The Batter


 * Not to be confused with BattLer Ushiromiya.

The Batter is the player character of the role-playing game Off, created by Belgian developer Mortis Ghost (real name Martin Georis) with soundtrack by Alias Conrad Coldwood. He appears as a baseball player who uses a bat to whack enemies senseless, and has a stoic and terse personality. The Batter has only one objective: to "purify" the world, and will stop at nothing to complete his sacred mission. Even though he's the protagonist, he is aware of the unseen soul that controls him - aka you, the player.

Off was originally made in the French language, and was released in 2008 to critical acclaim and positive reception among players mainly due to its unique visuals and atmospheric music. The game is known for garnering a large fanbase on Tumblr - and all the shit that's associated with the site such as obnoxious fans and gay fan arts - but its relatively old age and the emergence of newer, more popular indie RPG games has somewhat lessened this association.

Play the game before you view this; the game is fairly short and is best experienced "blind" Off's gameplay mainly employs block puzzles and a simple turn-based action combat system. The game's main objective is for Batter to travel to each zone and purify them. It's later revealed that defeating the Guardians of each Zone (boss enemy) will render it "fully purified", turning the zone into a silent, colorless, and lifeless place.

After traversing the game's four Zones, the Batter moves on to a special final zone called "The Room", which consists of six chapters ordered in reverse (5-0). At the end of the zone, he encounters Hugo, a small human child who is his son and creator, and defeats him in an unavoidable one-sided fight where Hugo doesn't even retaliate.

The Batter then comes across a switch, but is stopped by the Judge; at this point the player can choose between two endings: if the player sides with the batter and defeats the Judge ("Official Ending"), he will turn the switch OFF, thereby destroying the universe. If the player sides with the Judge ("Special Ending"), the Batter becomes the final boss where he takes on a monstrous dinosaur-like form. Should the batter be slain, the world will stay intact but lifeless except for a few inhabitants, prompting the Judge to say "hence nothing remains except for our regrets".

Tournament History
The Batter rose from relative obscurity to becoming the ultimate champion of the board's King of /v/ character tournament in 2021 thanks to a combination of teamfagging, tourney lore autism, and mountains of OC art; by the end of the contest the Batter received the highest-ever number of entries in the /v/alhalla booru with 250+, accounting for more than 20% of all entries in the site. There's also the precedence of the board electing an indie game protagonist (Recette) as that year's Queen, who also won because of a concerted effort of anons producing tournament-related fan arts for her.

Gallery
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