Every human being on the planet is special in their own way. While that's true, many gamers often seek games to get a taste of what it feels like to be famous, infamous, or simply the wielder of blinding, bewildering power. Most modern games thrust their players into the role of a legendary soldier, mighty superhero, or god-like wizard.
Even when a game starts the player off with no gear at level one, there's often something "special" about them that allows the player to charm townsfolk, solve puzzles, or smash bad guys like they were soft-boiled eggs. However, some games take a different approach, forcing gamers to climb the slippery pole to success in the zero-grip shoes of an absolute nobody.
10 Outward
Almost everything in Outward is there to remind the player that in this game, they are not special. The only thing the protagonist has going for them is their homeownership. Unfortunately, seeing as the inciting event is being told to pay off a completely unfair debt in less than five days or have the house taken away, it hardly elevates them above the rest of the village.
Before the adventure begins, the player must scramble to attain some essential tools and a backpack. Once the game gets going, it will become evident that rushing the bad guys is a bad idea. The game even auto-saves after each defeat, taking save state time travel (every gamer's true secret power) away.
9 Kingdom Come: Deliverance
As the son of a blacksmith in 1403, Bohemia is about as high up on the social food chain as it gets as a member of the commoner class. Unfortunately, Henry, the protagonist of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, is quickly "disabused" of this privilege in the first fifteen minutes of the game.
Hounded, homeless, and hungry (always so hungry!), Henry must work from the dirt of nothingness up to knighthood using nothing but his illiterate wits, malnourished muscles, and ability to wash himself of filth once in a while.
8 Dark Souls
Gleaming knights, dragons, and undead slaying are all par for the course in Dark Souls (and the Soulsbourne series in general), but a power fantasy this is not. The player starts as barely more than a corpse with a broken stick as a weapon. Even the ability to return from death is shared among the entire population of the undead human race.
Throughout the game, many characters refer to the player as the "Chosen Undead." However, this is at best a self-fulfilling prophecy, as the main character is nothing special and can die to just about any of the game's enemies without the player's skillful intervention.
7 The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion
The protagonist in The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion didn't have it so bad at the start of the game. Somewhere to live (prison cell), plenty to eat (bones), and a chatty neighbor (a bully). Suddenly, a weird old emperor bursts in, thrusting upon them a quest ordained by destiny before taking it in the neck by a zealot assassin and calling it a day.
The player isn't given the role of the chosen one, but they'll be plenty of the chosen one's dirty work. This includes roaming the bowels of Hell to clean out a few enchanted stones for the lousy title, "Champion of Cyrodiil," and some kitsch armor. Worst of all, by the time of The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, after a 200-year time skip, nobody can recollect their name.
6 Age Of Decadence
Set in a low-magic, high-fantasy world inspired by the empire of Rome's fall into ruin, Age of Decadence players may assume that the gritty, often lethal backdrop would offer the chance at some cathartic brawling and deft, sneaky wet work. But no.
Try as the player might to act as the noble hero, Age of Decadence will constantly remind them that they are unimportant in the grand scheme of things by swiftly throwing down any grand (or modest) designs and back to their last save. The road to the top is hard and littered with bodies (most of them the player's).
5 Project Zomboid
With an aesthetic that screams "The Sims 1," it might come as no surprise that none of the characters in Project Zomboid are particularly well-suited to deal with a zombie apocalypse. Besides being turned into just another walking dead member, the main character is also susceptible to loneliness, starvation, and depression.
Thankfully, the player can improve their stats for as long as the game lasts (or as long as they can fend off an infinite swarm of the undead). By the end of a successful (and lucky) run, the main character will find themselves the proud owner of Kentucky's most well-fortified logging camp.
4 Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord
In the Mount & Blade series, "peasant" isn't an insult; it's the player's job description — at least at the start of the game. Real peasants had only one short, miserable life, but thankfully, gamers can try again over and over (which is what a lot of unskilled players will probably end up doing).
As the player rises through the ranks over a sludge of blood and guts, they might even get a chance at royalty, but nothing is guaranteed. Plus, there are already some pretty heavily armed people occupying that position who think that a lowly earthworm should stay wriggling in its dirt.
3 Kenshi
Character customization in Kenshi, a post-post-apocalyptic samurai-themed survive-a-thon, is uncompromisingly wild. Players can choose from aliens, robotic skeletons, or if they're feeling up for a challenge, a limbless torso and head. While each race has a small bonus to skills, what the player can't do when creating their avatar is put a shirt on their back — or give them much else of a fighting chance out in the desert.
In all likelihood, the player will find themselves captured and sold at the highest price (if they manage to avoid starvation or being killed by a roaming mob of brutes). Kenshi is one of the most open-ended and hardcore survival games out there. While it's tough to get going, Kenshi offers an end game in which players can flip settlements and cities and become kingmakers in their own right.
2 Final Fantasy 12
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The third installment in the legendary RPG series is often compared to Star Wars due to its science-fantasy setting, similar themes, and mysticism-meets-beaten-up tech. With this comparison in mind, some fans commented that this would make Vaan, the street-urchin protagonist of Final Fantasy 12, the C3PO of the game.
Rather than being a kid with a secret, twisted destiny to put right his family's mistakes, Vaan is the audience's surrogate to the true protagonists' stories right up until the credits roll. Without a twist on their true identity (as with Final Fantasy 10), Vaan arguably remains a nobody until the game's sequel, Revenant Wings, in which he finally becomes a hero in his own right.
1 Fallout: New Vegas
Unlike in other Fallout titles in which the protagonist is the child of a renowned doctor, or the sole survivor of the old world, the Courier has nothing to their name besides an unoccupied shallow grave and the knowledge that they were a mail delivery expert in their previous life.
By the end, depending on the actions taken by the player, the courier ends up heralding in a new world, sitting on a pile of bottle caps, or just smashing all of Nevada up with an orbital laser. That's as good a reason as any to never shoot the messenger.