Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/35777
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

It depends on what you're going for with this. Rather then wondering about how Dave is perceived, you need to figure out what Daves role in all of this is. Why is he tagging along? What is he hoping to accomplish? Why does Bob let him tag along?

Drawing from game examples specifically, you have a similar situation in Final Fantasy X with the Crusaders. They are brave to self sacrificial levels and skilled warriors as well. However, they do not have the powers to defeat their enemy - that is something only summoners are capable of. However, they still have a role - they made it their goal to save as many lives as possible, by at least trying to divert and delay the big bad if they can't defeat it. Ultimately their attempts are futile, but they don't come across as comical or useless in the story.

Now when it comes to gameplay, that's another question entirely. Don't force sidekicks that don't contribute anything to the game part of the game on the player.

That aside, it appears that there is a fundamental confusion on your part regarding the nature of a player character - you correctly observe that ultimately, they are invincible from the _players_ perspective because the _player_ has the capability to start over if he fails. This is _not_ an attribute of the protagonist. This is an attribute of the player. Separate the two. They are not the same. Just because the eventual victory of the player is an inevitable certainty, as is their ultimate superiority when it comes in actually getting things done in the game world, this is not by necessity a foregone conclusion from the point of view of the characters. The protagonist doesn't need to be actually invincible and unique in-universe just because they are special from a game mechanics point of view. If you do make them invincible in universe, that should be a conscious decision on your part of the sake of the story and/or worldbuilding rather than the result of attempting to reconcile story and gameplay.

Original score: 3