8 Video Games Where You Played As The Wrong Character

Bethesda's Elder Scrolls and Fallout series (before they ballsed it all up and attracted the ire of the entire world with Fallout 76) were exemplars in player-based character building.

Although all the games had central plots and ultimate goals, the player was free to sack these off and explore the games' respective worlds, joining whichever factions they wanted to and taking on quests as they saw fit.

While this was still very much an option in Fallout 4, the game's central narrative felt massively at odds with its explorative mechanics. Playing as one half of a couple coming out of stasis to find that their infant son has been taken from them, they begin a desperate search across the wasteland to find and reunite with him.

As any parent knows, the idea of their child being kidnapped would push everything else out of their consciousness entirely and their focus would solely be on trying to get them back.

This makes venturing off the beaten track to engage in quests where you look for paint to help decorate a stadium feel out of place, and you end up exploring because you feel like you should rather than because the game actively encourages it.

Couple this with a fully voiced character and significantly more limited dialogue options, and the role-playing aspect of this role-playing game feels underwhelming.

Literally any other character, or at least any other overarching goal, would have been more appropriate for a series where distractions reign supreme.