8 Video Games Where You Played As The Wrong Character

There are many great video game protagonists - think Solid Snake, Samus Aran or Sonic The Hedgehog. On the flip-side, there are many rubbish heroes too - think Bubsy the Bobcat, Aiden Pearce or, well, Sonic The Hedgehog (sorry).

No matter whether we love or loathe, most main characters feel appropriate for the game they star in, having been woven into the narrative that has been set out.

This isn't always the case though, and there are times where you'll reach the end credits after 30 hours, only to realise there were WAY better stories to tell... using different characters in the game.

Sometimes someone will overstay their welcome, hogging valuable screen time that a more interesting support role deserves, or their personal goals completely contradict the nature of gameplay.

Yes, these are the games that not necessarily had bad protagonists (many are still enjoyable, serviceable or great in their own way), but for a host of pretty clear reasons in retrospect, we'd been playing as the wrong character the whole time.

With that said, let's take a look at a few of these misplaced protagonists and theorise on who was more deserving of that hero status.

Before you start reaching for the pitchforks and a stake to burn me at, this entry is neither an attack on Arthur Morgan nor John Marston. Arthur's story is touching and devastating, while John's epilogue serves as both a solid payoff to Morgan's arc, setting up the original Red Dead Redemption.

However, Rockstar missed a trick with the post-ending free roam elements.

After the game's final mission - in which Micah Bell is finally given what-for - John and Abigail marry and settle down on their ranch at Beecher's Hope. Alongside, bounty hunter and all-round hellcat Sadie Adler heads off to pursue further adventures and live the life of a gunslinger.

Why then, once the credits had finished rolling, were we still playing as John Marston?!

If he has finally settled down to tend to his ranch and argue with his wife (with 20,000 dollars in his pocket, no less), it feels dissonant to continue playing as him riding across the west, robbing trains and shooting dudes in the face.

A much more savvy move would have been to switch to the perspective of Sadie, now left to her own devices on the frontier. With Rockstar focusing on Red Dead Online and with no single player DLC in sight, it might have been the only opportunity we had to play as everyone's favourite breakout star.