History Main / ItsUpToYou

* ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog'', once the franchise made the leap to 3D, plays the trope straight when you have partners following you. Your allies just mimic your movements and they don't bother attacking enemies. It's up to you to do all the attacking.

** ''VideoGame/DoomII'', on the other hand, plays it straighter. There is mention of a few survivors left on Earth after Hell invades, but none of them bother to lend a hand to our intrepid SpaceMarine - ostensibly, anyone else who could fight is either protecting the ship carrying the rest of humanity or already went the way of the other marines on Phobos - leaving him to open the way for their escape vessel ''and'' kick all of Hell's ass by his lonesome.

* Used in ''VideoGame/VampireTheMasqueradeBloodlines''. The player character is a newborn vampire, and yet is apparently the only agent Prince [=LaCroix=] has available. This is, however, thoroughly justified; [=LaCroix=] has only just taken over the city and his control of the older, stronger vampires is precarious at best (and if he orders them to do something and they refuse, it will only weaken his authority further), the player character is still young and weak enough to be easily [[MindControl Dominated]] into doing any tasks he doesn't want to do, and [[spoiler:[=LaCroix=] is actively trying to get the player killed.]] You can actually call him out on this at one point and ask him why he doesn't send theabsolutely terrifying Sheriff to kill a bunch of Sabbat instead of little old you; he'll respond that he needs the Sheriff to guard headquarters. Other quest-givers generally have something at least approaching a justification for not doing whatever it is themselves (squeamish and lacking combat skills, politically dangerous to be directly associated with the problem, etc).

* ''VideoGame/IWasATeenageExocolonist'': Sol's actions will make the difference between the colony surviving and being wiped out, and they're the only one who can save many lives. Some of that is because of their visions giving them information from other lives, but not all; sometimes they're just able to pull off something that the colony's adults can't manage because they're the protagonist. One example of the latter is that both the Engineering storyline and researching xenobotany have events that can't progress without materials found outside the colony, but Sol has to take shifts with the surveyors to obtain them on their own rather than simply ask the people heading out anyway to do so. Once the materials are obtained, they won't be properly exploited unless Sol at least participates in researching t

* ''VideoGame/IWasATeenageExocolonist'': The Sol's actions will make the difference between the colony surviving and being wiped out, and they're the only one who can save many lives. Some of that is because of their visions giving them information from other lives, but not all; sometimes they're just able to pull off something that the colony's adults can't manage because they're the protagonist. One example of the latter is that both studying biology and researching xenobotany have events that can't progress without materials found outside the colony, but Sol has to take shifts with the surveyors to obtain them on their own rather than simply ask the people heading out anyway to do so. Once the materials are obtained, they won't be properly exploited unless Sol at least participates in researching them.

* Exaggerated in ''SDI'' by ''Creator/Cinemaware'', where you play one man and have to personally control the United States' SDI system to shoot down incoming missiles, pilot a space fighter to defend the satellites from incoming Soviet fighters, manage repairs on damaged satellites, and [[spoiler: rescue your CapuletCounterpart from the Soviet station]]. You'd think that the US would at least have a proper team to manage their entire WorldWarIII defense.

*** In ''The Answer'', Aigis is dubbed party leader because she has the Wild Card ability - again, much to Junpei's chagrin.

Essentially, this is the video game equivalent of TheOnlyOne and TheMainCharactersDoEverything. Also see OneManArmy, ApatheticCitizens, and EvilOnlyHasToWinOnce. Players who [[WeDoTheImpossible Do The Impossible]] and beat the odds may lament "DudeWheresMyRespect" due to no recognition. Not to be confused with AllUpToYou, where a character is the only one left to stop the villain period.

** Semi-Averted in the Deluxe version, Explorers of Sky, which adds a playable backstory, missions, and possibly epilogues for all of the guild members. It's all still up to the player, but at least you get to control the [=NPCs=].

** {{Handwave}}d in ''VideoGame/Persona3'' -- the player is chosen to lead the party in the Journey, much to the irritation of one of his companions, because he has the wild card. His friend gets even more frustrated when he begins leading the party over much, much more experienced SEES members. Aigis in The Answer is dubbed party leader for the same reason - again, much to the chagrin of TheLancer from the previous game.
** ''VideoGame/Persona4'' plays it the same way, except that, with the wild card being the only one who could enter the world inside the TV to begin with the others are completely comfortable with you taking point.

* Used in ''VideoGame/VampireTheMasqueradeBloodlines''. The player character is a newborn vampire, and yet is apparently the only agent Prince [=LaCroix=] has available. This is, however, thoroughly justified; [=LaCroix=] has only just taken over the city and his control of the older, stronger vampires is precarious at best, the player character is still young and weak enough to be easily [[MindControl Dominated]] into doing any tasks he doesn't want to do, and [[spoiler:[=LaCroix=] is actively trying to get the player killed.]]

* Played straight in most games within ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda'' series where Link has to do all the work to save the day while other games subvert it. While the trope is justified since Link is the ChosenOne or BecauseDestinySaysSo and there is no other hero who can take on the evil plaguing the land, there have been a few games where Link has received help from other characters that greatly aid him in his quest and would have not succeeded if it wasn't for them, such as [[spoiler: Zelda aiding Link in the final battle against Ganondorf with her Light Arrows in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTheWindWaker'' and ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess'']].

** MASSIVELY subverted in ''VideoGame/HyruleWarriorsAgeOfCalamity'' [[spoiler: in an AlternateTimeline. Every Champion, old and new, fights alongside Link to bring down the Blight Ganons and Calamity. Additionally, the final battle has an army of [=NPCs=] from every race, and the Divine Beasts, and each is able to contribute.]]

* Speaking of Sierra, Roger has a crew, complete with Chief Engineer in the fifth ''VideoGame/{{Space Quest|V The Next Mutation}}'' game, but as Cliffy is a little accident-prone, you have to handle a lot of maintenance.
** Roger ends up with a lot of this. In his first game, it was up to him since he was the only survivor of the Sarian attack on the Arcada, and the only one who smuggled out the shutdown codes. In the second game, he was the only one near the Labion system that wasn't loyal to Vohaul. In the sixth game, no one was interested in investigating Stellar's "death" since [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveConnections the wealthy admiral's widow Sharpei]] was above suspicion. It's lampshaded and justified in the fourth game; the time-traveling LaResistance found Roger and sent him to the BadFuture to stop Vohaul as he was the only one in history who ''did.''

* Played straight in ''[[VideoGame/{{Battlefield}} Battlefield 1942]]'', to the point that it was pretty much the only complaint reviewers had. But it was ''so much worse'' in ''Battlefield Vietnam'', it seemed like a parody. While the player was supposedly as good as anyone else, in single-player mode, it was possible to single-handedly capture the enemy's main base, but your own bases would fall like dominoes as your bot teammates failed to hold the line.

* Justified in ''VideoGame/TheSecretWorld.'' Though it's established that there are plenty of magical specialists, supernatural beings, and BadassNormal types who are more experienced than you, quest-givers entrust you with just about everything because a) you're [[ResurrectiveImmortality effectively invincible]] and b) you're immune to [[MysticalPlague the Filth]], unlike just about everyone else. Plus, it's also established that your faction of choice has sent other agents besides you into the field - I mean, [[GameplayAndStoryIntegration what do you think all those other players are up to]]?

* ''VideoGame/MarioPartyDS'': The only way to advance in the Story Mode is if you, the player, are the winner of the series's signature battles royale that make up much of the chapters. If one of the CPU players is the winner, a cutscene plays where the character goes off to fight the boss of the chapter...[[CurbStompBattle only to fail miserably]], followed by a message that reads something along the lines of: "(Character) could not defeat (Boss)! Only you can defeat (Boss)!" There's a slight humor factor in watching Mario or Luigi going off to fight Bowser only to ''[[EpicFail lose]]'' because either Toad or Waluigi are the only ones allowed to fight Bowser and actually win.

** Frustratingly blatant in the [[VideoGame/MassEffect3 the third game]], where numerous lore tidbits indicate that ''everyone'' from the ramshackle quarians to the high-tech salarians have access to the stealth-tech that used to make the Normandy the only ship capable of undertaking certain missions. Every faction also has special forces teams as capable as Shepard's, [[GameplayAndStoryIntegration in the form of, among others, the multiplayer teams that can be added to the war assets in single-player mode.]] Despite this, everyone from the krogan to the quarians to the asari are content to just let you do all the work in various decisive encounters, even if the task of clearing out a few dozen enemy combatants or pointing a laser designator at a target could've been done by just about any other capable special forces team in the galaxy by that point.

* Just about EVERY main series ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' game features this-- why is it that it's always a kid with level 20 Pokémon that saves an area from trouble while there are plenty of adults with Level 25 Pokémon just a few steps down the road and, of course, Gym Leaders and the Elite Four?
** Speaking of the Elite Four, this was averted once in ''VideoGame/PokemonGoldAndSilver'', as Lance of the group in question shows up at the same time as you to clear a power plant of Team Rocket members. A good "you take that one, I'll take this one" combined effort commences.
** This is also averted in ''VideoGame/PokemonSwordAndShield'', the champion Leon deals with most of the serious problems himself and Team Yell, the 'evil' team, is more a nuisance than a threat.

** Not to mention Command's [[DisproportionateRetribution over-the-top reactions]] to failing mission objectives. For instance, in one mission a single fighter wing (4 fighters, including yourself) has to defend a Hecate-class destroyer, which is not only the size of a mountain but has all the fighting capability of a hunk of cheese. Against wave upon wave of Shivan bombers, as well as a Moloch-class corvette. In a vision-obscuring nebula. If you fail, Command yells at you, strips you of your wings, and [[ReassignedToAntarctica consigns you to cargo-hauling in a dead-end system for the rest of your days]]. Damn.

* Used in Rockstar's ''VideoGame/RedDeadRedemption'', where the whole main plot is your personal mission to kill your old companions, but on those missions where you have allies (like the assault on Fort Mercer or Escalera), they are useful but not so much that you aren't essential to victory, and lampshaded when John bitches to the government agents about how stupid it is to send two men into a gang hide-out by themselves, even though you've pretty much been doing exactly that since the start. [[spoiler:Considering the ending clearly indicates Ross wants John to just die, sending John on missions alone against ridiculous odds may even be a UriahGambit that makes sense to do from Ross' perspective.]]

* Also semi-averted in ''VideoGame/MaxPayne2'' with missions which are played from Max's perspective and then switch to Mona's, showing what she was doing at the same time to help Max perform his jobs. The original ''Max Payne'' lampshades his uniqueness though by pointing out that only he in the game world has the ability to slow down time, but offers no explanation at all for it.
** ''Max Payne 2'' notably fails to address why, given what happened last time Max went on the run from the police but was proven right, people are still unwilling to trust him. A non-game example of this is on ''[[Series/TwentyFour 24]]'', where after seven seasons of Bauer's crazy theories and maverick tactics generally being proven to be a 100% reliable course of action, you'd think his superiors would actually listen to him and not keep screwing him over.
*** Well, in this case, [[spoiler: Max ''did'' kill Winterson.]] And even before that, his behavior was increasingly erratic. And in the first game, he wasn't so much "proven right" as "[[spoiler:had the charges taken care of by mysterious and powerful connections]]".

* ''VideoGame/HalfLife1''. Random young brunette tech with a crowbar and bad eyesight turns out to be a more effective warrior and scientist than any number of spec-ops forces, particle physicists, or camo-suited assassins. Taken to extremes in ''VideoGame/HalfLife2'' when most of the remaining human race has heard of your badassery and refuse to do anything without your explicit approval, particularly in the last quarter or so of the game. However, [=HL2=] does attempt to retcon your importance in the first game by suggesting you were an equal and respected member of the science team, which definitely isn't how you were originally treated.
** Partially justified by Gordon having possibly the only functioning suit of PowerArmour in the world, although the game never makes it clear why nobody else can wear it, given that it doesn't actually belong to him as such and it's clearly not even the only suit (there's clearly spaces for two more next to the one you put on, and you later find a corpse or two in [[spoiler:Xen]] wearing them).
** And lampshaded at the same time. At one point, you can hear Breen dressing down his soldiers, reminding them that you're not a supersoldier, just an ordinary man and a mediocre engineer who had barely even earned the distinction of what his ''actual'' career path was intended to be before the Black Mesa incident happened.

* ''Franchise/AceAttorney'': Even though Phoenix Wright is officially only a defense attorney, he's still responsible for investigating the crimes himself. An odd case in that while there are actual detectives, forensics experts, and so forth, they usually seem to work only for the prosecution, and will often outright interfere with your own investigation and not inform you about evidence or witnesses. On the defense side, it's usually just the player, the defendant, and your assistant. This is of course because investigating the crime [[RuleOfFun is a lot more fun]] than the loads of paperwork a lawyer would actually be doing between trial sessions.

In shooters, this tends to occur with {{Sniping Mission}}s, in which your character is tasked with using a sniper rifle to kill or [[EscortMission protect]] someone, despite the fact that your character has never been acknowledged as a sniper or marksman until now. NPC allies tend to be struck with ArtificialStupidity such that they are incapable of defeating anything but the most basic {{Mook}} even when armed with the same weapons as the player.

Similarly, in many [=RPGs=], the main character will be designated to lead the party for no other reason than that he or she is the player's avatar; no matter how much stronger, more important, more intelligent or more experienced the other party members are. Even if this doesn't occur to the character, the group the character is part of frequently falls victim to this trope instead. Anyone trying to beat the BigBad who ''isn't'' part of the main party will fail, and at best have to be rescued. Equally likely is the character [[SenselessSacrifice will simply die]] and give the player greater reason to kill the BigBad. It may be shown later that the side character "weakened" the boss if the programmers are trying to deliver AnAesop about ThePowerOfFriendship.

Of course, this is generally forgivable if your character is a SuperHero or otherwise possesses extraordinary abilities that would warrant his increased involvement, but it can be particularly jarring to one's SuspensionOfDisbelief when [[GameplayAndStorySegregation the plot acts]] as if you and your AI comrades are of equal skill (such as in most warfare {{First Person Shooter}}s). One lazy but occasionally effective way to justify this is to have all your allies out doing other missions, conveniently far away from you, but sometimes the game doesn't even ''try''.

Note the relationship with RuleOfFun; the player gets to do these things so there'll be more in the game, but the story suffers by focusing all the action on one character.

Essentially, this is the video game equivalent of TheOnlyOne and TheMainCharactersDoEverything. Also see OneManArmy, ApatheticCitizens, and EvilOnlyHasToWinOnce. Players who [[WeDoTheImpossible Do The Impossible]] and beat the odds may lament "DudeWheresMyRespect" due to no recognition. Not to be confused with AllUpToYou, where a character is the only one left to stop the villain.

* The only way to advance in the story mode of ''VideoGame/MarioParty DS'' is if you, the player, are the winner of the series's signature battles royale that make up much of the chapters. If one of the CPU players is the winner, a cutscene plays where the character goes off to fight the boss of the chapter...[[CurbStompBattle only to fail miserably]], followed by a message that reads something along the lines of: "(Character) could not defeat (Boss)! Only you can defeat (Boss)!" There's a slight humor factor in watching Mario or Luigi going off to fight Bowser only to ''[[EpicFail lose]]'' because either Toad or Waluigi are the only ones allowed to fight Bowser and actually win.

** In the ''VideoGame/GhostRecon: Advanced Warfighter'' games, the player controls only Captain Mitchell. Although there are several infiltration/recon missions where he must go solo, the majority of the game provides him with up to three specialized "Ghost" units --ranging from heavy artillery, medic, sniper, and infantry. These units can turn the most difficult missions into [[CurbStompBattle cakewalks]], but only if the player utilizes the Ghosts effectively, instead of leaving them behind.

* In ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolidPeaceWalker'' and ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolidV'', despite being the leader of an entire private army, Big Boss/Snake still does most of the important missions by himself (or with a singular buddy). Even during missions where the objective doesn't require stealth (such as Episode 9 of ''The Phantom Pain''), Big Boss never brings any extra soldiers to back him up. This gets silly when Metal Gears are involved, as Big Boss has to fight an entire HumongousMecha by himself with his army at best giving air support. On a logistical level, Diamond Dogs can't seem to source military hardware like mortars and have to rely on Boss stealing them from the actual army.

* In ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolidPeaceWalker'' and ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolidV'', despite being the leader of an entire private army, Big Boss/Snake still does most of the important missions by himself (or with a singular buddy). Even during missions where the objective doesn't require stealth (such as Episode 9 of ''The Phantom Pain''), Big Boss never brings any extra soldiers to back him up. This gets silly when Metal Gears are involved, as Big Boss has to fight an entire HumongousMecha by himself with his army at best giving air support. On a logistical level, Diamond Dogs can't seem to source their military hardware like mortars and have to rely on Boss stealing them from the actual army.

* In ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolidPeaceWalker'' and ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolidV'', despite being the leader of an entire private army, Big Boss/Snake still does most of the important missions by himself (or with a singular buddy). Even during missions where the objective doesn't require stealth (such as Episode 9 of ''The Phantom Pain''), Big Boss never brings any extra soldiers to back him up. This gets silly when Metal Gears are involved, as Big Boss has to fight an entire HumongousMecha by himself with his army at best giving air support. On a logistical level, Diamond Dogs can't seem to source their own military hardware and have to rely on Boss stealing them from the actual army.

* In ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolidPeaceWalker'' and ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolidV'', despite being the leader of an entire private army, Big Boss/Snake still does most of the important missions by himself (or with a singular buddy). Even during missions where the objective doesn't require stealth (such as Episode 9 of ''The Phantom Pain''), Big Boss never brings any extra soldiers to back him up. This gets silly when Metal Gears are involved, as Big Boss has to fight an entire HumongousMecha by himself with his army at best giving air support.

* ''VideoGame/ValkyriaChronicles''. Player-controlled squad 7 are drafted militia. If you think the trained army or any of the other militia squads from all over the country are the ones who are going to be winning the important battles, defeating the enemy armies, stopping the invasion, or indeed do ''anything'' useful without your help, you've got another thing coming.

* Most games in the ''VideoGame/HarvestMoon'' series have this as the central theme: either you've been given a task by the Harvest Goddess or you need to save the Harvest Goddess from something. ''Island of Happiness'' takes this UpToEleven: Literally every bit of development on the island is spurred on by your productivity or paid for by you directly (road and bridge repair). And characters will leave the island if you ignore them for long enough, no matter what their connection to anything or anyone else is (temporarily, but still).

* Telltale's ''VideoGame/TheWalkingDead: Season 2''. The amount of times a party of grown adults defers to an eleven-year-old girl to take charge in dangerous and complicated situations is downright comical. {{Justified|Trope}} ''occasionally'' in instances where Clementine is best suited to the task at hand (she is the smallest and sneakiest person in the group), but not always, and when it isn't, this trope is absolutely JustForFun/{{egregious}}. This is lampshaded by Clementine at various times, who can react with a dejected but accepting "Why does it always have to be me" reaction.

** Then again... The first part of a particular mission involves rescuing SSgt. Griggs, both out of a "no man left behind" mentality and also due to the fact that Griggs supposedly has the C4 required to blow up an electricity pylon. Who has to actually plant the C4 on the pylon? Hint: Not Griggs.