#tmosth is not gonna pull an Undertale with 'actually Dr Pepper is named Barry and uses they/them pronouns because they prefer them'

[coralchoral]

Oh yeah also my problem with the player character of TMoStH is because they have some of the same pitfalls of the player character of Dream Daddy: a Dad Dating Simulator.

The character is incompetent in a way that was surely fun for writers to write but not so much for players to play. Every choice presented is effectively either 'the thing the game wants you to do and the thing worded slightly differently with no material effects' (culminating in astronaut/grocery store), 'protag is incompetent but other characters get to play off of it in interesting ways' (consider marrying into the royal family), and the equivalent of 'Glass Him' (offering to take Vector's order and being sternly rebuked for teasing a hungry man when you can't actually serve food WITH THE CHARACTER WHOSE WHOLE JOB HAS SO FAR BEEN ESTABLISHED AS "THE MICROWAVE GUY").

There's also a couple of moments where the player character doesn't have knowledge of something that the player almost definitely does (the identities and some history of the entire sonic squad for instance) and learns this information over the course of the story- but sometimes there's a disconnect as to what. For instance, Barry the Quokka doesn't know who goes by 'The Ultimate Lifeform' but the non-digetic image of Shadow the Hedgehog appears anyway, even as the internal monologue asks 'could there really be someone here who goes by that name?'

To me, this game should have had Tails as the player character. Sure, the tone would be Different (and the 'but thou must' of leaving Sonic to die would have to play a bit differently), but the dissonance between player and player character is easier to handle the less the player invests in character creation. Tails is his own man who we already know and like, and seeing his perspective is already an interesting prospect. Dr Pepper the Quokka might be their own person, but we named them with a degree of self-insertion as the intent, and when they go off the rails it's the tiniest bit frustrating.

Alternatively, just give the player character a canon identity and have us step into their shoes for our brief tangle with the Sonic Squad, then move on. I can accept that 'Barry the Quokka' will not always follow my commands to the letter, but I expect better of Dr Pepper and get constant secondhand embarrassment.