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Melody Amaranth from Super Lesbian Animal RPG

The main protagonist of a recently-released RPG Maker title that has spent many years in development and has received great critical reception.

Melody is a bisexual trans girl beastfolk resident of the small town of Greenridge. At the start of the game, she has recently entered a committed relationship with her girlfriend and childhood best friend, Allison Goleta and has become a paladin, type of healer that gets their power from a strong belief in something. At the start of the game, the player can choose whether this faith comes from nature, confidence, or the power of love. She soon enters a comedic and dramatic adventure across her home island to save the world from the threat of Javis, a glitch-based reality-warping wizard with a VHS tape for a head.

The game's creator, Bobby Schroeder, is also an overweight bisexual trans woman, and wanted to have her game's player character embody traits that are cute and positive but are seldom found in video game protagonists, including being fat.

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Expect two new entries soon! The last few months have given us two great indie games with fat protagonists, Melody Amaranth and Peppino Spaghetti.

(PS Suggestions and submissions are still open! Would appreciate some pictures of fat soulslike player characters and info on Sam from Get In The Car Loser!)

E: Three actually! Forgot about The Gourmand for a minute.

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An update!

Hi! I realize this blog has not been updated in several months. The reason for this is simple: I need you help!

If you can think of a fat protagonist in a video game, let me know! Tell me more about the character! Provide images! Character creator protagonists are highly encouraged!

I also have a few potential future entries but I don’t have enough information:

1. I would love to include something about the player characters of FromSoftware’s games but I don’t own any of the games, so if someone could submit images of the various character creators showcasing the body shape sliders I would very much appreciate it.

2. I want to do an entry on Sam, the protagonist of Get In The Car Loser!, so if someone could help fill me in on her personality I would appreciate it. I have some information just have having played the early game but I would like to play more so I have a more complete understanding.

In the meantime I will try to think of more potential entries. Bear with me if a couple of them are joke characters.

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The Sole Survivor from Fallout 4

Fallout 4 has an infamous reputation for it’s weak writing and limited narrative freedom compared to its predecessor, Fallout: New Vegas, but even so it has a much more developed character creator, allowing for wider range of faces and body types.

The Sole Survivor is, as their title suggests, the sole survivor of a failed vault experiment. Their vault had them and their neighborhood (including their spouse and child) cryogenically frozen. This was halted by interference by The Institute, a secret organization of scientists who threaten postapocalyptic Massachusetts and use it as a breeding ground for their experiments. The first half of the main story deals with them seeking out Kellogg, a mercenary who killed their spouse and kidnapped their son, Shaun.

This character creator would be carried over into Bethesda’s next Fallout title, the even more infamous Fallout 76.

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Mae Borowski from Night In The Woods

The protagonist of the famed 2017 narrative adventure game about late-stage capitalism’s effect on small-town america.

Mae is a 20-year-old college dropout who returns to her hometown of Possum Springs, and comes to realize how different her town is than how she saw it as a teenager. She spends the game hanging out with her friends while trying to solve the mystery behind the disappearances plaguing her town.

Mae struggles a lot with self-image. Between being unemployed, a college dropout, her reputation for having hospitalized a child as a girl, her mental health issues, her shortness, her childish personality, and her weight, she has a lot of things to dislike about herself. Early in the game, before going to a party in the woods, she stares into a mirror and thinks about herself and her body. It’s possible for the player to choose more self-affirming dialog options, but she still has a lot of problems to work through.

Surprisingly, for as much as the character is a “hot mess” and how much of the game discusses this, her weight is never made a joke. Many find comfort in this. It is a common practice among fan artists to draw her with more visually clear heaviness.

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Sam from the Sam and Max series

While slightly debatable as a video game character given his origins in comics, Sam is nonetheless an iconic point-and-click adventure game protagonist of a series that popularized the trend of “episodic” video games in the late 00s and early-to-mid 2010s.

Sam is a private investigator (or “freelance police” as he and his partner Max prefer to be called) who is regularly hired by an unseen police commissioner to investigate strange and surreal cases. While he and his partner revel in violence and the unethical, when it comes to the games they take a more relaxed approach that involves irritating suspects and puzzle solving, especially when compared to Max. Whether ACAB applies to them is debateable, as they technically aren’t police, but are certainly bastards.

Sam is overweight, and unfortunately this is a subject of jokes at his expense., especialy in the latte half of the Telltale series of games. Nonetheless, he and his partner continue to be some of the funniest game protagonists of all time.

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Coach from Left 4 Dead 2

One of the survivors from the Left 4 Dead 2 campaign, Coach (as he prefers to be called) is a georgian high school health teacher and football coach whose life is thrust into chaos due to the Green Flu epidemic that turns people into zombies.

According to his backstory, he was a college football star in his youth, but had his career cut short due to a debilitating injury. However he was able to use his Physical Education degree to land himself a teaching job at a high school in his hometown of Savannah where the starting campaign takes place.

Despite the life-threatening situations he gets thrown into, Coach is optimistic and has a big heart. He represents a sort of everyman role, and does his best to get along with his companions, Nick, Rochelle, and Ellis. He is also a huge fan of local legends the Midnight Riders.

His weight is admittedly a source of comedy, but it fits along well with his general “everyman” archetype, presenting a kinder depiction of the average overweight American.

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Wario from the Super Mario Bros series (along with Wario Land and Warioware)

Shifting gears to a character who is much more of a joke than the previous entries, Wario can be considered the “evil Mario”. Although in less games and with even less of a backstory, Wario feels like more of a character.

Wario is a treasure hunter and the CEO of Warioware Inc. As a “darker”  version of Mario, he is fatter, obsessed with collecting treasure and gaining riches, and embraces in the grotesque. He is also much stronger, and seemingly unkillable.

It does not needs to be explained how coming up with negative traits and having “being fatter” as one of them is fatphobic, but many overweight people find a sense of kinship in his character and have reclaimed him.

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Mario from the Super Mario Bros. series

Mario needs no introduction. The ur-video game mascot, Mario has appeared in a wide variety of games, from platformers, to RPGs, to racing games and puzzle games.

Over the years Mario’s backstory has changed from being an italian-american plumber from Brooklyn to seemingly no backstory beyond what appears in the games, given his mascot-like nature.

It admittedly is rather strange and silly in how this very simple, very famous character is probably one of the most well-known overweight video game characters whose body isn’t a joke. However that isn’t to say this is the case with other characters in the series. Perhaps because his design and presence is so ubiqitous, it’s very easy to forget this.

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Karnov

Jinborov Karnovski AKA Karnov is a recurring character in Data East’s game library. His exact backstory is unclear, but he is a fighter and strongman of central asian origin. He originally appeared in the 1987 platformer arcade game of the same name (which would later be ported to the Famicom/NES). He also appeared in Fighter’s History (as the final boss) and its sequel Karnov’s revenge (once again as a playable character).

He is an unusual character, but does not seem to be a joke character. His exact body type can also vary across depictions, but there is an emphasis on strength.

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For our first character creator entry, The Boss (AKA Playa) from the Saint’s Row series

The Boss is the leader of a gang known as the Third Street Saints. They are a reflection of the players of open-world crime games: violent and ruthless, but having a strong sense of humor and playfulness.

In the original game they are an initiate into the gang. They are a silent protagonist, save for a few lines typically said at the climax of one of the mission storylines.

In the second game onwards, they are the leader, and despite massive setbacks are always able to rise to the top. Additionally, from this point on, The Boss becomes much more talkative and the series puts a large emphasis on customizability. The Boss can have a surprisingly wide variety of body types, including overweight ones, as well as a selection of potential voices. This is reduced to a degree in 3 and 4 due to technical limitations, however it is still possible to make your Boss fat.

At the time of this entry, the 2022 game has not been released, but promotional material has put further emphasis on customizability, including the somewhat out-of-touch tagline “Self-Made”.

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For our inaugural entry, Lady Love Dies from Paradise Killer

Lady Love Dies is a member of the Syndicate that controls the extradimensional island known as Paradise. Prior to the events of the game, she was an investigator who was exiled when one of the island’s “sequences” was destroyed due to her being manipulated by demons. She is brought out of exile when the Council rules over the island is murdered.

The game employs a mix of first-person platforming and visual novel-style dialogue trees. Although we cannot see her in first-person, she is always present during the dialogue.

In the art book for Paradise Killer, the game’s creator, Oli Clarke Smith notes ”We knew we wanted to create a character that goes against the normal video game female body shape. My partner [Rachel Noy] is a plus-size woman and she never has any representation in games.”

Rachel Noy notes “I'm pretty tall and overweight, and I've often said to Oli it would be really nice to see my body shape being represented in a game but not have it called out as part of a joke.”