-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Protagonists with disabilities
- Thread starter SpaceCadetKeon
- Start date
Katawa Shoujo takes place in a school for people with disabilities or special needs.
-Hisao has a heart condition
-Lily is blind
-Hanako is a burn trauma
-Rin is... complicated though the most obvious part is she has no arms.
-Suzune is deaf
-Emi has no legs
Kat from Halo Reach has a robotic arm. She'll comment that you don't need to be concerned and it won't slow her down when you look at it. Noble 6 can also be equipped with it if you unlock it.
A lot of characters in Soul Sacrifice becomes dismembered or disfigured in some ways as the magic takes greater toll on their body or they offer a piece of themselves in Black Sacrament.
Rakuen has a lot of characters that are unwell, some aren't really disabilities per se but the game takes place in a hospital.
In Overcooked there is this awesome raccoon chef that is in a wheelchair that I like to pick.
-Hisao has a heart condition
-Lily is blind
-Hanako is a burn trauma
-Rin is... complicated though the most obvious part is she has no arms.
-Suzune is deaf
-Emi has no legs
Kat from Halo Reach has a robotic arm. She'll comment that you don't need to be concerned and it won't slow her down when you look at it. Noble 6 can also be equipped with it if you unlock it.
A lot of characters in Soul Sacrifice becomes dismembered or disfigured in some ways as the magic takes greater toll on their body or they offer a piece of themselves in Black Sacrament.
Rakuen has a lot of characters that are unwell, some aren't really disabilities per se but the game takes place in a hospital.
In Overcooked there is this awesome raccoon chef that is in a wheelchair that I like to pick.
Katawa Shoujo
Ohh ffs Mephala 😄 posting this still!
Hisao Nakai (中井 久夫 Nakai Hisao)
Hisao is a male high school student diagnosed with chronic cardiac arrhythmia and congenital heart muscle deficiency.[27] In the prologue, he collapses from a major heart attack. Due to his heart condition, he transfers to Yamaku High School in class 3-3, and although initially resentful of his placement in a school for the disabled, he eventually adapts to his new lifestyle.
Emi Ibarazaki (茨崎 笑美 Ibarazaki Emi)
Emi is an energetic, extroverted blonde girl with twintails and forest-green eyes. She has prosthetic legs, having had her original legs amputated below the knees as a result of a car accident. Despite her disability, she still has more than enough lower body strength to walk, and in fact she is a successful track runner.
Hanako Ikezawa (池沢 華子 Ikezawa Hanako)
Hanako, as a child, suffered an accident in which her house burned down, taking the lives of her parents. The right side of her body is heavily scarred from the incident and has left her traumatized. Her long, dark purple hair hangs down her back, and her bangs cover the right side of her face, which hides much of her scars.
Lilly Satou (砂藤 リリー Satō Rirī
Lilly is the class representative of 3-2, a class composed of blind and partially blind students (including Kenji); she has been blind since birth.
Rin Tezuka (手塚 琳 Tezuka Rin)
Rin, a girl whose arms were almost entirely deformed due to a birth defect, uses her feet to accomplish everyday tasks with surprising dexterity.
Shizune Hakamichi (羽加道 静音 Hakamichi Shizune)
Shizune is one of Hisao's classmates who serves as the student council president and class representative of class 3-3. This bespectacled girl has short dark blue hair and eyes; she is both deaf and mute, communicating primarily through sign language.
Kenji Setou (瀬藤 健二 Setō Kenji)
Kenji is Hisao's neighbor in the dorms, who is legally blind, being unable to see anything more than a few inches from his face.
Ohh ffs Mephala 😄 posting this still!
Hahahaha, to be fair I wanted to post the image with cut-outs of all the girl's but I'm on mobile.
And I was working on quoting the wiki and deleting the not important stuff 😄
Good stuff mate. Have a nice day.
Screaming Meat
Unconfirmed Member
Is that a criteria?
Captain AHat
Member
This is quite fascinating to see the varied characters. I knew about the situation in Overwatch, cos I play it. But was unaware of most of the other ones listed (bar Joker in ME). Nice to see some representation of us disabled folk in a form of entertainment so beloved by so many 
Slightly OT, but related I swear!
It would seem to me that having a game with its main character wheelchair bound would be a great VR game. It would hopefully stop the movement vom, but more importantly it would, I hope, give everyone more insight to how it feels in a chair.
Slightly OT, but related I swear!
It would seem to me that having a game with its main character wheelchair bound would be a great VR game. It would hopefully stop the movement vom, but more importantly it would, I hope, give everyone more insight to how it feels in a chair.
Most silent protagonists are shown or implied to actually be speaking lines that the player doesn't see. How many of them are actually shown to not speak at all?
Poltergust
Member
Bentley from the Sly Cooper series. It's quite shocking since he is fine in Sly Cooper 2 but he gets injured and adopts his wheelchair for Sly 3.
Seeing the ending to Sly 2 was one of the most shocking things I've ever experienced in a video game back when I was a kid, especially since it came from this series.
I love how he adapted and still is doing what he does best in the future games.
Sarcastico
Member
Gordon Freeman?
Prime crotch
Banned
a hotlinking warning? is this 2004?
The Spoony Hou
Member
I think Symmetra actually wears a mechanical glove of some sort.
Was he actually a mute before GTA:SA? The CJ thing sounds more like a joke about silent protagonists, although I don't remember it that well.
Claude from GTAIII is a mute. He is not a typical silent protagonist as in GTA:SA you can see CJ calling him a mute etc.
The protagonist of Layers of Fear is missing one of his legs.
This is conveyed narratively through in-game text and voiceover, as well as through the way the character, from a first-person perspective, slowly moves through the environment with a heavily swaying camera and sound effects to suggest the wooden prosthetic leg he's wearing.
This is conveyed narratively through in-game text and voiceover, as well as through the way the character, from a first-person perspective, slowly moves through the environment with a heavily swaying camera and sound effects to suggest the wooden prosthetic leg he's wearing.
He never talked in GTAIII and iirc developers tied this to main characters not usually having voice at the time, difficulties in implementation vs npcs and having the player to tie with Claude etc. Though CJ would later call him a mute asshole and snake without a tongue lol
Your character in GTA:Online also doesn't talk but it is unknown if they are actually mute cause npcs joke around them like "you don't like to talk much, eh" etc.
benicillin
Banned
One of the main characters in the GoT Telltale game is a fighter who gets crippled in the first episode and cant walk without a cane anymore. The reason I bring it up is that it is addressed in the narrative quite a bit.
He's able to at the end of the fourth episode. More of a temporary injury.
Hyakkimaru from Blood Will Tell, an underrated action game for PS2 I had lots of fun with back in the days.
He's missing both arms, eyes, legs, and most of his organs. He's missing 48 body parts in total, actually.
The game revolves around getting back his body parts by defeating the game's 48 bosses. Cool thing about it is that getting body parts gets you additional abilities and sometimes changes the gameplay too. For example, getting the intestine increases maximum HP. Getting the hippocampus unlocks the enemy library. Getting legs enables dashing. Or, my favourite, the game plays in black and white until you get back the first eye.
He's missing both arms, eyes, legs, and most of his organs. He's missing 48 body parts in total, actually.
The game revolves around getting back his body parts by defeating the game's 48 bosses. Cool thing about it is that getting body parts gets you additional abilities and sometimes changes the gameplay too. For example, getting the intestine increases maximum HP. Getting the hippocampus unlocks the enemy library. Getting legs enables dashing. Or, my favourite, the game plays in black and white until you get back the first eye.
From X-Men: Mutant Academy 2.
I mean
Is this real? Because I'm on the floor trying to catch my breath.
DriftingSpirit
Member
Yeah, this is a good one.
Bentley from the Sly Cooper series. It's quite shocking since he is fine in Sly Cooper 2 but he gets injured and adopts his wheelchair for Sly 3.
killatopak
Member
As a kid, I always thought he was born with wheels for arms.
Hashmal_Bringer_of_Order
Member
Only post that matters imo. Non-disability disabilities don't count at all.
One of my favorite video game characters is Lilac, the protagonist of the Freedom Planet games. But there was one thing about her design that I never really understood.
Just what the hell are those blue things on the sides of her head? They're right where her ears should be. And those things on top of her head are actually horns. I mean, they look neat I guess, but what are they, and why are they there?
Well as I discovered recently, they are actually hearing aids. It turns out that Lilac has a genetic defect that made her as good as deaf, so she wears those blue things over her ears to help her hear. I actually like her even more now that I know this about her.
It also got me wondering: what are some other video game protagonists that are disabled in some way, shape, or form?
EDIT: You know what? I'm not that picky. They don't necessarily have to be the main character. If they're playable at all, I'd love to hear about them.
I didn't know that. :O
From X-Men: Mutant Academy 2.
I remember that game, though I just kept picking Spider-Man because I realised that I was more of a Spider-Man fan than an X-Men.
Yeah it's real.
Neoleo2143
Member
There is merit (actually a lot of merit since many games don't really do this too well I feel outside VNs like Katawa Shoujo) to what you are saying (most notably the psychological aspects of going from not disabled to disabled) but I think you are missing some part of the picture. To me, these characters represent in part the ideal of the disabled and those "weird Sci-fi enhancements" are representations of where our technology and methodology should strive to be and accomplish (effectively making "disability" nonexistent).
BouncyFrag
Member
Controlling him during the
Joker from Mass Effect was born with a condition that makes his bones incredibly brittle. He has to be very careful when walking because even a trip could result in his bones shattering.
Collector boarding attack on the Normmady
I appreciate the post-disability ideal and sentiment here, but please check your use of "the ideal of the disabled" -- not everyone is is looking for a cure. If I were offered a cure for my disability, I wouldn't take it. I'm content with my life and the idea of such a drastic change is not appealing, given how fulfilling (albeit challenging) my life is now. While there's definitely a place for these characters with enhancements that essentially nullify the disability, I would appreciate more representation of disabled characters that reject the power fantasy-element of the technological "cures" and instead live their lives how they are, warts and all. My priority is for people to give a shit about the disabled, rather than a cure for my disability so they never have to.
Hashmal_Bringer_of_Order
Member
This honestly disgusts me more reading this. The fantasy cures annoy me because they fundamentally don't represent disability, which is to be less able the a normal person, not because disabilities don't need to be cured. I have no interaction with other disabled people these days because this type of attitude makes me want to fight people.
Neoleo2143
Member
I completely agree with what you're saying. I did say, "In part", I do recognize that not everyone wants a cure to their ail because they've learned to handle it and derived satisfaction from it. I myself am Autistic and I do derive a great deal of satisfaction having spent many years of my life working through that and would not have changed it in retrospect if there was a "cure" (even though that is somewhat selfish in the context of the demands I put on my family). There should be more gaming characters that just have to deal with their lot because dealing with our lot in life is what we all do and that's far more relatable as a storytelling means to me. In fact, it sounds pretty enthralling if you ask me to try and represent the lives of disabled peoples and their families mechanically.
You are also correct, these magic cures beyond the scope of today's technology do not represent disability in modern society, how could they after all (so they don't really belong in this thread)? But I still think there's validity because stuff like being able to get a perfect prosthetic that people won't complain about the pain from sounds exciting to me.
Hyakkimaru from Blood Will Tell, an underrated action game for PS2 I had lots of fun with back in the days.
He's missing both arms, eyes, legs, and most of his organs. He's missing 48 body parts in total, actually.
The game revolves around getting back his body parts by defeating the game's 48 bosses. Cool thing about it is that getting body parts gets you additional abilities and sometimes changes the gameplay too. For example, getting the intestine increases maximum HP. Getting the hippocampus unlocks the enemy library. Getting legs enables dashing. Or, my favourite, the game plays in black and white until you get back the first eye.
Wow, that sounds interesting!
I double-took when I saw the image - thought it was Blade of the Immortal. I'd recognise Hiroaki Samura's art anywhere.
For anyone curious, the Japanese title is 'Dororo', based off the old manga of the same name.
Is Reinhardt blind in his scarred eye?
Please note that my opinions are my own, and I do not pretend to speak for the disabled community at large. You're right though, we need cures for lots of disabilities, but that doesn't mean every disabled person is pining for one.
allenpergallon
Member
Indivisible's not out yet but Yan looks pretty dope.
Last Day of June
93% (Very Positive): http://store.steampowered.com/app/635320/Last_Day_of_June/
5/5: https://store.playstation.com/#!/en...june/cid=UP4040-CUSA06148_00-OVOSONICO505GCAR
It is a wonderful narrative-driven game with light story elements, beautiful visuals, and a great soundtrack. One of my favorites of its kind in a long time.
Ascenion
Member
How is Big Boss part of this? He never gets a new eye. He literally has to adapt to losing that eye. Limbs are different and I'm guessing you didn't actually finish MGSV.
Neoleo2143
Member
The side of the Screen darkening in MGS3 was lovely even if it wasn't hugely impactful (it at least was a mechanical acknowledgment of the situation). If they could have gone one step further with some depth stuff that would've been the icing on top.
rackham
Banned
I don't think so.
and Baiken, who lost her arm when Gears went batshit insane and blew up Japan. Though she keeps a whole armory of weapons in that sleeve of hers.
Baiken is basically Samurai big boss!
Rad Shadow
Banned
Squall has plenty of issues.