Pro Tip: Don't make a Kirito.

Matt you literally picked one of the greatest examples ever. I've played and beaten Tales of the Abyss a billion times and Luke's character development is one of the most satisfying I've ever seen. :')

They mention canon Persona 4 protagionist's personality is picking the all weird options, but Devil Survivor 2 gave you all KINDS of fucking weird options to do, and then the anime decided to make him Shinji Ikari.

I disagree with Liam in that a protagonist should surprise you, there are plenty of great protagonist that never surprise me but are perfect none the less (I.E. Guts, Edward Elric, Alana & Marko, Josuke Higashikata, Yusuke Urameshi, Spike Spiegle, most video game protagonists, The Sandman).

In my opinion, I don't think that good protagonists require character development. You can make a character where he/she doesn't change throughout the story but is still a compelling character via backstory or personality.

I love this channel thanks for these podcast clips

TellTale suffers from people liking some of their characters, simply because of their forced archetypal choices. Kenny goes through some rough shit but he eventually turns full villain, no matter how hard you try to keep him happy (be it Lee or Clem), and the game still gives you options and choices to treat Kenny like he's still a human being, when he completely heel turns into a inhuman psycho.

in my humble and obviously correct opinion, the protagonist should be able to, in some measure, stand up for themselves. the one exception i can think of for this is if the story is from the perspective of someone who is NOT the hero. if it's from the point of view of a hanger-on or lesser sidekick, then having the protagonist be worthless is fine. but if your hero can't defend themselves without their hand being held, that's a problem. somewhat ties in to pat wanting semi-competent protagonists, though i'm fine with them being an idiot as long as it's interesting and the other characters support the hero's lack of brain cells. for an excellent example of an idiot hero who's competent correctly and not worthless while also not being a mary sue, look at luffy of one piece. dude can't reason his way out of a narrow hallway and i love him all the same.

thank you plague

This question is inherently nonsensical as a protagonists worth depends not only on their personality, but on the perspective of your story, what the story is about/trying to convey, how they react to their setting, their purpose in the story, how their actions/thoughts are conveyed, and the viewers preconcieved biases. Someone as smart as plague should know better than to pose a question in a vacuum.

for me the best protagonist is a silent one but with enough dialogue options that you can tailor him however you like otherwise characters that have their own personalities that you can still influence a little bit their behavior

A good protagonist should have some change or growth in their story whether it's just a different out look on life from what they started with. Or even having a dangerous edge towards them due to what happens to them in story. A perfect hero is terrible because there's no flaws to make the good aspects shine, one of the many reasons why Superman sucks most of the time.

NO. NNNNO. BAD LIAM. BAD. WE DO NOT ENCOURAGE ‘SuBvErTiNg ExPecTaTiOnS’ AS A REPLACEMENT FOR CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. BAD.

For me, the worst type of protagonist has no better example than Ryoma Echizen, from "The Prince of Tennis" anime. I've never read the manga, but in the anime he is UNGODLY AWFUL. He's set as this huge badass in tennis by defeating some douchebag seniors in two separate occasions. But then he proceeds to defeat EVERY SINGLE ONE OF HIS OPPONENTS, many of which should trump him in various areas (be it on stamina, reach or experience, each of which makes ENOURMOUS difference in a tennis match). His matches always feel like there are no stakes, because you feel that he'll just win like always. F*ck, the only times he loses are f*cking implied losses! Even the team's captain matches were greater, and he was set up to be more of a badass than Ryoma!

The ideal kind of protagonist, or at the very least a very good protagonist should be Joseph Joestar

Most western RPGs have the exact same problem as Japanese ones with empty protagonists, in that your character still has no identity or voice, except now they just hold up a sign when prompted; see The Elder Scrolls for games where the protagonist is essentially nothing despite having a lot to potentially say. A lot of people make up their own, but that's just shitty storytelling; you don't make your player tell your story for you, even if they're okay with that. What a player projects onto their character should still manifest in some fashion, and it also should make some fucking sense in the context of the story. Another common trap western RPG writers fall into is to make everything important that the protagonist does be while you're not controlling them. See damn near any Bioware game for examples of how badly you can fuck all of the above up, and more. I personally prefer a protagonist who has an established personality and motivations, but with lots of choice available to the player as to how they react to what's put before them during the course of the game. You become more invested in them because you're still making the major decisions -- or at least are given the illusion that you are -- but you then see how those decisions play out and further shape an existing mold; you feel like you're guiding the story, rather than watching it. Telltale is an okay example of this; they stumble because their games too frequently make it obvious that it really doesn't matter what you do along the way, just at the end -- and even then the outcome may be the same -- so unless it's hooked you, you've got people who fuck around in their games just to see how amusing it is for the rest of the game to awkwardly go around it, but in general, they do a good job of involving you in the narrative.

Vegeta > Goku

Honestly I'm a little bit sick of these guys (mainly Woolie) claiming to have all these super sick but super secret ideas they can't tell you about because if they ever got out everyone would be stealing them and making millions. Color me skeptical, but I don't think these guys who can barely run a KZfaq channel and can't figure out how to mix audio are secret geniuses.

i forgot how much i fucking hate raiden.. i haven't played that game in like a decade. jesus that was a weak installment