One in the present because Aigis sealed Pharos inside them to prevent the Fall and save the world, but the incident that led to that happening — a late night ride with their parents being interrupted by Aigis fighting Death/Pharos — was essentially a random accident that could have happened to anyone. The protagonist just happened to be the only person nearby when Aigis needed to seal Death away.
• StarCraft seems to have followed the Diablo franchise in this trope as of Legacy of the Void. As it turns out, the Xel'Naga Prophecy basically includes an Alien Non-Interference Clause, and that the two species (originally thought to be Protoss and Zerg) that are to merge must do so of their own volition. Amon essentially tried to subvert this prophecy by making those two races into The Chosen One, and therefore unable to fulfill the prophecy: The Zerg Swarm is unable to assimilate the Protoss, while forcibly merging them creates Hybrid instead of a new generation of Xel'naga. In comes Kerrigan, a powerful Terran psionic (fulfills "Purity of Form"), who as of the end of Heart of the Swarm has had her Zerg essence rebuilt from the ground up with Primal essence untouched by Amon (fulfills "Purity of Essence"). A unique case to Kerrigan in the story of the franchise, as any other Terran psionic in the game would have been killed by the process which Kerrigan underwent (which is why her survival is vital in defeating Amon), however it is implied that Terrans are quickly evolving into psionic ability, and after a few centuries they would begin rivalling even the Protoss.
• The Tales Series will frequently create some sort of hero, only to reveal how much It Sucks to Be the Chosen One, with an Unchosen taking center stage.
  • Tales of Symphonia — Colette and Zelos are The Chosen Ones of their respective lands. However, it is Idiot Hero Lloyd Irving who rallies everyone to try and fix everything the Big Bad has done and random orphan Sheena who possesses the powers that make it possible. And the whole Chosen One system was all set up by the Big Bad, anyway. Fulfilling their duties would've just played right into his hands.
  • Tales of Legendia — The bad guys have a Dark Messiah who will annihilate all of humanity if Senel Coolidge and his allies don't stop her.
  • Tales of the Abyss — Cloning makes it hard to determine who is and who is not The Chosen One. The most simple answer (that no-one ever seems to come up with) is that both Luke and Asch are The Chosen One, making them The Chosen Many.
  • Tales of Vesperia — the hero, Yuri, is as unchosen as you get. Rather than being predestined, his involvement in almost all of the game's events is due to him suffering from severe Chronic Hero Syndrome. Which his comrades make sure to point out.
  • Tales of Berseria — Velvet Crowe ends up in the hero role, saving the world, mostly by accident. The Big Bad Artorius is the one who fits most of the chosen one tropes and the one who actually aims to save the world for a certain definition of "saved". This is a deliberate subversion of how straight the chosen one tropes were played in the previous game.
• In Third Super Robot Wars Z: Tengoku-hen, Ambriel reveals that she was intended to be the pilot of Genion. The black nucleus that Hibiki touched in the first stage of Jigoku was the Genion's manual and pilot registration system, and it was sent there by DEM in order to scout Suzune as the pilot but Hibiki, being a teenage mecha protagonist, just had to go touching it.
• The Bard of Wandersong sets out to learn the Earthsong, convinced that it'll save the world. Later on, however, they discover the universe wasn't meant to be saved that way, courtesy of Eyala and Audrey. Once the Bard learns Audrey's true duty as The Chosen One is to hasten the destruction of the world, they become dead-set on defying fate itself to save the world.
• The player character in White Knight Chronicles is the only character in the game that has no obligation to help out whatsoever, but is still there the entire way. The newbie wine-seller to whom no one paid much attention can also end up obtaining a brand new Incorruptus called the Ark Knight, which leaves the villains sputtering in disbelief.
• In the course of World of Warcraft: Legion, you retrieve and empower an artifact, Light's Heart, which channels the spirit of a Naaru, a being of light, called Xe'ra. Xe'ra insists that on Azeroth there is a "Child of Light and Shadow" who will be instrumental to defeating the Legion. This individual is none other than Illidan Stormarage. When he meets Xe'ra in person, the Naaru tells her would-be Chosen One about his destiny. However, after he refuses Xe'ra's offer of power, having been in a position like this before, Xe'ra tries to empower him by force. He takes this poorly, fights back, and Illidan completely destroys Xe'ra. He sums up his reasons to one of Xe'ra's enraged followers.
  "Your faith has blinded you. There can be no chosen one. Only we can save ourselves."
• Xenoblade Chronicles 3: The Ouroboros powers were meant to go to candidates who trained for the purpose of becoming Ouroboros. However, the Levnis ferrying the Ouroboros Stone necesary to empower the Ouroboros is shot down in the first chapter, leaving Vandham to make the judgement call to use it on the heroes before it could be seized or destroyed. When the party finally makes it to the City and meet the original Ouroboros candidates, the candidates are obviously not pleased about having their duty hijacked by outsiders.
• Adol Christin of Ys is an inversion: he became badass not because he was The Chosen One, he became (or repeatedly gets picked as) The Chosen One because he's badass. Because if your land needs a savior, it's an excellent idea to pick the guy who's already killed enough dark gods to fill a pantheon. In the sixth game's Trials of Alma sidequest, the daughter of the goddess running said trials isn't very impressed with this random guy who just showed up, but when Adol started passing the trials, apparently she went and asked around about you. She becomes much more impressed and respectful after that.
• Zettai Hero Project opens with The Hero, the Unlosing Ranger, dying in a hit-and-run accident. You just happen to be nearby when he croaks and leaves you with his morphing belt. When you go to confront Darkdeath Evilman, Surprisingly Realistic Outcome occurs and your unprepared ass is handed to you on a platter. What follows is Training from Hell as you work on becoming the hero who will save the world, through trial and error — lots, and lots, and lots of error.

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