9 Best Action Games Where You Don’t Play A Set Character

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Daniel has been playing games for entirely too many years, with his Steam library currently numbering nearly 750 games and counting. When he's not working or watching anime, he's either playing or thinking about games, constantly on the lookout for fascinating new gameplay styles and stories to experience. Daniel has previously written lists for TheGamer, as well as guides for GamerJournalist, and he currently covers tech topics on SlashGear.

Action games frequently have a fixed playable protagonist. You can’t have something like Devil May Cry, for example, if you’re not playing as a specific white-haired, demon-slaying butt-kicker. While this is frequently the case, though, that doesn’t mean it’s always the case.

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Action games, moreso their offshoots like action-adventures and action-RPGs, can manage a little wiggle room for either wholly user-created or, at least, user-customizable characters. You see this frequently in action games where the adventure is a little more important than a single character’s narrative throughline, or if there is a throughline, it’s vague enough that pretty much anyone could fill the role. This kind of framework definitely has its appeals; as much fun as it is to play a specific character you know and like, there’s an additional appeal to raising up a protagonist yourself and putting a little bit of yourself into them. Plus, it makes protagonist fan art more flexible, which everyone can appreciate.

9 Immortals Fenyx Rising

Ancient Myths are Murky

In the times before widespread information circulation or literacy, stories and legends were passed largely through word of mouth. If you’ve ever played a round of Telephone, you know some things can get lost in translation when passed around in this manner. This, presumably, is why the protagonist of Immortals Fenyx Rising, doesn’t have a fixed appearance: because in telling Fenyx’s story to Zeus, Prometheus isn’t sweating the details.

While the female, red-headed Fenyx is technically the character’s canon appearance, when you first start the game, you can customize them to look and sound pretty much however you want, whether they have bright green skin or a giant, bushy mustache. You’ve never been to Ancient Greece, maybe there were green people back then. Prove there weren’t.

More to the point, Fenyx’s only established backstory is that they’re a shield-bearer in the Delian League, which is hardly an exclusive position. Granted, as is revealed later, they’re also a demigod and child of Hermes, but considering the notorious promiscuity of the Greek Pantheon, that still doesn’t really alter the bar of entry.

8 Sunset Overdrive

From Zero to Hero

To paraphrase a wise man, not everyone can be a hero, but a hero can come from anywhere. No matter how much of a layperson you are or consider yourself, you could probably manage some heroics given the right impetus. This state of mind informs your nameless protagonist in Sunset Overdrive, who starts as a nobody working as a janitor while the majority of Sunset City is partying its brains out. It’s only because you weren’t invited to the party that you didn’t drink the tainted OverCharge drink and turn into a horrific mutant. Small blessings!

Given you’re in the midst of a mutant apocalypse and your burgeoning survival group isn’t picky about recruits, whoever you were and whatever you did beforehand is completely irrelevant. Right now, you’re able-bodied and capable of using a gun, so by sheer process of elimination, you’re the one best-suited for escaping from and/or saving the mutant-ravaged city.

On a meta level, Sunset Overdrive is meant to be a playground game of sorts, a place where anyone and everyone can save the day and have fun doing it. As the game’s initial reveal trailer posited so succinctly, “can you save Sunset City? Of course you can, it’s a f#@&ing video game.”

7 Astral Chain

Pick a Twin

I know I said character-action games like Devil May Cry usually have fixed protagonists by nature, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s impossible for one to go the custom route. You can have a blank slate protagonist in that kind of action game, you just need a lot of other elements to build a narrative throughline around, like in Astral Chain.

When you first start Astral Chain, you select one of two twins to play as, alongside customizing their name and basic appearance, with more in-depth customizations like clothing available later on. Whichever twin you don’t choose becomes a supporting character, your sibling supporting you on the police force and in the Legion program.

Both twins were born to a redshifting woman and adopted by Neuron captain Max Howard for pretty much exactly the reason you’re thinking, but which twin goes through which character arc is wholly dependent on the one you choose to play as. Or, maybe it’d be more accurate to say the twin you play as doesn’t get a character arc, since they’re silent the whole way through, while the one you don’t pick does get one.

6 Monster Hunter Rise

One Hunter of Many

The Monster Hunter games are kind of like small MMOs. They have many of the trappings of such games, from extensive character creation to instanced battles, just in a more compact, action-focused package rather than a full-on RPG. Monster Hunter Rise is probably the best example of this, both in and out of the game’s setting.

In-universe, your created player character is a resident of Kamura Village who’s just been promoted to full hunter status. What did you do beforehand, what were your motivations for becoming a hunter? Who cares! You’re a hunter now, and that’s all that matters, so get out there and start protecting the village from giant monsters.

Monster Hunter Rise’s inherently co-op-focused game design effectively prevents your player character from being any kind of chosen hero or superhuman being. You’re just one hunter out of many, and while you can fight solo if the situation calls for it, hunters tend to do their best work in groups. You’re one face in a large army of exceptionally proficient beast-battlers; rather than just you yourself, it may be more accurate to say that Kamura Village’s entire battalion of hunters is collectively the game’s protagonist.

5 Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon

A Nameless, Faceless Mercenary

Throughout the entirety of Armored Core VI, you never actually get to see or hear your protagonist. You don’t even know their name, just their Augmented Human designation, C4-621, and their callsign, Raven. Ostensibly, the main reason they’re involved in the conflict on Rubicon 3 is because Handler Walter promised to undo whatever augmentation procedure they went through if they perform well. We only really have Walter’s word to go on for that, though.

The only aspect of your character that’s customizable is your AC; Raven never steps outside the cockpit, talks about themselves, or indeed, talks at all. Whatever it is that motivates them beyond the aforementioned procedure reversal, we can’t begin to guess, and motivations past that are entirely dependent on the choices you make as the player.

You could argue that we’re cheating a bit here and that Raven is a set character, but there isn’t any way of knowing that. For all we know, Raven is just three dogs in a trenchcoat that someone accidentally let into an AC. If they never speak or show their face, then their appearance and personality is customizable, at least in theory if not in practice.

4 Borderlands 2

Who’s Your Vault-Hunting Weirdo?

In the Borderlands games, a “Vault Hunter” is a catch-all term for pretty much any gun-toting weirdo who’s walking in the presumed direction of a Pandoran Vault. While the character classes in Borderlands 2 specifically have unique appearances, they’re largely silent as protagonists, so you can project pretty much whatever personality and motivations you want upon them.

Every Vault Hunter is present on Pandora for the same reason: to find a Vault, and to a lesser extent, shoot Handsome Jack in the face. Just about every action you take in the game’s campaign is in service to one or both of those goals, so everything in between is up to you. You could be a Gunzerker who takes on every possible sidequest to help everyone, or you could be a Commando who’s all business.

Interestingly, in Borderlands 2, all the playable classes from the first game become full characters in their own rights, and in Borderlands 3, the same is true for nearly all the Borderlands 2 characters. The Vault Hunters in the third game have more clearly-defined motivations and personalities, so maybe it was just something about those first couple of batches of weirdos that made them quieter on the job.

3 Saints Row 4

What Did the President Look Like, Again?

In all the Saints Row games, you can fully customize your protagonist, including their physical appearance, voice, manner of speech, and even combat style and taunts in the later games. Even after the initial character creation, though, you can always change these aspects on a whim by visiting one of the city’s many plastic surgeons. This applies to every game in the series, though I find it most amusing in Saints Row 4 specifically, since you’re supposed to be the President of the United States.

Could you imagine that? The President looks and talks one way on one day, and then the next day they look and sound completely different, but you still somehow know it’s them? It doesn’t even make sense in the context of the game, because the Steelport in Saints Row 4 is completely virtual, but getting plastic surgery also somehow affects your body in reality.

It’s not really important, though. The President/Boss of the Saints is always who they are, and who they are is a mildly sociopathic crimelord-turned-superhero. They can look like anyone or come from anywhere, but that kind of mad drive is truly one of a kind.

2 Cyberpunk 2077

Multiple-Choice Backstory

For those unaware, Cyberpunk originally started as a tabletop roleplaying system, not unlike Dungeons & Dragons. Making your own character, including their backstory and motivations, is a vital part of the Cyberpunk experience, so it makes sense that Cyberpunk 2077 would have at least some degree of emphasis on the same. You may be playing a character named V no matter what, but who V actually is depends largely on you.

In addition to the obvious aspects of character creation, from general appearance to spec’d stats, the game also allows you to choose one of three backstories for your particular V. You could be a Streetkid, having grown up in the back alleys of Night City, a Nomad used to traveling the surrounding deserts, or a Corpo employed as an Arasaka counterintel agent. All three of these lifepaths eventually lead to you being a runner teamed up with Jackie, but the way in which you meet him vastly differs.

Additionally, your chosen lifepath can have small knock-on effects on the rest of your playthrough. These include some minor quests, special dialogue options, and unique character interactions. Whether or not you choose to pursue these is, again, up to you. Personally, if I successfully made it out of the Corpo lifestyle, I’d never want to go back, and wouldn’t want to talk to anyone who’d want me back.

1 Elden Ring

A Tarnished of No Renown

The premise of Elden Ring is that, after spending a long time being banished from the Lands Between, the Tarnished are called back by the Grace of Gold in the hopes one of them will become a new Elden Lord. The Tarnished are an entire society in themselves, though, so in addition to all the heavy-hitters Gideon Ofnir and Goldmask, there is a veritable army of literal who's. You know, like you.

The intro of the game makes it clear right off the bat: you are a Tarnished of no renown. Nobody’s ever heard of you, nobody knows your name, you haven’t done anything particularly noteworthy, and you’re maidenless to boot. Your created protagonist can be pretty much anyone and come from pretty much anywhere. You could be a muscular warrior who battled alongside the greatest heroes of the world’s wars, or you could be a completely naked wretch who probably just showed up because everyone else was.

No matter who you are or where you came from, though, all are equal under the Two Fingers. With the right weapon and some training, anyone could become Elden Lord. That’s the entire reason the Roundtable Hold exists, to help ensure someone becomes Elden Lord, no matter who it may be.