Games with black protagonists

[Savagezion]

Don't forget Crackdown 1 and 2. I can't think of any others that haven't been listed yet.

 

[BathorysGraveland2]

Just remembered another one. Men of Valor. A Vietnam war FPS. I don't remember it being very good, but it does have a black protagonist that I think has at least some amount of characterisation. Can't remember for sure, though.

Spoiler

 

[FootloosePhoenix]

You play as a young black boy in Papo & Yo.

I only played the demo for this and it isn't exactly a popular title, but it's something. The Walking Dead is definitely the best game in recent memory to have some diversity among its cast and not make a huge deal about it.

 

[Buzz Killington_v1legacy]

State of Decay. Marcus [http://stateofdecay.wikia.com/wiki/Marcus_Campbell] isn't exactly the protagonist, since you can switch off to other characters, but he's the very first character you can play, and a lot of people (including me) tend to use him as their main character.

 

[Psych the Psycho]

What about games like Fallout or Mass Effect where you CAN make your character black?

 

[Batou667]

The default police dude in Crackdown is black.

 

[Adeptus Aspartem]

Wouldn't Borderlands count too? I mean with Roland they've at least 1 black guy as a part of the protagonist party.

But jeah.. outside the titles which have already been mentionend i can't remember any other game at the moment.

AH! Diablo 1? The sorcerer was black! And in D2 the Paladin looked black.. but i'm not quite sure if i remember those 5 pixels correctly.

Does Civilzation count?

 

[jhoroz]

Does the kid from Limbo count? I mean, he is black after all:

 

[ZZoMBiE13]

My Saint's Row avatar is a black lady. I know that doesn't count, but still.

Screw you games industry for saying gamers don't want anything other than a white male protagonist! Hoo-AH!

 

[hazabaza1]

Aside from what everyone else has said, I think there was an Area 51 game or something where you played a black guy.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

The default police dude in Crackdown is black.

Yay, default When you think about it that's actually quite rare as a default race to choose from.

You know, now that I think about it, I don't even remember Crackdown having an option to be a white character. I think every character was either black, hispanic, pacific islander, or asian.

I mean, I guess you could make the case that the guy in the bottom left looks white, but I think he's hispanic.

 

[AuronFtw]

I honestly liked GTA:SA because of Carl, and the attempts to paint him in a good light. Yeah, he was "black" and a "gangsta" from the "hood" and had a rough upbringing - but they used all that as fuel for his personal crusade to bring stability to his home and his family, what little of it is left.

The game featured an incredible array of characters, with many of the early ones being black or mexican but later including white hippies, redneck mechanics, a stuck-up government agent and several asian mobsters... but it never felt like race was the "point" of their characters. They all had motivations, they all had goals; good guys and bad guys came from all races and creeds.

The way-above-par voice acting definitely helped flesh out the characters. Guys like big smoke or Tenpenny wouldn't have been nearly as good without the great VA's they featured. All in all, great writing and great character design - GTASA is one of the strongest (if not *the* strongest) title in the series because of it.

As a 100% white person, I enjoyed every minute of that game because of the great effort that went into all the characters - it gave a (rare, and still somewhat fictional) view of the black urban struggles without going over the top or falling back on constant stereotypes. The main character is easily relatable even with no frame of reference for the lifestyle, and the environment/other characters he meets paints a really striking picture of his situation. Definitely one of the most engaging black protags I've seen.

 

[Stryc9]

There was SiN in 1998 and later SiN Episodes...which only got one episode before being cancelled. John Blade, the protagonist in those games was black. Also those games were really pretty damn good, the original particularly so after it got all the bugs patched out of it.

EDIT: Also there was American McGee's Bad Day L.A. which while full of racial stereotyping and "offensive" jokes was still a decent game. If you're looking for a positive example of a black protagonist this probably isn't the game for you though.

 

[wulf3n]

Ok maybe I'm just misreading this post but...

so to say that Mass Effect's universe has "solved" racial and cultural prejudices by giving everything a top coat of caucasian, western culture is just a bit ethnocentric, and inaccurate.

I can't remember if this is explained very clearly in the game, but in the extended universe [pushes up glasses] "caucasian" is pretty rare, with the ethnicity of most humans being "mixed"

, the universe itself is still modeled after western society, as though assuming the world is going to make it that far into the future without the cultural tides shifting.

Now I can't really comment on how closely the human "Systems Alliance" models western culture but I'd argue the Galactic Government [i.e. citadel council etc] models the U.N. which I wouldn't inherently call western culture.

 

[BathorysGraveland2]

There was SiN in 1998 and later SiN Episodes...which only got one episode before being cancelled. John Blade, the protagonist in those games was black. Also those games were really pretty damn good, the original particularly so after it got all the bugs patched out of it.

Eh? Blade isn't black. He had dreads, yeah, but he certainly wasn't black. At least, not in the original game he wasn't.

On the right.

Spoiler

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

Soul Calibur 3's plot centered heavily around Zasalamel, who is black.

While he is an antagonist to basically everyone else in the entire game, since it's a fighting game, he does have his own story, where he is a good guy. And antagonist or protagonist or whatever, he's an awesome character. He manipulates EVERYBODY. The two swords of good and evil, their wielders, good seminarians, evil monsters, kingdoms and empires, time itself, all just so he can get what he wants.

You know, I was legitimately upset with the Soul Calibur series for jettisoning Zasalamel into space in five. He is a really rare example of a Fighting Game Xanatosian Bastard who comes off fucking sympathetic.

 

[Lonewolfm16]

I guess we could include all those games that let you customize your character to appear black while still having an obviously white grizzled antihero voice like in Deus Ex.

Personally, I don't like to include these when it comes to tallying up any video game character minorities, whether they be racial minorities or female. While it's nice of them to include characters generic enough to be customized, as you said they're still designed with a white default template in mind. While Commander Shepherd can be any color you want, they're still going to sound like a white man or a white woman.

I only count them as "a game with a black person" or "a game with a female" if the character was MADE to be black or female. As you pointed out with the Walking Dead, they escaped the typical black stereotypes, and they did that through good writing. They wrote with a black character in mind, but they still approached him as a real person. He wasn't written and acted white and then just colored black, he's got a history, he's got his own way of speaking, and his character is merely augmented by his race, not defined by it. Just like any other person's race augments them in some way. While writing a real person sounds easy in theory, it's apparently tricky enough that many miserable failures have been produced.

And while I appreciate the option to be any race or any gender in Mass Effect, their diversity was achieved by making the character just generic enough to pass as an "everyman" or "everywoman." Not by actually designing the character with that specific race or gender in mind.

I am a bit confused on how a character who is "written...white and then just colored black" would act. Is the behavior of most black people so different from that of whites as to be noticeable?