Renaming Characters

Overview

Many games, particularly from the 2D era of console gaming, allow the player to choose a name for the protagonist, and sometimes other important characters. The name can be chosen from a list, or entered with an on-screen keyboard, usually with a limited number of spaces.

In most cases, the game uses the chosen name in its dialog. Voice acting very rarely incorporates custom names; if the game has a large amount of voice-acted dialog that references the protagonist, a placeholder name like "kid" is often used for custom-named characters, or the lines are written so that the voice actor can omit the character's name without sounding unnatural.