History Main / PlayerAndProtagonistIntegration

* ''VideoGame/BravelyDefaul'' and it's sequel, ''VideoGame/BravelySecond'', has one of the Advisor type which is played seriously. Namely, [[spoiler:the Players themselves who are playing the games in real life are acknowledged as part of the overarching Bravely Default universe as "The guiding one". While the first game didn't have the characters of Luxendarc learning of their existence, this becomes a plot point in ''VideoGame/BravelySecond'' where your presence is not only acknowledged, the BigBad of ''VideoGame/BravelySecond'' also called the real life Players out for [[WhatTheHellPlayer potentially controlling the heroes for their amusement]] in their PlayerPunch during the FinalBoss fight, and force them to delete their saves until Yew stepped in to stop the BigBad from trying to break the guiding one, encouraging them to fight again.]]

* ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolidVThePhantomPain'' has this come up in the game's true ending: [[spoiler:At the beginning of the game, it appears as though the player is Big Boss, and they are preparing to undergo facial reconstruction surgery to hide their identity before the forces of XOF hunt them down, which leads to a rudimentary character creation system where players make their character, name them, and give them a birthday (which is actually celebrated in-game if you play on your birthday) before things go pair-shaped and the story begins. The true final mission, "The Man Who Sold The World", reveals that what ''actually'' happened is that the character you created at the beginning of the game -- a medic from Militaires Sans Frontières who took the brunt of a bomb blast that nearly killed the real Big Boss -- underwent facial reconstruction and hypnotherapy to become Big Boss's body double, while the real Big Boss took your passport -- which has your name and birthday from the beginning of the game -- and went into hiding. The entire time you were playing the game, you were playing as yourself pretending to be Big Boss, as well as being [[CanonCharacterAllAlong the "Big Boss" that would die at the hands of Solid Snake in the original]] ''[[VideoGame/MetalGear1 Metal Gear]]''.]]

* ''VideoGame/TheBureauXCOMDeclassified'' at first has the player controlling the protagonist, William Carter, in a seemingly straight-up Controller example. [[spoiler:Only you're not really controlling him, but an Ethereal who controls him; strange abilities the player has, like Mind Control, actually belong to the Ethereal. Later Carter breaks free of the control, and the Ethereal has to find a new host, who will be the protagonist for the final mission]].

* ''VideoGame/{{Deltarune}}'', in contrast to ''Undertale'', almost immediately makes it clear that [[spoiler:you, the player, and Kris, the player character, are separate entities]]. The game starts with TheVoice helping you create an avatar [[BaitAndSwitch that immediately get discarded]] [[spoiler: and you take the role of the SOUL.]]

* In the sapphic werewolf interactive novel ''{{VideoGame/Moonrise}}'', there's a sliding scale of Advisor to Controller to an Adventurer is You. The player comes to possesses the body of the protagonist: they are the "wolf" or "spirit" that has been bitten into an ordinary medical student. During the first few chapters, the narration will speak directly to the player, often humorously, but gradually fades out as the player assumes control. An ongoing conflict of the game is whether the player will choose to continue the medical student's relationships and goals, or abandon them entirely.

** The scale continued to slide further and further as the story continued onward, by the time of later expansions, the Protagonist is very clearly their own person with their own thoughts, emotions and outlooks and has a very clear arc of CharacterDevelopment and HiddenDepths, bouncing the player back and forth between AnAdventurerIsYou and the Commander.

Note that both ends of the scale essentially consist of the player acting as themself- the difference is where the role of 'protagonist' lies, either with the player or with another in-game character. Which, [[DisorganisedOutlineSpeech come to think of it]], makes it less of a sliding scale and more a circle.

* Near the end of ''VideoGame/{{Mother 3}}'', the player finds out that the seemingly-basic goal they've been trying to accomplish, saving the world from destruction at the hands of the BigBad, [[spoiler:is impossible. And it's not because of anything the BigBad did, but because of the nature of the world itself: the game is revealed to take place AfterTheEnd, and the human race just [[DepopulationBomb doesn't have enough people left in it]] to survive more than a few generations]]. To complicate things further, there's the pulling of the needles, which is said to awaken a Dark Dragon who will obey the wishes of the puller... or something like that. [[spoiler:When Lucas goes to pull the final needle, the player selecting "No" doesn't stop him from doing it, and the Dark Dragon destroys the world, making one wonder if they were given false information or if that ''was'' Lucas' wish - and given his status as a HeroicMime you never get to know what he was thinking]].

* Both ''VisualNovel/YouAndMeAndHer'' and ''VisualNovel/DokiDokiLiteratureClub'' mess with this trope in similar ways. [[spoiler: Both games start out with controller-type protagonists, until eventually one of the girls turns out to be a {{Yandere}} with MediumAwareness and begins addressing the player directly. In the former, the player character continues to be their own character at this point, wondering who the girl is talking to, while in the latter the player character, already continuously failing to notice various glitching and out-of-character actions occurring around him because they're not supposed to be part of the narrative, basically ceases to exist as a character once the girl starts addressing the player directly.]]

* Unless a player provides the name for the character they're playing as in ''VideoGame/AIDungeon2'', the AI will always refer to the player character as 'you'.

* In the main ''Roleplay/DestroyTheGodmodder'' games, the players are by default controlling their real-life ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'' accounts, unless they create their own in-universe main characters, in which case the players play as 'those' character's ''Minecraft'' avatars. This also applies to spinoff [=DTG=] games taking place in other video game or forum-based universes such as ''VideoGame/{{Terraria}}'' and Wiki/TVTropes. The two notable exceptions are the original MSPA session and its upcoming reboot, in which the players usually are hapless [[Webcomic/{{Homestuck}} Sburb players]] or multiversal travelers, with no distinction between avatar and controller.

** Played with further when it's revealed that the kids are issued commands from an in-universe terminal manned by the Exiles... Who the audience then issues commands to, at several points advising a character advising a character.

* In a similar fashion to the above ''Franchise/FireEmblem'' example, the first ''[[VideoGame/NintendoWars Advance Wars]]'' game on the Gameboy Advance puts the player into the role of advisor for whichever [=CO(s)=] are in command, and occasionally has the characters refer to you directly in the campaign mode. Again, this feature was never used again for the sequels.