Rufus from Deponia is quite a despicable character overall. Searching, evaluating, tinkering, these are the verbs of an adventure game protagonist and the verbs belonging to a salvager. Scrounging around the various environments, putting together the miscellaneous items found, which frankly would be considered junk anywhere else, to create solutions to problems makes a lot of sense in this ludic context. When you pause to think about the behavior that adventure game protagonists partake in, you wonder why no one thought of this before. Both the protagonists of Deponia and Primordia were scavengers and salvagers. Two games last year independently came up with the same profession for their protagonist that I havenвЂ™t seen before. As the events of the story and the environment change, so does the plausibility of standard game behavior in relation to that character. The defined identities of adventure game protagonists hold up only as well as their situations allow them to. For example, Robert CathвЂ™s character is rationalized in The Last Express through the revelation of further details of his checkered past or the addition of new identities and cultural positions for April Ryan to occupy in The Longest Journey. Later adventure games like The Last Express and The Longest Journey would go to extraordinary lengths to explain and rationalize why the standard behavior of an adventure game protagonist would still work in every situation as the game wore on. In the golden age of Sierra and LucasArts, protagonists were more often archetypes than characters. It isnвЂ™t as detrimental a factor in point-and-click adventure games, but many games will go to extreme lengths to validate behavior one way or the other in positions where it otherwise would be inappropriate nonetheless. This disconnect between what the game tells us what the character is like and how the game has us behave is a prime example of ludonarrative dissonance.

And sometimes such an identity enters iffy territory like a private eye taking evidence from a crime scene.

Sometimes this narrative-defined identity fits with your behavior, like breaking and entering as a pirate, but sometimes it doesnвЂ™t, like solving complex word problems as a pirate. We know that, as the player, everything will eventually lead to the goal, but the character shouldnвЂ™t. Even if your actions exist in service to an overarching goal, it isnвЂ™t always apparent how the little things that we do get us closer to it. This is not an identity conducive with most of the professions and characteristics given to our avatar by the game. So, in the standard adventure game, who are you? A thief, a busy body, an interloper, and a problem solver. What is it that you the player do in an adventure game? You break into places you arenвЂ™t suppose to be, you steal things, you combine your stolen goods with other stolen goods, and you generally get in everyoneвЂ™s business, whether youвЂ™re wanted or not.

Who are you in an adventure game? Often you are presented with an identity that matches the world - a pirate, a detective, a college student, royalty - but that identity exists regardless of the actions you take in the game and how they define that character.

Deponia characters