The key to penning a story of adventure, at least by my reckoning, is to provide an interesting character, then contrive a reason for them to set out on some manner of lengthy quest. The same is true for most adventure-centric video games, whether they be action games, RPGs, or other assorted genres. Even in the most obscure adventure games, an adventure is usually a bespoke thing, something only one person would feel inclined to go on. Note how I said “usually” there.
10 Games That Are Better If You Ignore The Main Story
Why would you follow the main story when there’s a perfectly good side quest waiting for you?
Some adventure-centric games, whether through early-game character creation, development over the course of the story, or simply forgoing major characters entirely, manage to shirk the need for a set protagonist. In these particular circumstances, it could be said that the adventure is for you, the player, rather than anyone existing within the game’s universe. Perhaps that might make the adventure feel a tad hollow, but these games still manage to be a great time anyway, with the lack of established character traits sometimes leading to more interesting development down the line.
8 Terraria
Hard to Have a Set Character with No Story
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- Released
- May 16, 2011
- ESRB
- T for Teen: Blood and Gore, Cartoon Violence, Mild Suggestive Themes, Use of Alcohol
- Steam Deck Compatibility
- Verified
- Platform(s)
- PC, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, Vita, iOS, Android, macOS, Linux, 3DS, Stadia, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch
- File Size Xbox Series
- 418 MB (March 2023)
- Metascore
- 85
- PS Plus Availability
- Extra & Premium
- OpenCritic Rating
- Strong
To call something an “adventure” comes with an implication of goals or drives. Why would you be going on an adventure if there was no impetus to do so, after all? Well, in the case of Terraria, you go on an adventure because there’s an adventure to go on. Ain’t much else driving you in this game’s case.
Terraria, despite being an adventure game, has no overarching plot of which to speak. There is some background lore, originally divulged to players by the devs in a series of forum posts, the short version being that you’re a world-saving hero guided to this precise point in the middle of nowhere for the purpose of saving the world from a Cthulhu-worshipping cult. I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t know that, because it’s certainly not explained to you in the game itself.
The actual experience of Terraria is one of open-ended, self-sustaining adventure. You build up a home base for yourself, you explore the dungeons and caves beneath, and beat up punks and monsters on the way. You could come up with a backstory for your custom protagonist if it makes you happy, but it would exist exclusively in your own head. Unless you’re playing on a roleplaying server or something, I guess.
7 Final Fantasy
Nobody Cared Who I Was Before I Was a Warrior of Light
In the vast majority of Final Fantasy games and similar JRPGs, your party is made up of specific, named characters. Each of them have their own backstories, motivations, and other assorted details indicating they were up to stuff before they joined with you. The lone exception to this is the very first game in the series, where your party of do-gooders seemingly appears right out of the ether.
The four members of your party, collectively known as the Warriors of Light, journey to the kingdom of Corneria, each with a crystal clutched in hand. Where did they get the crystals? Who knows! What were they doing before they found the crystals? Who cares! Aside from deciding your party’s members and their respective classes at the start of the game, there is absolutely no other differentiating information about any of them. They are blank slates in the truest sense.
Considering how the story ends, with the Warriors defeating Chaos, breaking his time loop, and pretty much erasing their entire journey from history, it’s kind of thematically appropriate that nothing is known about them. All that remains are vague legends of their exploits; if someone were telling their story in-universe, they wouldn’t have anything to say about them beyond their general appearances or skills, if that.
6 Shadows Over Loathing
You’ve Got an Uncle, That’s About it
Shadows Over Loathing starts with your protagonist bumbling into a diner on the outskirts of Ocean City with a magazine stuck to their face. After being directed to the bathroom by the helpful proprietress, you start building out your character’s backstory, including their face, full name, and general outlook on life. No matter what you pick, though, you’re there for the same reason: because your Uncle Murray called for you.
Uncle Murray, unfortunately, has been spirited away by the minions of eldritch horrors, so you’ll have to get around to tracking him down at some point. In the meantime, you can do pretty much whatever you want, using your particular skills to explore the city and uncover cursed objects.
One particularly interesting bit of modularity to this game is your recurring nemesis, right-hand man to the game’s main antagonist. Your nemesis’s identity and general vibe are entirely dependent on which of the three classes you choose at the start. So, not only are you not playing a set character, you don’t even have a set rival character to hinder you.
5 Rogue Legacy
A Whole Legacy of Nobodies
The premise of Rogue Legacy is that you’re a member of a lineage of adventurers who have all been trying to plunder the same magically-shifting castle for untold years. Every single new member born into this family will, invariably, take up a sword and venture to their almost-certain doom within the castle, and whatever cash they pick up will be added to your estate’s coffers to fund future upgrades and efforts.
All of this is to say that whoever you first start the game as, and whichever heirs follow them, is mostly meaningless. Every heir may have a different name or personal quirk, but they’ve all been trained to do the exact same job, and are all happy to do so even if they’ll probably get squashed, stabbed, or shot for it. Frankly, I’d be surprised if you bothered to remember any of their names after selecting them.
The various journal entries you can uncover throughout the game hint at the castle’s darker nature, detailing a nameless hero’s quest to surmount it and its disappointing end. The implication seems to be that anyone who enters the castle has their entire family line bound to it pretty much for eternity. So, long story short, someone on your family tree monumentally screwed up.
4 Pyre
You Can Read, That’s All That Matters
In the high fantasy setting of Pyre, people are exiled from the Commonwealth to the wastelands of the Downside for a variety of different crimes and arbitrary reasons. Your protagonist, known only as “the Reader,” was cast down for one of the most serious offenses in the land: the crime of being literate.
By the time the Nightwings find you, you’re on the verge of death with most of your limbs severely injured. They can only even make an educated guess at your gender based on your silhouette under your tattered robes. However, since you can read, and therefore read the Book of Rites, you are invaluable to them, and they’re content to let you take the reins on most things, especially since you can’t participate in the Rites yourself.
Every Supergiant Game, Ranked
From Bastion to Hades II, ever game produced by Supergiant Games is a certified banger.
Throughout the game, you do get various opportunities to divulge (i.e. establish) your personal backstory. Maybe you were a farmer, maybe you were a scholar, maybe you were a war orphan; it’s pretty immaterial, though, as none of it changes the fact that you learned to read and got chucked down the proverbial hill for it. You could even opt to withhold all of your personal details from the other Nightwings and leave your backstory murky. They won’t hold it against you.
3 Street Fighter 6
A Lone Fighter in a World Full of Things to Punch
Okay, I’m cheating a little bit here since Street Fighter 6 is, first and foremost, a fighting game rather than an adventure game. That said, the game’s World Tour mode is undoubtedly an adventure, and particularly one whose protagonist, i.e. you, is a physiologically flexible individual, and in more ways than one.
All we really get to start with is that you, whoever you are, sign up with Buckler Security and start training under Luke. Beyond whether you shower in the morning or at night, he doesn’t particularly care what you got up to prior to this, and soon enough, he cuts you loose to travel the world and become an accomplished fighter. This isn’t even mentioning the fact that you can change pretty much your entire physical being for a small fee, so what you look like doesn’t even matter that much.
Additionally, you can learn every other character’s fighting style merely by training with them for a little bit. Even stuff that you really shouldn’t be able to do, like Blanka’s electricity or Dhalsim’s yoga stretching, comes remarkably easily to you. Whoever the heck you are, you might just be the greatest martial arts savant the world has ever known.
2 Disco Elysium
Harry Du Bois, Backstory TBD
Now, you might be thinking, “Wait, Disco Elysium does have a set protagonist, Lieutenant Harry Du Bois!” You are correct, you are Lieutenant Harry Du Bois. The question is, though, who exactly is Lieutenant Harry Du Bois? Because he sure as sugar doesn’t know.
Due to engaging in the most monumental bender in human history, Lieutenant Du Bois starts the game with essentially zero idea of who he is or what he’s about. He’s less of a “set character” and more of a backdrop on which to build your personal version of him. Certain successful skill checks throughout the game do provide little breadcrumbs of Harry’s personal history, such as when and where he was born and his upbringing and career, but whether these revelations actually affect his actions is largely dependent on how you handle them as the player.
In his blanked-out state, Harry is extremely receptive to new input and ideas, not to mention influences from his various anthropomorphized feelings and senses. Even if he had no inclination towards particular ideologies in the past, with your decisions and lucky (or unlucky) rolls, he could end up a substantially different person than his backstory may imply.
1 Fallout: New Vegas
Just a No-Name Courier
In the original trilogy of Fallout games, you have a more-or-less established life and backstory. Fallout 3 in particular has you live through the greatest hits of your childhood and teen years, giving you a firm origin point to establish your protagonist’s ethos. Fallout: New Vegas, on the other hand, doesn’t really bother with that. You’re a courier for the Mojave Express, and you got shot in the head by a man in a tacky suit. Whatever came before that must’ve fallen out of that hole in your head.
The only thing we know about the Courier beyond their profession is that they were one of six couriers hired by Robert House to deliver various googaws to the New Vegas strip. As is revealed in Lonesome Road, you also delivered a package from Navarro to Death Valley, which inadvertently caused the major detonation creating The Divide, but that wasn’t intentional.
Any defining elements of your Courier are defined almost entirely during your brief checkup with Doc Simmons. Whether you’re skilled in physical or mental pursuits, whether you’re morally balanced or bankrupt, it’s decided there and with your actions going forward. I guess, in fairness, the average wasteland resident doesn’t have the most interesting life, at least compared to those of tribals or Vault Dwellers.
13 Best Games Like Fallout: New Vegas
Whether you’re a veteran of the Mojave or just looking for a game to scratch that post-apocalyptic itch, here are the best games similar to New Vegas.
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Author: 360 Technology Group
