Naming Your Character In RPGs?

Thanks to InsertCredit for their feature discussing the player-inputted choice for character names in videogames. They discuss some of the joys of DIY character naming ("Some people will buy an RPG, only to name the characters after their favorite profane words"), as well some more unlikely pleasures ("I became obsessed with buying used Final Fantasy VI cartridges for 100 yen at a certain game shop in Akihabara, just to see what all the characters had been named.") Taking a lead from this distinctly unconventional article, what names have Slashdot Games readers entered for characters in their favorite RPGs, and why?

Comments

So here we go. Before article gets /.ed...

[Anonymous Coward]

Feature: notes from FF Dog #1: on naming characters in videogames
by tim rogers
07092003

One thing I've observed on any number of forums about videogames is that people can't stop arguing about what makes an "RPG" an "RPG." Some are clever enough to define the name of the genre: "RPG means 'Role-Playing Game' -- an RPG is a game where you play a role." Some people are quick to shoot this down, with much typing of words. Some people quote the significance of naming a character in a pen-and-paper RPG, and having never played any of those, I don't always get what they're driving at. I do know, however, that in the past fourteen days, seven readers of this very website have emailed me, asking for advice on naming a "badass samurai" for their "new campaign." I guess it's that time of the year.

I get lots of weird questions from the people of the internet, and I won't get into most of them. I guess it's best to start this by saying that someone asked me the other day what an RPG was to me, and I said I wasn't really sure. I thought this over while replaying Final Fantasy IV for my Project FF Dog feature, in which we named the hero of the quest "FF Dog" and the summoner, Rydia, "j00dy."

It's like this: An RPG is a game where I name the main character, and/or I don't ever think to change the main character's name.

Supporting evidence of my belief: in Konami's Cybernator for Super Nintendo, I'm offered the choice to change my mecha pilot's name from the options menu. I change it, sometimes. I do not, however, care what his name is. Sure, it's fun to see people call him "Billy" in the cut scenes. That doesn't mean I really, honestly, care. Therefore, Cybernator is not an RPG.

In an RPG, I think, the decision of a character's name should fill me with a kind of anxiety. I decided this today when FF Dog mourned the death of the Sage Tellah by screaming out in vain: "No! g00zer!" Did I really want to name Tellah "g00zer"? Was this not too silly? What did this say about me, or about videogames?

I didn't really come to any conclusion -- just that RPGs sure have changed.

If you were enough of a loser to play Ultima: Exodus on your NES (hey, I was), you know that pretty much the greatest coolism that game offered the player -- aside from the permission to kill any random townsperson -- was the joy of seeing whatever four-letter names you chose for your characters on the sidebar during a battle.

The original Dragon Quest ramped up the level of coolness -- here you were as one lone man on a quest to save a princess and kill a couple of dragons, and the descendent of a hero, no less, and the only name he had was the name you chose. This guy who, in the world of the game, was someone: he bore the name you gave him. That alone kept me playing.

When Dragon Quest II rolled around, we had three heroes, each of them royalty of their respective kingdoms, all of them distantly related to the guy you played in the first one.

The original Final Fantasy took a step in some ambiguous direction for the significance of character-naming: here you were as four heroes from another time period, each of you carrying a Crystal, each of you having a character class and a name of your choosing. In a recent experience of the Final Fantasy Origins edition, I played with a party full of Doug, Billy, FF Dog, and Jules, each one named after I person I, in some form or another, know. Yet I felt this distance between the game and myself: when the king of Cornelia first met my group, he called us by our team name: "Light Warriors." Never once was FF Dog or Billy referred to by name. I felt like I had been tricked into playing, not that I was playing by my own will. When I die in my Gameboy Color edition of Dragon Warrior I, the king wakes me with the words, "Billy! You died!" This urges me to play on more than naming a sexy Red Wizard "Tim" ever could.

Final Fantasy II begins with a plea for the player to name the four main characters. Or, rather, rename -- the characters all ha

Re:That is true.

[ginbot462]

Apparently, Mensa people don't have site references ever... A potential one Origins of Assassin