All The Tropes

Player Mook: Difference between revisions

Page Discussion

Player Mook (view source)

Revision as of 22:42, 8 April 2014

247 bytes removed ,  10 years ago
m
Mass update links
VisualWikitext
(clean up)
m (Mass update links)
Line 43:
** ''Destiny Of An Emperor'' seemed like a pretty standard RPG based on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms story, until you realized that that's not HP, but soldiers! Wow, so many dead bodies!
** ''[[Wild Arms XF]]''
* ''[[Dragon Quest III (Video Game)|Dragon Quest III]]'' had this. Other than [[The Hero]], you could go to a tavern at any time and make new characters.
** ''[[Dragon Quest IX (Video Game)|Dragon Quest IX]]'' has this too, as a throwback to that
** ''[[Dragon Quest V (Video Game)|Dragon Quest V]]'' and ''[[Dragon Quest VI (Video Game)|Dragon Quest VI]]'' feature [[Mon|recruitable monsters]]. Their only personality is that they come with names.
* Similarly to DQIII and DQIX, ''[[Makai Toshi Sa Ga]]'' lets you choose which kind of character [[The Hero]] is, and you can recruit up to three more generic party members at a guild. ''[[SaGa 2]]'' has [[The Hero]] take three of his classmates with him.
* By nature of the genre, most [[Real Time Strategy]] games use this.
Line 61:
** Though if you lost enough soldiers, you'd get faceless mooks with limited stats to replace them.
* Similarly averted in [[Valkyrie Profile]] 2. The einherjar all fall into four general categories (light knight, heavy knight, mage and archer) but they all have their own names and models and different stats.
* Possibly averted in ''[[Bahamut Lagoon (Video Game)|Bahamut Lagoon]]''. The non-plot characters in there blur the line between unusually well-defined [[Player Mooks]] and badly-realized regular characters.
* ''[[Diablo]] 2'' allows you to hire expendable mercenaries in town to aid you.
* ''Mario Superstar Baseball'' and its sequel, ''Mario Super Sluggers'', uses this trope like there's no tomorrow. In fact, the only [[Palette Swap|Palette Swaps]] available in those games are for the mooks themselves (complete with individualized stats), with the thin justification that those same mooks had palette swaps in the main games to begin with (except for Magikoopa and Dry Bones, who only had palette swaps in the [[Paper Mario (Video Gamefranchise)|Paper Mario]] series). Interestingly, while Yoshi gets palette swaps in the sequel, Birdo still doesn't, despite different colored Birdos blatantly appearing elsewhere in the game.
* The title soldiers in ''[[Cannon Fodder (Video Gameseries)|Cannon Fodder]]'' mostly play this straight, but they each have names, and they're so darned cute that they tend to provoke [[Video Game Caring Potential]]. Mind you, since this game attempts to avert [[Do Not Do This Cool Thing]], an average player will see more than 200 of them meet [[Family-Unfriendly Death|Family Unfriendly Deaths]], each adding another tombstone to the hill on the pre-mission screen and deepening the player's angst.
* ''Star Wars Battlefront'' is this trope in spades - you even jump between random shmoes (somehow keeping your experience and bonuses) if your [[Player Mook]] gets wasted.
* While most ''[[Wizardry (Video Game)|Wizardry]]'' games follow this trope, ''Wizardry 8'' has an interesting subversion. While you do create and customize your players in a fashion similar to Player Mooks, you can also give them their own distinct voices and personalities. They talk as necessary whenever the plot demands, and often they feel like story characters rather than Player Mooks.
* One of ''[[Perfect Dark]]'''s multiplayer modes had player 1 try to complete a single-player mission while player 2 controls the mooks. The mook usually has only 2 weapons. If the mook gets stuck (or player 2 needs to get to a closer mook) he can use a cyanide pill to effectively [[Body Surfing|Body Surf]] to another mook.
* ''[[X-COM]]'' and its sequels/successors/clones. Due to [[Nintendo Hard|the nature of the game]], players can expect casualties, lots and lots of casualties.
* ''[[Scarface the World Is Yours (Video Game)|Scarface the World Is Yours]]''. No matter how many times your Enforcer, Driver or Assassin gets wasted, you can call up another one. The regular drivers/co-pilots that assist Tony come in differing flavors and talents and skills (this last part may not be intended). It's so cute to hear them scream curses like the boss. Their highly efficent fighting skills definitely invokes the above mentioned Caring Potential when an enemy mook rushes out of the bushes and shoots them point blank in the face.
* ''[[Fire Emblem|Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon]]'' gives you these if you get enough normal characters killed. ([[Video Game Caring Potential|Most players STILL Start over on a single death anyways]].)
** This series as a whole tends to avert it, though, because everyone in your control is unique, with their own sprites, portraits, and stats.
*** Although [[Fire Emblem Jugdral|Fire Emblem Thracia 776]] played this straight in one chapter, where Glade joins along with a couple of generic knights under his command, who have names such as [[Exactly What It Says Onon the Tin|Lance Knight and Bow Knight.]] Since they're only available for the one chapter, most players just strip them of their weapons and use them as cannon fodder.
* Averted in the [[Jagged Alliance]] series, which plays like a tactical strategy game, but instead of giving you generic soldiers, it has [[Loads and Loads of Characters]], each with their own dialogue and personality. Played straight with the militia, who are AI controlled allies that you train to defend your towns. You will probably lose dozens if not hundreds of them during the game.
* [[City of Villains]] and the Mastermind class. Full stop.
Line 78:
* Bioshock 2's mutliplayer has you play as the Splicers to avoid having six Deltas running around at once.
* [[Gradius]]' Big Core MK I gets a starring role in ''Gradius NEO Imperial''.
* ''[[Etrian Odyssey (Video Game)|Etrian Odyssey]]'' uses these in order to build your party. The storyline involves your adventuring group as a whole rather than a single character, so no preset character is necessary.
* In [[Mr. Robot]], there are four plot-essential robots that join your party (by having their personalities [[Party in My Pocket|copied into your head]]), one for each "class". But you can also get a couple more robot personalities to help you in battle by exploring the world thoroughly, and their existence isn't mentioned at all (even when the main character whines about how crowded it's getting in there). If I remember right, they do have names, but for some reason they aren't capitalized. Weird.
* ''Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas''. Being awesome enough means one can recruit fellow gang members to assist on missions. They will follow, fire, pursue and then try to get in the car with you to go back home.
Line 85:
* ''[[Final Fantasy VI]]'' has the ghosts in the Phantom Train. Most ghosts are enemies but a few will offer to join your party. They have no backstory, a unique class, and a stat set randomly chosen from three presets. You can only recruit up to however many to fill your party; if they are KO'd or use their "Possess" skill they leave you party and you can recruit another one, endlessly. However, they always leave at the end of the level.
* ''[[Hellgate London]]'' [[That One Level|confounded players]] with an [[Unexpected Genre Change]] in which [[Mook]] troopers had to be endlessly expended fighting through creatures that the players could, by that point, have strolled through themselves.
* Starting with Delta, [[R Type|R-Type]] allowed the Pow Armor power-up carriers to be playable, and they could [[Lethal Joke Character|hold their own pretty well]]. Then Final gave players the chance to play as the [[Goddamned Bats|Cancer]], known as the TL-T Chiron, even getting its own force module. An interesting aspect of the Chiron is that it transforms into the Cancer when the force module is attached.
* Starships owned by the player of an [[X (Videovideo Gamegame)|X-Universe]] game, but not used for the player ship, don't even have pilots<ref>Specifically, the player's name is listed as pilot on the ship's info screen.</ref> unless the player gives them one by activating a script that adds a named pilot. Even then, their name is randomly generated based on the species that owns the sector, and you never interact with the pilots in person beyond giving them orders from a command console.
 
{{reflist}}
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/910794"