Post
Your character conveniently can't remember anything, which is a surprisingly elegant way to align player and protagonist.
The amnesia trope gives the protagonist memory loss at the start of the game, so they know as little about the world as the player does. It's narratively convenient -- every piece of exposition feels natural because the character genuinely needs it explained too. It also creates an immediate mystery (who am I? what happened?) that pulls the player forward. The trope gets criticized for being overused and lazy, but when it's done with intention rather than convenience, amnesia can be a powerful tool for exploring identity, unreliable memory, and the question of whether you are who you were before. The key is making the amnesia itself thematically relevant rather than just a tutorial justification.
Example
Planescape: Torment elevated the amnesia trope into high art -- The Nameless One has died and lost his memory thousands of times, and piecing together his past lives IS the game's central narrative. In Soma, the protagonist's confused state mirrors genuine philosophical questions about consciousness and identity transfer that the game explores.
Why it matters
The amnesia trope persists because it elegantly solves a fundamental game design problem: how do you make exposition feel natural when the player is new but the character should know things? Understanding why it works (and when it doesn't) reveals a lot about the challenges of game narrative design.
Related concepts