Identity Amnesia / Video Games

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Identity Amnesia in Video Games.

• After Armageddon Gaiden: All five main characters turn out to suffer from this. They believe they're just regular demons, but as they regain memories of their past lives, they eventually learn that they were a group of human heroes who tried to stop the demons thousands of years ago, but failed and were captured. The main villain turned them into demons and had their memories rewritten in the hopes of making them work for him. It doesn't work though, as even without their original memories they instantly take a dislike to the villain and refuse to do as he says.
• Baldur's Gate:
  • Ysuran, an elven necromancer in Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance 2, forgets that he's a member of the Eldreth Veluuthra, an elven supremacy group that wants genocide against humans, after a magical accident. When his past becomes apparent to him, he swears it off and becomes The Atoner.
  • The Dark Urge, one of the origin characters in Baldur's Gate III, starts their journey having no memories of their past prior to being abducted by mind flayers and must fight off an uncontrollable urge that drives them to murder and bloodshed. By the time of the game’s third act, they would soon discover two truths about them: One, they’re a mortal offspring of the god of murder known as a Bhaalspawn. And two, they’re the true mastermind behind the conspiracy surrounding the Cult of the Absolute and was originally one of its leaders before another Bhaalspawn, Orin the Red, usurped them as Bhaal’s Chosen and erased their memories. Depending on the player’s choices, they may either reject their evil heritage and destroy the cult, or reclaim their place in the cult and plunge the world into chaos in Bhaal’s name.
• BioForge: The protagonist, who managed to avoid going crazy after his Unwilling Roboticisation, goes on a Quest for Identity (and blasting everyone trying to stop him.) His actual revealed identity is one of the random ones, depending on his actions throughout the game.
• Cute Bite: Buttercup has no memory of her past or even that she is a vampire, and has to be filled in on everything and trained by Saule.
• Dark Souls:
  • Dark Souls II: A side effect of the Undead Curse is gradually losing one's memories, starting with the oldest. A group of retired Firekeepers are mildly surprised that the protagonist actually remembers his/her own name. As the game goes on, other Undead that you meet will slowly go through this, some more quickly than others, and even at the start, almost none can remember why exactly they came to Drangleic in the first place.
  • Dark Souls III: In the DLC The Ringed City, the player can come across another Undead by the name of Lapp, who has lost nearly all his memories and has no recollection of who he is (even the name "Lapp" is just an assumed one, he can't remember his real name). Ordinarily, a Purging Stone would offer some restoration, but Lapp claims that even those do nothing for him anymore. If you lead him to the Purging Monument, he'll recover his memories... he is in fact Patches, having survived uncountable ages and lived all the way to the end of time.
• Dead or Alive: The second game features a character named Ein. He is a master of karate, but he doesn't remember his true identity. At the end of the second game, he is revealed to be Hayate, a ninja.
• The player character of Disco Elysium awakens in a trashed hostel room with no memories of who he is (name included). The game itself is two mysteries for the price of one — a murder investigation that also lets you piece together your life and identity prior to the game's events.
• Drek in Diver Down has this. He doesn't remember his name, his purpose, or why he's being chased, which drives most of the plot.
• Divinity: Original Sin II: Justified with Sebille, who is missing large chunks of who she was before she was enslaved with a magical Restraining Bolt, made into an assassin, and stored in a box between missions. If she's in the party, she rediscovers that she's the Prime Scion, who will become a ruler over all elvendom.
• Dragon Age II has a cruel variant of this with Fenris, a bitter fugitive slave who hates the former master who used him as a bodyguard and personal warrior. His earliest memory is of the horribly painful ritual that gave him the ability to phase through objects and erased his previous memories. As it turns out, he was raised in slavery as Leto... and "won" the privilege of being the subject of the ritual in a competition with other slaves. It's implied that he didn't know about the ritual beforehand (he was competing for a boon that he used to free his mother and sister from slavery) but he's still horrified by the revelation.
• Empress of the Deep: Anna wakes up at the bottom of the ocean having forgotten that she's the titular Empress of the Deep Ocean. She doesn't remember her name or how she got there, much less that she has a sister called Pandora.
• Escape from Monkey Island': You have to bonk Herman Toothrot on the head not once, but three'' times to unravel his convoluted amnesia. Not only that, but you have to track down the specific items he was hit by in the first place if you want to cure him.
• Final Fantasy:
  • In Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy VI, both Galuf and Terra awake initially knowing only their names, but nothing else about themselves.
  • Cloud Strife in Final Fantasy VII: Suffering from Trauma-Induced Amnesia and Fake Memories, he has forgotten his own personality, instead confusing his own identity with that of Zack, his late best friend he once looked up to as a role model.
• Fire Emblem:
  • In Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War, the archer Brigid survives the Battle of Balhalla minus her memories, and participates in Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 as the swordmaster Eyvel. If she survives that war, she goes on to regain her original identity after the wars.
  • In Fire Emblem: Awakening, Robin wakes up in a field, absent any memories save their name.
• Rion, the protagonist of Galerians, has no memories of his life before waking up Strapped to an Operating Table. He wouldn't know his own name if other people hadn't told him. This ends up being a subversion — he's not really an amnesiac, but rather a Blank Slate who spends the game "becoming Rion."
• In Gems of War, Ferit doesn't know his own background but hears "whispers" which are probably remnants of his lost memories. It turns out he was a warlock whose memory was wiped by the horror of a thing he summoned, which is why his fragmentary "whispers" know that the planned re-summoning is a Bad Thing.
• A core plot point in Ghost Trick. Spirits often lose their memories due to the shock of death and need details to remember themselves. The main character, Sissel, manages to figure out what he looks like pretty easily upon spotting his corpse but has forgotten his entire past. Detective Lynne even manages to mistake herself for a very much alive Inspector Cabanela at one point. It's also one of the first hints that Sissel isn't the corpse he saw, but a deceased pet cat hidden from his eyesight.
• Invoked by Queen Lili in Guardian Tales; The sole purpose of KAI's state of existence being what it is, is as a failsafe for the event that Kaden's future would eventually morph him into what he is now. How it works, is that the android stores but does not express information regarding the behavior and personality traits expressed by the hero as an adult, before his turn to the 'dark' side, and at the tail-end of every iteration of the timeline, Kaden, as the Plague Doctor, would be factory-reset by Lili and have those old memories from when he was a hero implanted into his brain, effectively resetting his personality to an old, archived copy. The purpose of this is to make him ideal for use as a Champion by the Knight in their quest to defeat the Invaders, allowing The Prophecy to be fulfilled and for the universe to repeat.
• Knights of the Old Republic: This is pretty much the premise of the player character, if intentionally invoked on the part of the Jedi Council.
• In The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, your childhood friend/possible love interest Ilia loses her memory from getting hit with an arrow.
• Manhunt 2 has Daniel Lamb, a scientist in prison with no memories of his life. He's been given help by Leo Kasper, an inmate. In the end, it is revealed that the latter is a Split Personality implanted by Danny himself. By the time Danny woke up in his battle with Leo, he has no memories again of who he is, so Dr. Whyte gave him a new name and address so that no one would come after him again.
• This happened to Zero before the Mega Man X series — we learn in Mega Man X4 that he was an evil and Ax-Crazy Maverick when Sigma first found him, and he lost his memory in the fight, waking up sane and sober. The Bad End of Mega Man X5 shows us what would happen if his Maverick self ever resurfaced, and it ain't pretty (though ironically, he's still pretty calm, just fully committed to evil now). There's been much debate over the years as to which one is the "real" Zero; Word of God has been less than conclusive and the revelations in his own series just muddy the waters more. (He actually gets amnesia again in that series, but keeps the heroic personality. It might have helped that his body was actually a duplicate while his original was occupied by another Ax-Crazy personality.)
• The internet video game database MobyGames has an entire group devoted to this kind of games, listing a hundred games as of 2014.
• The player character of Moonrise wakes up as a werewolf with no memory of their past, their name, or even the fact they're human. The first choices of the game are limited to what a dog could do in the situation. Once their humanity is remembered, the player can choose to reclaim their human life in a Quest for Identity.
• Overlord: The Overlord himself is one of the heroes who defeated the previous Overlord, but lost his memory after taking a nosedive of the nobody-could-survive-that variety. In a subversion on par with the theme of the series, the Overlord makes no efforts to redeem himself or return to his old self after the reveal. However, you can play as a nice Overlord by being nice to others, making good moral choices, etc., which ends up with a popular, merciful Overlord that's evil in name and appearance only, so going that route makes him almost like a good guy again.
• Overwatch: Cole Cassidy began using "Jesse McCree" as an alias when he joined the Deadlock Gang, continued using it during his time employed by Blackwatch, and finally remembered who he really was and went back to his birth name some time after the fall of Overwatch. It's implied that his sense of self had gotten so bad, he was in danger of forgetting about his original identity.
• The Nameless One in Planescape: Torment has gone through this literally thousands of times, such is the nature of his existence — he never ages, and every time he dies (which is surprisingly often), he comes back to life with no memories of his prior existences and with a completely new and random personality. However, the Paranoid Incarnation managed to seek out an expert who was able to diagnose his condition and develop a temporary remedy for it. Unfortunately for the Paranoid Incarnation, the remedy would only kick in three deaths later, long after the Paranoid Incarnation had himself "died"... so the Paranoid Incarnation reacted the way he always does, and in your current incarnation there's no one left in the planes who knows anything about how your head works.
• The fairy-like Riftwalkers in Otherspace are actually the crystallized intelligences of rift-destroyed sapient beings, stripped of their physicality, and thus while they can speak and have unique frames of reference, all memories before that event are permanently gone.
• Pokémon Mystery Dungeon:
  • In the first games, the protagonist wakes up one day as a Pokemon with no memories besides their name and that they were once a human. They were chosen to restore balance to the Pokémon world, but they asked to have their memories removed because they weren't sure they were up to the task.
  • Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers features this too, only this time the protagonist is a human from the future who traveled back in time to prevent the destruction of Temporal Tower and the resulting planet-wide temporal stasis.
• The video game Raw Danger features a playable character named Ivan Kozlov, who does not remember who he is. Unlocking his identity and memory then becomes a game mechanic to drive his story forward.
• A Running Gag in the Reality-On-The-Norm is an old bum living in the alley, who switches to a different identity with every game.
• In Riviera: The Promised Land, the protagonist Ein is a grim angel with the duty of activating the Retribution and, through it, destroying Riviera and the demon threat. At the end of the first chapter, his memories of being a grim angel are taken away to show him an unbiased view of the people living in Riviera and what he was trying to accomplish. At the end of the second chapter, his memories are granted back, but Ein now has a changed mindset and is willing to rebel against his duty to protect Riviera.
• In the "bad" ending of Shadow Hearts: Covenant, Yuri loses his memories due to the curse and lives with Roger thereafter.
• "Hawk" in Shin Megami Tensei II was found in a fugue state one year before the game and has no memories of his past. After the prologue, one of his old friends shows up and reveals that his true name is Aleph, and that he is the Messiah. As it turns out, his lost memories never existed in the first place. Aleph is an Artificial Human only two years of age, and the lead scientist abducted him before Fake Memories could be implanted. Everyone who claims to have known him is either lying or has false memories.
• Shirone: The Dragon Girl: Inverted at the very start of the game. The protagonist, Shirone, wakes up fully aware of who she is, but the ghosts she meets in the castle's hallway are all amnesiac, knowing nothing of who they are or what is their past. As Shirone destroys the memory orbs, the ghosts slowly get their memories back. The ghosts are former employees and soldiers of the castle, who died in the war and got their memories absorbed by memory orbs, devices designed to absorb all the memories from the dead. The other creatures Shirone meets are not amnesiac either.
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: The protagonist is found in the Zone with no knowledge of anything about himself. The only clue about his past is a PDA he's carrying which contains the instruction to "Kill Strelok". He decides to pursue Strelok in order to find out who he is and why he would want to kill Strelok.
• Tales Series:
  • Averted by Luke fon Fabre in Tales of the Abyss. At first it seems like the most played-straight and hardcore example in the series, as Luke loses his memory at age 10 and has to relearn everything about himself from scratch. It turns out he has no memories of himself before age 10 because he didn't even exist. He's a clone of the real Luke fon Fabre.
  • Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World: Because he gets prematurely revived by Marta, Ratatosk wakes up as a blank slate and creates a new identity (Emil) by filling in the blanks as he goes along. His original personality is a ruthless Blood Knight; his new personality is a wussy but strong-hearted Idiot Hero.
  • Sophie in Tales of Graces. She loses her memories twice during the story, and regains them gradually.
• In Virtual Villagers, specifically in the second game, a random event can occur where a villager is hit on the head by a coconut and loses all their memories. The villager's name permanently becomes "?" unless changed, and what happens next depends on the player's input: the villager can even be hit on the head again and either become a genius or lose all their common sense.
• Xenoblade Chronicles:
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Blades are reverted to their Core Crystal state when their Driver dies, and, upon resonance with a new Driver, are born again with no memory of the events of their prior lives. They do retain their knowledge of their names and personal interests, however, and are generally treated as the same person just missing their memories. Brighid even keeps a diary of her previous lives, which seems to confirm that she's largely unchanged over at least five hundred years. The fact that Fan la Norne, known to Mythra from five hundred years prior as Haze, goes by an entirely different name now and seems entirely different is a plot point.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 3: This turns out to be the secret behind everyone's lives. Every single soldier from Keves and Agnus was a person from the original two worlds that merged together; now they are trapped in a cycle of reincarnation and a meaningless Forever War. The only people who we see outside of Aionios are Noah, Lanz, Eunie, and Joran, who were all happy children but are now just more conscripted soldiers who see nothing wrong with fighting and killing forever. And then on top of that, Noah and Mio are the Morally Superior Copies of Moebius N and Moebius M; anyone who becomes Moebius is burdened with all the memories of their reincarnations, but Noah and Mio managed to move on without those memories and even redeem their older reincarnations.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed: Nikol and Glimmer are strongly implied to be Shulk's son and Rex's daughter respectively. Except since neither of them know what parents even are, their fathers have difficulty connecting with them. Last they saw them, they were innocent pre-teen children, but now they're amnesiac young adult soldiers.
• A controlled form of this process is used as an alternative to capital punishment in the world of Xenosaga, erasing a killer's memories and personality and replacing it with a new one that will hopefully be less murderous. Needless to say, this doesn't always work.
• Yummy Breakfast has a variant. Susan remembered her own name but forgot the fact that she is a flesh-eating monster.