No Social Skills / Video Games

Characters with No Social Skills in Video Games.

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• Yuuki Terumi from BlazBlue is a crass, crude, rude, loud and extremely self-absorbed Politically Incorrect Villain who's also pretty outspoken about his rather controversial goals. All of this kinda, sorta, totally gets in the way of his attempts to be a Manipulative Bastard, but he's also aware enough of his flaw that he has an artificial human made for him that he then takes Demonic Possession of, allowing the construct to speak for him while filtering out most of his unpleasantries.
• The Silencers from the Crusader games may like this. Depending on which version of their creation and training is true, they may be either taken from their parents in their youth and trained in a completely isolated facility or grown in vats, and then raised and trained in a completely isolated facility.
• Victor von Gerdenheim, of the Darkstalkers series of fighting games, is a Frankenstein's Monster who was barely raised at all before the Doctor's untimely death. Victor is so unacquainted with the very concept of death that he takes his "father"'s unmoving silence to be disappointment, and is extremely perplexed at his "sister" Emily's refusal to wake up. In the comics, Victor and Emily both mistake the Professor's lack of movement and silence as sleeping, then after a few months feel it must be sickness.
• Rozalin from Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories, due to her being raised in complete isolation from the real world. Which was intentional on the part of the Big Bad so she would remain a social idiot completely devoted to him for her entire life.
• Dragon Age:
  • Morrigan of Dragon Age: Origins was raised alone in a swamp by her mother Flemeth the Witch of the Wilds. Flemeth taught her two things: 1) Shapeshifting, and 2) that she could trust nobody except herself in order to make it easier for Flemeth to steal Morrigan's body. Small wonder Morrigan isn't very good with people (to put it lightly).
    • If you earn high approval with Morrigan as a male character but do not romance her, she will comment that she literally did not know it was possible to befriend a man.
  • Dragon Age II:
    • Merrill in is a Dalish elf with absolutely no experience with humans. She is somewhat socially inept among her own people, but among humans with no grasp of concepts like 'laws' she has a lot of trouble. It doesn't help that she's casually using Blood Magic.
    • Fenris of the same game spent the entirety of his life, as far as he remembers, as a slave to one of the horrifically evil Tevinter Magisters and only recently escaped. As such, he has difficulty relating to other people at best, plus a lot of rage issues, especially with mages. This is most evident with his often hostile interactions with Merrill.
  • Cole from Dragon Age: Inquisition is a spirit-like entity that spent most of his existence being unable to interact with others. Most people who talk with him forget about him shortly after, with only vague recollections of speaking to someone. Small wonder that he lacks understanding of social norms, like not blurting out people's hidden hurts and traumas in an awkward attempt at helping them.
• Ensemble Stars!:
  • Souma was raised in a family that lives as if it were still the Edo period and he hasn't quite acclimated to modern-day Japanese life - for example, he doesn't seem to grasp that nowadays, it is not considered acceptable to take out a sword and threaten someone with it if they offend you. Keito does try to keep him in check, though. In a less obvious way, he also tends to assume social rules that no longer exist, particularly when it comes to the 'masters' he swears loyalty to, making him quite prone to exploitation, which unfortunately happened the previous year.
  • Kanata had an even stranger upbringing - he was raised to believe he was a literal God of the Ocean, complete with fawning worshippers. This left him very separated from ordinary people - for example, until he was fifteen he didn't realise that all people have names. While that's in his past now, he still has almost zero experience interacting with people as an ordinary guy and so is a massive Cloud Cuckoo Lander that nobody else really fully understands.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Played with by Cloud in Final Fantasy VII Remake. At first, he talks like an edgy coolguy hero, but it soon becomes apparent that his rudeness is an awkward attempt to push people away to protect himself while also impressing them, and that in real emotional or romantic situations he's hopeless. However, other scenes in the game make it clear his social skills are in some ways very good - it's just that he exploits them to play a heel instead, in order to inspire positive changes in people. This can be seen in the way he starts insisting on extortionate payments to return a key, in a scene that's intended to be read as Cloud encouraging the man to take care of his own problems, and also in him riling up Gwen of the Neighbourhood Watch into organising her community by demonstrating that she can't rely on mercenaries to be on their side.
  • Zig-zagged with Vincent in Final Fantasy VII. In the original game he comes off as initially cold and isn't much of a talker, but seems kinder when the player gets to know him. He is just as taciturn in his spin off game Dirge of Cerberus, with flashbacks suggesting that while he used to be shy and bad at speaking his mind at critical moments, it was his long sleep in a coffin and various traumas that left him functionally depressed and much less inclined to talk outside of when he deems it necessary.
  • Several of the main cast members of Final Fantasy VIII spent at least part of their childhoods in the training academy of a mercenary company. The ones who enrolled around the age of ten or so got away with relatively mild emotional issues, but Squall, who enrolled at about the age of five or six, was given no help getting through his separation trauma, and immediately began a form of training which eroded his long-term memory, might as well have been Raised by Wolves. Atypically for the trope, Squall is perfectly aware (and frankly doesn't care) that he's not behaving according to social norms...but, having never bothered to learn how to act like a normal human being, when he tries, he's generally horrible at it.
  • The Warrior of Light from Dissidia Final Fantasy is a downplayed example. All of the other characters have identifiable personalities, but the Warrior of Light seems to have no personality or ability to interact with the other characters outside of a grandiose heroism, and comes across as rather robotic. Since he has no memory of a life before the war, being that he was a manikin created during the cycles, this is less than surprising.
• Fire Emblem:
  • Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance: Ike. He's a common mercenary raised by his father Greil to be honest and treat others equally, which is all very good until he arrives at Begnion with its divided classes and strict customs. He ultimately ends up yelling at their beloved apostle before the entire senate without even knowing the gravity of his actions. Fortunately his Raised by Wolves nature makes him one of the few beorc to gain the laguz's trust.
  • Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade: Lyn is this. Being the daughter of a Lorca chieftain and a Lycian princess, she found herself at quite the loss after meeting her Lycian grandfather and staying with him in court, and worries that she'll be ostracized in part due to her lack of experience at the political game. Canas also has trouble with social skills, what with not bothering to introduce himself before he starts gushing over meeting Pent and, in his recruitment, going off on a tangent that dark magic is a biased term before getting back on track.
  • Fire Emblem: Three Houses gives us Bernadetta and Marianne, who both have trouble talking to people, though for opposing reasons: Bernadetta's abusive upbringing left her emotionally stunted and while she desperately wants to make friends, her abysmal self-esteem has her believing that nobody would want to be friends with her. Marianne meanwhile prefers to be left alone and worries that any potential friends might come to harm, as a result of having a different Crest from the rest of the cast who possess one.
• Genshin Impact:
  • Due to both her shyness and her focus towards her alchemy work, Sucrose struggles with interactions with others. Her character story mentions that she would probably understand more about Diona's Cat Girl traits if she just asks the bartender directly and nicely, but she would rather do what she does best: observing from a distance. She also says that this makes interacting with Kaeya awkward.
  She finds the discipline of social interaction to be far more difficult to master than that of alchemy.
  • Xiao, as an Adeptus who usually shuns human interactions as much as possible frequently voices his difficulties understanding human customs, emotions and motives, making him talk as little as possible and being brutally honest when he does.
• God of War: Kratos, deicidal berserker that he is, really doesn't know how to interact with people he isn't trying to kill. This is most noticeable in the Norse games, where Kratos is trying not to kill everyone he meets, but has a hard time of it because he has so little experience interacting normally with people.
• Rell of League of Legends was sold off by her parents and raised as a Child Soldier experiment in a brutal Noxian/Black Rose facility. Not surprisingly, this has left her social skills a tad stunted. With her mood seeming to consist of 1 of 2 things: Bloodthirsty anger at any Noxian or Black Rose member she can find, and bumbling attempts at flirting with champs she finds cute.
• A Running Gag in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is how completely and utterly tone-deaf the Gerudo are when it comes to talking to men. Being a One Gender Warrior Race whose town outright forbids men to enter, and who live in a harsh desert far away from where most people are willing to travel, they are fiercely brave and talented warriors in combat but fall completely and utterly to pieces when it comes time to try and flirt with a guy. One can be found training on a dummy and insists it's practicing for a job when caught, they have a class on how to talk to men that gives hilariously bad advice, and the ones that attempt to flirt with Link outside of town will barely be able to speak and do little more than recite bad pick-up lines.
• At one point in Neverwinter Nights 2, Duncan comments to the PC that the latter's foster father Daeghun is so inept at dealing with such things as "people" and "emotions" that the PC might have been better off if he/she had been Raised by Wolves. In this case the trope may or may not apply to the PC, who adhere to it depending on background choices such as "Wild Child" or subvert it with other, more socially adept ones that the player can choose during character creation, but without a doubt applies to Daeghun.
• The Players in Magicka grew up in an isolationist School of Magick supposed to keep wizards away from sane people. Their lack of ANY kind of social skills expresses itself in them being silent protagonists, which causes three of the Boss fights when they are unable to mention that Vlad sent them with an errant and instead slaughter their way through the servants of their Allies. Vlad even complains about it.
• Mass Effect: Andromeda: Alec Ryder is one of Earth's first N7s, a One-Man Army with the skills to homebrew his own AI... and the social skills of a particularly dead rock. Even those closest to him admit he's a "prickly bastard", making it all the more astounding he managed to marry and have kids. According to the story his wife told their daughter, she thought Alec's fumbling was adorable.
• The Outer Worlds: Downplayed. Sanjar is an extremely Nice Guy, and can make pretty much anyone come around to his line of thinking after a few minutes one-on-one, but he doesn't have the raw charisma or skills necessary to be an effective leader.
• Persona:
  • Persona 3: It's never exactly clear how Elizabeth was raised, but she has no idea how the world outside the Velvet Room functions when you take her out on dates in FES. Among other things, she thinks you're supposed to kill the people on a "Wanted!" Poster, believes a manhole is a pitfall trap, and gets trapped inside a jungle gym when she tries to play on it. Her younger brother Theodore in Persona 3 Portable is similarly clueless; it's indicated that neither sibling is human to begin with, considering that Theo can drink a can of machine oil with no ill effects and tell to the degree the temperature of water by dipping his hand in it. In contrast, their eldest sister Margaret in Persona 4 seems well aware of how the world works, although she only leaves the Velvet Room once, to speak to the protagonist in private (whether her savviness is due to greater experience with the world or whether Elizabeth and Theodore are simply quirky by nature is left open to Wild Mass Guessing).
  • Persona 5: Futaba Sakura (appropriately enough, the Hermit Arcana) is a recovering Hikikomori who's been relying solely on the Internet for any socialization while also healing from depression. As such, she's awkward and withdrawn around most people, and tends to be incredibly tactless whenever she does try to socialize. As such, she relies alot on Joker (even hiding behind him when dealing with new people) and to a lesser extent, the rest of the Phanton Thieves to help her. Her Confidant revolves around her learning to be a part of society again, such as doing things on her own and reconnecting/saving an old friend. Interestingly enough, we hear from her adopted father Sojiro that her mother was actually similar to Futuba.
  • Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth: Hikari, the main OC of the game is outright stated to be not being able to properly communicate with people, as she simply shuts down when seeing people and can't talk directly to them at all, only using Nagi as a medium. It turns out that beforehand her entire childhood was consisted of Jerkasses emotionally abusing her for being different, and she couldn't get her message clear to such a situation, leaving her an easy target to be emotionally manipulated by them. Even when socizalizing with the party, she only talks about movies when they are bought up and nothing else. However, it does make it endearing when she begins opening up to them bit by bit (a notable example is a mission where she has to find a prized possession and has interact positively with Junpei, Yosuke and Ryuji.)
  • On the whole, characters whose Personas are aligned with the Emperor Arcana tend to be socially lacking. This is pretty ironic since the major traits of the Emperor tarot card are excelling as a leader, wisdom, and fatherly/brotherly behavior. The sole exception thus far is the protagonist of the original Persona, who was a Heroic Mime in his game and was socially competent in his spinoff appearances.
    • Persona 3: Akihiko Sanada. As a result of his misguided need for power, his only real relationships are a professional one with Mitsuru and a heavily strained friendship with childhood friend Shinjiro; the latter in particular is killed late in the game, and due to a lack of communication on both their parts, their friendship never really recovered before then. As the Yakushima trip and early game interaction shows, he's aloof, completely oblivious to both his popularity in school and to the girls who fawn over him, and when casual conversation comes up, he'll either be the game's Exposition Fairy or talk about obscure fitness facts. The PSP re-release has a new social link that the female protagonist can get with him, and he gets really tongue-tied around her, which escalates if you choose him to be her Love Interest.
    • Persona 4: Kanji Tatsumi, albeit not nearly as much as the others on this list. His extremely brutish personality is a facade hiding deeply-rooted insecurities over his talent for handicrafts; said talent made him a bully magnet and, to a lesser extent, made him question his sexuality, especially since he has a crush on Naoto. He's very much aware that his behavior is off-putting, but he has a hard time dropping it and tends to either accidentally scare people off or be on the wrong end of his friends' jokes.
    • Persona 5: Yusuke Kitagawa, which can be partially attributed to his upbringing — he had been raised by his elderly mentor, an artist named Madarame, since the age of three, and said mentor is very old-fashioned in many respects alongside being very abusive. Art is pretty much one of the only things on Yusuke's mind, to the point that he initially stays with the Phantom Thieves not necessarily to help others, but because the other world they raid will provide new subjects for him to paint. He has no tact in public, tends to be insensitive to others, and some of his antics when painting tends to scare off other people. Not surprisingly, he and the above-mentioned Futaba tend to bicker whenever they're around each other yet hilariously enough, he was the first to get to interact with them extensively as a result.
• Pokémon:
  • N Harmonia from Pokémon Black and White is like this due to being raised in nearly complete isolation from other people.
  • New Pokémon Snap: Professor Mirror is so devoted to his research that he's ignorant of things that are obvious to anyone with half a brain unless he's read about them in a scientific study, like the concept that Pokemon can tell when their trainers love them and return that love.
• Lucia from Shadow Hearts: Covenant has a tendency to say awkwardly rude things without understanding how they'll affect people. It's not so much a matter of how she was raised (she's actually quite good at Cold Reading) as her having the IQ of a sock monkey.
• In Shop Heroes, Nya is rather odd in her interactions with you — an unsuccessful attempt at complementing her causes her to talk about your disturbing aura, and even a successful compliment still causes her to call you strange.
• Fina from Skies of Arcadia fits this perfectly, having no concept of things like shopping. Her big brother, Ramirez, ends up suffering some pretty tragic consequences due to his similar upbringing.
• Béluga of Solatorobo has such poor social skills that even just asking the locals simple questions ends up with them all mad at him. However, when interacting with his teammates, he doesn't seem all that awkward. Once he does his Heel–Face Turn, he decides to leave missions involving socialization to Red and Elh.
• Daryl Whitelaw of Super Daryl Deluxe never speaks, almost never changes his facial expression, and does not use body language. People asking him direct questions and receiving no response at all is a Running Gag.
• A few characters from Super Robot Wars have shades of this, especially Artificial Human Lamia Loveless. In a milder example, Ascended Fanboy Ryusei is occasionally shown to have trouble getting his head around things that don't involve Humongous Mecha, but he might just be an aspie.
• In Tales of Legendia, Jay was raised by a ninja, and then hundreds of talking otters. He's an antisocial "information dealer".
• Under Night In-Birth: Mulitple:
  • Vatista is an Artificial Human from ages past who's really, really out of touch with the norms of the modern world. You know, norms like wearing clothes for instance. It's to the point that she only really put some clothes on to make Hyde happy... and then immediately undressed again when he was no longer around. And whenever she and Hyde encounter a second female character she has to ask if Hyde forced them to wear clothes, too. It all comes across as rather funny and cute.
  • Carmine's lack of social skills, however, are anything but funny and cute. He's an Ax-Crazy, foul mouthed Jerkass with zero tolerance of boredom (which is unfortunate since he gets bored very easily) and a Hair-Trigger Temper, accentuated by the fact that he's pretty much incapable of interacting, expressing, and explaining himself to others, and tends to resort to violence when words fail him... and also whenever he damn well feels like it, which is roughly all the time... All of this would qualify Carmine as one of the most unpleasant villains in fiction if it weren't for the fact that he's, first of all, unaffiliated with the actual villains of the game, and, secondly, fully aware of his own social ineptitude and, beneath all the maniacal laughs, doesn't have too well of an opinion of himself.

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