What makes a protagonist memorable to you?

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With how eerily similar the fire emblem lords are to one another in abstract, I always wondered how the player-base felt about the charming (or not so much) protagonists of this series. But hell, I think expanding the scope of reach to other series and media is also a great way to understanding what makes a good fantasy hero that fire emblem always provides in it’s formulae “royal loses dad, destroys god at the end”.

I’ll answer first:
To me, what makes a protagonist memorable and a stand-out is it’s relatability. And you don’t need to have an average-joe isekai’d to a fantasy land to mark a “relatable” protag. In fact, I think the best characters are the ones that, despite all the differences in life-style someone has from a fantasy world, it’s endearing to see the small similarities they share with us, the audience and player.
To achieve what is a “relatable” protagonist, in my opinion, is to make a character that makes realistic decisions and responses to the crazy magic that happens right before their eyes. It’s why I think Corrin from Fire Emblem Fates fails as a protag and is often disliked. I find that Alear’s, from Engage, first reaction to seeing a corrupt is to run away, that sets them apart from the Marth that sees a huge army and goes “that seems like a fair fight”, but even the boasting charisma from Ephraim that actually conquers a castle by himself and his 3 allies is endearing.

So I pass the question to the community:
“What makes a protagonist memorable to you?”.

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I don’t think I can boil it down into a formula that always results in a protagonist I find memorable, but I find it really helps for the protagonist to have more opinions about their world than just “bad stuff bad, good stuff good”, and more defined personal goals and aspirations than just “thwart bad stuff, protect good stuff”. I realize this is super broad, and I don’t mean a protagonist who’s totally self-interested or anything; just one whose relationship with the world they inhabit is more fleshed-out and three-dimensional than just what’s necessary to justify them doing the main gameplay thing.

I also agree with you regarding relatability. I don’t think a character needs to be just some random John Everyman-type either, and I second the idea that at least as much of a character’s relatability comes from the little things that remind us that they’re human as comes from major aspects of their circumstances being similar to ours.

As an aside, I do think it’s important to keep in mind that to characters who live in a fictional world, the rules that govern that world are normal and natural even if they aren’t to us, so it’s not necessary (and even often feels forced and awkward) to have them react with utter incredulity to fantastical magical occurrences when such events are just a thing that can happen normally in their home world.

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Any protag that makes character choices lol.

A lot of Vanilla and Hack lords only make the choices of “not dying” and “stab the evil guy”. You could replace all of them with Fe1 Marth and the plot wouldn’t go differently at all. Leif in Fe5, despite being a pretty similar character to most Fe lords, stands out because he is allowed to make choices that have consequences, some positive, some negative, and some complicated. Fe5 but with Marth as the lead would be a different story, despite Marth and Leif being similar characters.

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I think most good stories should generally have a compelling answer to the question of:

“Why must this person be the protagonist?”

If I’m going to be following from essentially the POV of a character for 20+ chapters of a story I shouldn’t have to wonder why something is their story and why they’re the one driving the plot.

Ie this means they can be passive/reactive but the narrative should still be fundamentally challenging to them for a specific reason.

Vision Quest is a great example of contrasting a lord who is essentially just there for the ride (Storch post part 1) and a person actively responding to events and having his own ideas (Titus)

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For the most part, characters should want stuff. Protagonists, especially. And should visibly work toward getting the stuff that they want, within the bounds of their agency. Even if they can’t get the stuff they want, and they probably can’t, immediately, at least make the fly bounce against the window a few times.

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Relatability generally helps any protagonist be memorable, but their motivations for things within the story also need to be thought out. What do they want? Why can’t they have it? How do they work towards getting it? That sort of thing.

Like Storch in Vision Quest is a good example of making him memorable even at the start of the story.
What does he want? At the start it’s basically his family not living in poverty.
Why can’t he have it? Because the taxes are too high and basically everyone is suffering for it.
How does he work towards changing that? Stealing from others to procure funds to help his family.

Already empathy is established for the protagonist. The motivation is relatable. Etc. Etc.

Now, this isn’t the end all be all for being memorable, but the questions asked of the protagonist in any story will usually be answered differently depending on the point you ask them. A memorable protagonist to me will have this change over time in believable ways dependent on the situations and events that occur within the story and how they shift the perspective and actions of the protagonist.

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Being stupid and learning how to not be stupid

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I mostly remember protagonists when I finish a story and I start seething that their potential was wasted (Micaiah, Eirika, Edelgard, etc) leading me to hyperfixate on specific ways to epically pwn intsys sexism
And the specific sexism I cite is often rather contentious among others as to whether it exists LOL…
These bitches don’t get any agency…!

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I believe the most important trait to make them memorable is to make them feel unique, or different. Most main characters of the series are just Lords with the most basic noble personality, fighting for a greater cause because it’s their duty and blah blah blah. Examples of are this are Eirika, Ephraim, Eliwood and over anybody else, Marth.

On the other hand, we have characters like:

Hector: he is a lord, yes, but he does NOT use swords. Already a good start, since every single lord main weapon until that moment had been swords, no exceptions. But what makes him lovable is his personality. He can be rude, crude, openly aggresive, foolish and arrogant… He feels unique.

Why do people like Ike? Well first of all, he is not a lord. He is simply some mercenary and a simple man too, with wordly expectations. He doesn’t enter a war to end it, it’s only a escort mission at first because that’s what he was getting paid to do. No great ambitions, no greater cause. Just money and revenge.

As @File2ish stated, Storch from the hackrom Vision Quest. I’ll add Roxelana from Drums of War to that point.

Why do people like Dimitri? Dimitri entered the military academy with only one thing in mind: revenge. He is literally mad up until the last stretch of the Blue Lions Route, where he finally regains his sanity. Yes, he is MAD, pain drives him CRAZY, to the point that he neglets everything and everyone around him and gets swallowed by his own self pity and guiltiness. That’s unique.

Why do people like Claude? Ironically, it’s because his greater cause is bigger than anything else seen until that moment. He is an “outsider”, even in his own country because he is mixed race. He wants to destroy every single barrier between cultures so they can all coexist peacefully. To achieve that goal, he will manipulate people, use dirty tricks. Not to mention how cheeky he is.

EDIT: I forgot about Sigurd! As someone said later, he has a horse. That’s not so memorable, but the following is. Sigurd is but a simple paladin of his kingdom in times of chaos and war. He goes from being an idealistic with big dreams, to a lovestruck man, then the loss of his loved one makes him mature with all haste in order to be a capable father to Seliph, then he finally goes down in a spiral of confusion, rage, sadness and fire. His son, Seliph, is more like your typical noble… UNLESS you are reading the manga, he’s goated there. I swear, if they ever do a remake of Holy war they HAVE to follow the manga. A pity that a remake will NEVER happen.

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I tend to simp for the Tellius games when given the chance, so I’ll go ahead a breakdown Path of Radiance Ike as a good example of a memorable character:
-Modeled after Hector/Sigurd mechanically, so remembered as a solid unit (who can solo the game)
-Has a thematic and mechanical Arc with closure (Wants to be like his father Greil, wants revenge against the man who murdered him, grows in maturity and strength enough to stand toe to toe with his fathers killer, becames the leader of his group, gets some closure
-The translation does a good job of keeping him very down to earth in contrast to the noble archetype lords (the marth mold) while still framing him as someone open minded and if not kind, empathetic at least
-stands out in a short list of sword locked lords who do not suffer from doing nothing on enemy phase

The big asterisk on all this is that radiant dawn Ike, in comparison, is just a void of nothing, but path of radiance basically swung for the fences in giving us an MC to take the view point of

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As others have mentioned, there is probably not an exact formula for this, but i find that:

Character which are not noble swordfighters are usually more interesting, just due to the simple fact that we have so many of them in FE already.
The protagonists i most often see people like as protagonists are units like Ephraim (Noble, but lance), Ike (sword, but commoner), hector (noble, but axe), sigurd (sword noble, but horse), or lyn (sword commoner, but actually noble, and a woman).

Then you have protagonists which generally just have good dialogue, and feel human.
Holmes from Tear Ring Saga is a good example of this, and my favorite protagonist. Not only does he have a bow, he also doesn’t quite seem like a noble despite technically being one. He’s a flawed character, which makes him feel human and real, and he’s also fun to use, and strong gameplay wise. His character arc with Katri is quite adorable, and there’s been multiple scenes with him where i was just laughing out loud. Like the scene where he gets drunk and gets knocked unconcious by your jagen for talking crap.

Reese from Berwick Saga is another one i really like DESPITE being a noble sword lord. He feels quite human throughout the plot, and despite only being available for the main missions, and not the side missions (which constitute around 70% of the missions in the game), he still is better than most other fe protagonists. He’s shown as being of noble character inspite of being looked down upon by most other of the forces stationed alongside him in the capital. That however doesn’t mean he blindly help people without any regard for the big picture. One specifically memorable moment for me was when a handful of peasants asked for help against some particularly bad brigands, and he was quite hesitant to even accept the request because he frankly didn’t know whether he could feasibly do it with his small forces, which could be called into action by the king at any moment.

Having an interesting backstory also really helps i find. One protagonist that comes to mind for me here would be Roxelana from the Hack Drums of War (one of my absolute favorites btw, highly reccomend checking it out). She’s not your average young adult fe lord. She’s a bit older, a military veteran, with trauma from the past occasionally coming back to haunt her. You not only notice this throughout the story, but also due to the fact she’s a good bit higher level compared to the freshl, drafted recruits you get early on.

If all else fails, make the unit unique from a gameplay perspective. Micaiah for example gets a lot of shit by a good amount of people for story and gameplay related reasons, and some if not all of these concerns might very well be true, but at the end of the day, she’s a protagonist with magic, staves, and even a special sacrifice skill, making her more memorable than your average sword lord due to that alone.

Another protagonist who comes to mind here would be the main character from the hack Shackled power, who is essentially lyn with an axe.

An interesting gimmick could also help here. The best example that comes to mind for me here would be Arthas from Warcraft 3’s Frozen Throne expansion. While your other characters are leveling up like normal, Arthas, due to story reasons, instead levels down every mission, growing weaker. Thus you end up relying more on your other characters, while desperately trying to keep Arthas strong via stat boosters and items. This goes on all the way from being level 10/10 in the first mission, to level 2/10 in the final one.

Hopefully you can gain some insight from my ramblings. Had a slow day at work and needed something to spend my time with.

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This is a great question! I notice the responses before mine and people are listing personality traits, instead of physical ones. I think characters with brighter colours are more memorable than ones without.

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That’s a good trait if you want to make their design more memorable, but I’m unsure as how will they be memorable as characters, and not just a drawing. Edelgard has one heck of a good design, but she’s way more archetypical than Dimitri or Claude and thus, less memorable.

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Very lovely responses, I’m glad to see everyone’s perspectives!

I definetely agree, the small casual moments are often the ones that stuck out with out, in my opinion, getting to know more of a protagonist who is, more often than not, a war general fighting alongside his comrades, is very refreshing, these casual scenes can also break the tension and stiffness of what seems to be never-ending conflict as often is the case in fire emblem games and hacks.

100%, agency is so important in characters in general, so they just don’t feel like robot npcs that just fight for you seemingly without good reason, it’s specially impactful for main characters. One thing I dislike heavily is when the burden of choice is taken out of the player’s or protagonist’s hand, like how Corrin doesn’t get to kill Zola or Iago, but instead Leo does it for him, or even earlier than that, where Leo teleports Kaze and Rinkah, completely robbing Corrin of their agency when it could be far more interesting to see Corrin openly defy Garon and escalate the tension from there.

I agree with you three and each other’s points complement quite well, I believe. It’s usually the end goal during the journey they take that makes the reader/player want to stick with them, and it’s the plot’s role to keep challenging the protagonist to attain his end goal, making them question if it’s really worth the conflict they face, and so on!

I like when the protagonist makes mistakes and faces the consequences of these errors and at the end they improve from it, but, to me, these mistakes better be reasonable and not without logic. I see a lot of medie create conflict from mistakes the most forced way possible, sometimes breaking character to generate tension. So if they do something bad, it better be within reason!

I agree that standing out by using different weapons than the conventional norm is a breath of fresh air and really makes the protagonist more memorable. I think writers and game devs shouldn’t fall into the pitfall that protagonists have to be unique, it’s what I see some people struggle when making a story, because they have the urge to do something inovatine because they feel they are pressured to or their work will recieve no attention, which is not a great mentality to have. Sometimes an interesting personality and a good synergy between the character and the conflict that pushes them to move foward can make for a likeable protagonist.

I think PoR did a great job at making Ike’s path an interesting one while also giving us worldbuilding of the rising conflict and politics of the world they are set in, the Hero’s Journey trope was also well executed, in my opinion, and, in some sense, it’s grounded and doesn’t go too crazy with powerscalling like Radiant Dawn did where you end up killing God.

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I mean, I didn’t say it in the way of “haha stupid because… plot?” more like being dumb, goofy and inmature because the character lacks the experience, and then they learn how to behave.

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My apologies, I understand now :slight_smile:

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No problem pal, I wrote it in a very vague manner so is understandable that you didn’t got it.

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Kind of like Sigurd then. He was quite inmature during the prologue and chapter 1, naive in chapters 2 and 3, then finally turned into a full fledged man in chapter 4.

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In what world are any of the three house lords even archetypical? If anything, Claude is the most generic one and Edelgard is the least generic one???

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Edelgard is your classic emperor from any other game. She is Zephiel in Sword of Seals, she is Hardin in New Mystery and is Arvis from Holy War. The only difference between them all? Their past, even if it was painful for all of them. As for the rest, they are all people who wanted to conquer because their whole continent just because they believe everything will be better under their rule (even if better means destroy every single human like in Zephiel’s and Hardin’s case, but they really do believe that’s better).

The only reason Edelgard is liked as a character is becase she has one heck of a good design and because in the only route you can have her she doesn’t get as cold as in the others. That’s the only reason I can see anyway.