How The Generic Hero Trope Of Long-Running RPGs Can Make Things Feel A Bit One-Note

Recently, I’ve been bouncing back and forth between several action RPG gacha games, specifically Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail, and Wuthering Waves. As a result, I ended up joking with Mike about the “personalities” of the player characters in these games.

The Traveler from Genshin can be a bit mean and sarcastic. They pick on Paimon a lot. For some reason, just about everyone (Not actually everyone, but close enough.) the Rover in Wuthering Waves meets is an instant wife. Doesn’t matter the gender of Rover or the characters; it’s just the way things are, and is likely due to their calm demeanor. And then there’s Star Rail’s Trailblazer – the dumbest individual in the universe. Every time this character opens their mouth, something dumb comes out, and even their closest allies tell people to just ignore them.

It’s an interesting juxtaposition when taking into account their similar beginnings. All three “wake up” or “appear” in the world sans memory and with powers that neither they nor anyone around them completely understand. It can be frustrating for the player when given dialog choices, and, say in the case of the Trailblazer, you have to choose between saying something dumb and saying something really dumb.

Don’t get me wrong. I like the Trailblazer. They are an endearing character. But when it comes to dialog options for them, they don’t always hit the way I’d like them to. The same can be said of the Traveler’s meanness toward Paimon – although that’s mellowed out a lot, and now the Traveler makes it clear they’re just teasing their friend. It’s also been a while since we’ve threatened to eat our floating travel guide. So, at least there’s progress.

Perhaps the same will happen with the Trailblazer as they figure out more about who they were before a Stellaron was shoved in their body and they were discovered on the station. Perhaps the Trailblazer’s seeming daftness is a way to show the age differences between them and the individuals they’re traveling with. Or, perhaps they really just like dad jokes.

Whatever the case may be, the result is the same. Players have limited choices when it comes to making their characters feel truly “them”. In some ways, this is understandable, as these games do really lean into the voice acting, and having to record a bunch of different lines to respond to the same situation is time-consuming and not exactly cost-effective. That said, many scenes do give two or three dialogue options. It’s just that the options are fairly similar or more extreme versions of each other, a problem that can sometimes end with the character in question feeling a little one-note.

There are worse examples than the games listed here, of course. As I noted, Genshin Impact’s Traveler actually feels as though it’s grown. Wuthering Waves’ Rover doesn’t quite have the same problem – something I somewhat attribute to Rover figuring out who they really are rather quickly. And I’m sure that the Trailblazer will have moments of growth that will eventually make them feel like more than the group joke that also just happens to have big powers.

But the fact remains that other, similar games lean pretty heavily into the one-note generic player character. Another example would be the player character from the mobile game Tokyo Debunker, which revolves around a girl who ends up at a school filled with Ghouls tasked with investigating paranormal activity. Due to being cursed by one of the creatures a Ghoul is hunting, she ends up a bit of a prisoner at the school, tasked with using her new abilities to help the Ghouls and hopefully figuring out how to lift her curse in the process.

Of course, she’s scared and has no idea what’s going on. But as the investigations progress and she spends more time at the school, she doesn’t really seem to grow. At the end of the day, she’s consistently a doormat for the rest of the characters. Even if the player does choose a dialog option where she attempts to stand up for herself, she eventually backs down.

To be truthful, it’s my one real annoyance when it comes to games of these types, where the character seems to want to straddle the line between just being a completely scripted character and one the player can think of as theirs. This is especially true when the worlds and other characters in the game are so fully realized. It stands out a bit more. Look, sometimes I just want my Trailblazer to be a bit more serious.

Perhaps there is no real solution to it. And of all the complaints someone could have about a game, this certainly isn’t my biggest. After all, if nothing else, I do find humor in it – even if some of the Trailblazer’s jokes are just awful. Knowing HoYo, I’ll continue to see growth in their characters in some way, even if it’s not the way I would personally choose. It would also be nice if I could see that in other games, like Tokyo Debunker, instead of just feeling pity for the characters in question.