Schrödinger's Player Character: Difference between revisions

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Congratulations! You just bought a new RPG! The game offers three characters to play as: [[Fighter, Mage, Thief|Alice the Mage, Bob the Fighter, and Charles the Thief!]] Each character comes with a complete biography [[All There in the Manual|in the manual]], and the character selection screen, on top of explaining their stats, gives each character his unique motivations answering [[The Call]]. Alice wants to [[Acceptable Feminine Goals|save her son]]. Bob wants [[To Be a Master]], and Charles seeks to avenge his [[Doomed Hometown]].

So you decide to pick Bob. And as you play the game, you begin wondering... What happened to Alice and Charles? You keep playing the game, reaching [[100% Completion]], and you never see either. Looks like Alice, Bob and Charles are Schrodinger's Player Characters. In more generalized explanation: You are given a choice of characters, and once chosen, the game seems to go based on the assumption the selected character is the only one who exists. This trope is ~~VERY~~ common in games that give you a choice of pre-generated Player Characters, so much that it may come as a surprise when it is averted and the PCs you did not choose turn ~~out~~ as [[NPC]]s. This can also be confusing when each character is given a different backstory. Did those events even occur?

So you decide to pick Bob. And as you play the game, you begin wondering... What happened to Alice and Charles? You keep playing the game, reaching [[100% Completion]], and you never see either. Looks like Alice, Bob and Charles are Schrodinger's Player Characters. In more generalized explanation: You are given a choice of characters, and once chosen, the game seems to go based on the assumption the selected character is the only one who exists. This trope is ''very'' common in games that give you a choice of pre-generated Player Characters, so much that it may come as a surprise when it is averted and the PCs you did not choose turn up as [[NPC]]s. This can also be confusing when each character is given a different backstory. Did those events even occur?

The question is then: do the other characters exist? [[Cutting Off the Branches|If not, then why not?]] If so, then are they the [[Hero of Another Story|Heroes Of Another Story]]?

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Named, of course, after [[Schrödinger's Cat]].

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== [[Action Game]] ==

== Video game examples ==

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=== [[Action Game]] ===

* Averted and lampshaded in ''[[Monster Racers]]''. You choose between a girl lead or a guy lead at the start. The one you didn't pick appears and mentions they could have been you.

== [[Adventure Game]] ==

=== [[Adventure Game]] ===

* In ''[[Maniac Mansion]]'', you have the task of breaking into a mansion and saving Dave's girlfriend, Sandy. At the beginning of the game, you pick two teenagers out of six to assist Dave. The manual indicates that he only called two friends, either due to time constraints, or because he felt a smaller team would go unnoticed.

== [[Beat'Em Up]] ==

=== [[Beat'Em Up]] ===

* Particularly common in [[Beat'Em Up]] games, where a player is offered a choice of (usually three) characters and never see the others despite the fact that the plot has them fighting together for the same objective.

** ''[[Final Fight]]'' only allowed up to two players simultaneously, meaning that at least one of the three main characters will always be left out of the action. This is particularly egregious in the SNES version, which was single-player only and came in two versions: one that that featured Cody and a second version which replaced him with Guy (providing the explanation that Cody is still training under Guy's sensei in Japan and couldn't return to Metro City on time). The opening intro in ''Final Fight 2'' for the SNES establishes that all three of them fought the Mad Gear gang together, despite the fact that neither version of the first SNES game had the full roster.

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** The NES version of ''Double Dragon III'' changes the opening intro depending on whether one or two players are playing. Hilariously, the opening intro of the 2-Player mode misspells Billy's name as "Bimmy" in the opening, despite the fact that the 1-Player mode uses the correct spelling. However, the ending plays this straight by showing all four characters (although in the Famicom version, only the characters who survived are shown).

== [[Fighting Game]] ==

=== [[Fighting Game]] ===

* Averted in the first ''[[SNK vs. Capcom]]: Card Fighters Clash''. The opposite gender protagonist becomes a rival.

* ''[[Super Smash Bros Brawl]]'' has this for the adventure mode. It is assumed that your current party is fighting all the enemies in the story but depending on the character limits placed as you progress, you will never see the other characters jumping in to help.

== [[First-Person Shooter]] ==

=== [[First-Person Shooter]] ===

* At the beginning of ''[[Borderlands]]'', the four possible player characters (Mordecai the Hunter, Roland the Soldier, Lilith the Siren, and Brick the Berserker) are all riding into town together on a bus. Once you choose which of the four you are playing, you never see the other three again. It is implied, however, that they're all teammates.

** This can be the case.... Your team can also consist of a swarm of Brick clones, or Mordecai and Three Liliths.

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* Similar to ''Borderlands'', ''[[Dead Island]]'' seems to assume that canonically all four characters are working together even if only one is chosen. All the characters are shown together in cutscenes.

== [[Hack and Slash]] ==

=== [[Hack and Slash]] ===

* Not counting Multiplayer, this happens in ''[[Diablo]]'' 1 and 2. In Diablo's Multiplayer, the NPCs keep the same speech, talking to you like if you were the sole one present.

** This is an interesting example because, in the games' canon, all of the heroes were indeed present. The Rogue, Sorcerer and Warrior from the first game show up as Blood Raven, the Summoner, and the Wanderer (possessed by Diablo himself) in the second. Story fragments for the third game indicate that all of the heroes from the second game were involved in defeating the three Prime Evils and their armies, and they all went [[Axe Crazy]] from the ordeal (except for the Barbarian).

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* The Konami arcade game ''Devil World'' changes the ending depending on whether the player completes as Condor, Labryna or both. The game's U.S. release, ''Dark Adventure'', adds a third player character named Zorlock, but only has one ending which shows all three characters (regardless of the number of people playing).

== [[Mecha Game]] ==

=== [[Mecha Game]] ===

* When selectable heroes are involved in the plot, ''[[Super Robot Wars]]'' tends to subvert, invert, avert, and do the tango with this trope depending on the game in question.

** ''[[Super Robot Wars Advance|Advance]]'' averted this; Axel Almer and Lamia Loveless both exist at the same time, and they both belong to the villains. Whoever you select ends up [[Heel Face Turn|joining the heroes]] (Axel [[Amnesiac Dissonance|loses his memories]], and Lamia is [[The Mole]] who ends up [[Becoming the Mask]]), while the other remains a villain and becomes your [[The Rival|rival]].

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* ''[[Robot Alchemic Drive]]'' plays it straight. You're given the choice of three playable characters, and the game manual refers to them as if they're siblings. But whichever you choose, the other two will never show up, or even be mentioned.

== [[Platform Game]] ==

=== [[Platform Game]] ===

* In ''[[Mega Man ZX]]'', your plot only includes either Vent or Aile.

** ''Advent'' continues this; if you play as Grey, you meet Aile and she saved the world in the previous game, and if you play as Ashe, you meet Vent and ''he'' saved the world, but you never meet the other two characters. However, in Ashe's game it's hinted at one point that Grey still went through his intro stage, and a picture of both Vent and Aile is seen at one point in both stories, but otherwise the other characters never appear.

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* In ''[[Kirby's Return to Dream Land]]'', Kirby is always depicted with Waddle Dee, Meta Knight, and King Dedede at his side in the story scenes, even when he's traveling alone, accompanied by [[Color-Coded Multiplayer|Yellow, Green, and Blue Kirbies]], or teamed with a mixture of the palette-swapped Kirbies and the former three characters during actual gameplay.

== [[Roguelike]] ==

=== [[Roguelike]] ===

* Averted in ''[[Nethack]]''. You in fact see many characters in the Astral Plane. However, they all have cheap plastic copies of the [[MacGuffin|Amulet of Yendor]], whereas you have the real thing (hopefully).

== [[Role Playing Game]] ==

=== [[Role Playing Game]] ===

* Averted in ''[[Dragon Age Origins]]''. It establishes that all other player origins actually happened (presumably including the potential player characters) but without Duncan in the right place at the right time, it's almost certain that most, if not all, ended up dead. Entirely certain, for some origins. Players familiar with alternate origins who are willing to poke around a bit can generally find a nod to the other origins somewhere—usually where a character of that origin would get extra dialogue. Such moments include:

** If you rescue the Dwarven Commoner's friend from prison and you're not a Dwarven Noble, his friend is a rotted skeleton in the next cell over. Sorry, alterna-me.

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* Averted in spectacular and still-unique-16-years-later fashion in ''Chou-Mahou Tairiku Wozz''. Once the initial party is gathered together at the start of the game, you choose one of its members to be your player character. The rest are still part of the party, but are now secondary characters in the storyline.

== [[Shoot'Em Up]] ==

=== [[Shoot'Em Up]] ===

* This trope is normally in effect for games in the ''[[Touhou Project]]'' series: the characters the player didn't select presumably still exist somewhere, they're just nowhere to be found in the story.

** Subverted in both ''Lotus Land Story'' though, when the character you didn't select shows up as one of the bosses. ''Imperishable Night'' does something similar, but it has four storylines and only one fight with another character, so there's still several character unaccounted for.

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* Averted in the [[TurboGrafx-16]] version of the Data East shooter ''[[Bloody Wolf]]''. The character not chosen by the player at the start of the game will become a playable character when the initial protagonist is taken captive by the enemy.

== [[Simulation Game]] ==

=== [[Simulation Game]] ===

* Averted in ''[[Harvest Moon]] Island of Happiness''. You choose to play as either male (Mark) or female (Chelsea), and the other one appears later in the game as one of your love interests.

** Also averted in an earlier game, ''[[Harvest Moon]] GB 3'', where the plot revolves around you and the opposite character. The female (Sara) always owns the farm, and the male (Pete) always is a helper.

* The creatures you don't pick in ''[[Black and White]]'' and its sequel.

== [[Sports Game]] ==

=== [[Sports Game]] ===

* There was "You" in ''[[Tony Hawk Pro Skater|Tony Hawk's American Wasteland]]''. And of course, every model had the same voice.

== [[Stealth Based Game]] ==

=== [[Stealth Based Game]] ===

* Averted with ''[[Tenchu]]'', where the other ninja is presumably running other missions, and you have to rescue them at one point. Wholly averted with its prequel ''Tenchu 2'', where the missions mesh together perfectly and you have to play through the game twice to get the whole story.

** In ''Tenchu 3'', Rikamaru will show up during Ayame's story. She does not make an appearance in his.

== [[Survival Horror]] ==

=== [[Survival Horror]] ===

* Averted in ''[[Pathologic]]''. Whoever you didn't pick would go off on their own story.

* The original ''[[Resident Evil 1|Resident Evil]]'' contains a strange example. Both scenarios start the same way: Chris, Jill, Barry and Wesker are attacked in the woods, and run towards the mansion. In Chris' mission, Barry goes missing in the game (explicitly mentioned in the intro) and Chris later encounters Rebecca of Bravo Team, who escapes with him and Jill; Barry never resurfaces. In Jill's mission, Chris is the missing person, but he's found later in a cell; Rebecca is never even alluded to, not even as an encountered corpse or in a note or file. Yet, the storyline for the sequels holds that all four of them survived the mansion incident.

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** ''[[Resident Evil Outbreak]]'' offers eight playable characters throughout a total of ten scenarios (between the first game and ''File #2''), with no hints whatsoever of who definitively did what and where due to the games' need to be considered a [[Gaiden Game]].

== [[Third-Person Shooter]] ==

=== [[Third-Person Shooter]] ===

* In both ''[[Mercenaries]]'' games, you can pick one mercenary out of three to play as. The other two are never seen or heard from again. Apparently ExOps thinks that they only need to send in a single [[One-Man Army]] to do the job.

** Well in the sequel, the other two show up shortly before the player goes on a [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge]] for the [[Big Bad]]'s [[You Have Outlived Your Usefulness]] moment, but all they do is mock the player in a cantina. Apparently, their colleague getting stabbed in the back (metaphorically) and shot in the ass (literally) isn't enough to spur them to action.

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* ''[[Alien Swarm]]'' has this trope even if there are 4 players in the game. There are 8 characters to play as but only 4 at a time can be played, leaving you to wonder what happened to the other 4 characters.

== [[Turn-Based Strategy]] ==

=== [[Turn-Based Strategy]] ===

* Averted in the turn based strategy game ''[[Dark Wizard]]'' for the Sega CD. The player picks which hero to play, but the ones he didn't choose will appear during the course of the story as one-off NPCs with a single line of dialogue.

* In the second part of the fourth ''[[Fire Emblem]]'' game, ''Genealogy of the Holy War'', you take control of either the children of characters from the first part, or, if a character never got married, a set of replacements that bear no relation to anyone from part one. While it's obvious why offspring don't appear if their potential parents never got hitched, it's unclear where the replacements are (or if they even existed at all) if they did actually marry.

=== Non-video game examples ===

== Non-video game examples ==

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=== [[Literature]] ===

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== [[Literature]] ==

* [[Choose Your Own Adventure]] books have this, too. One of the ''[[Fighting Fantasy]]'' books "The Legend of Zagor" does it. You pick one of four characters. Whichever you pick is the only one present in this adventure.

** Also used in the reissues that let you pick a pre-generated character.

** Also used in the ''[[Fabled Lands]]'' books, though ~~its~~ possible the others are adventuring.

** Also used in the ''[[Fabled Lands]]'' books, though it's possible the others are adventuring.