In any case, I'm out there for a while, and I get to thinking. Back in the 8 or 16-bit days, almost every other game getting released had some character that wasn't human. There was so much creativity in terms of what teams could think up as the star of the show (read: game). There were buttons, hedgehogs, robots, opossums, heck even worms became main characters back in the day! That's not to say that there weren't games that featured human protagonists, of course there were, and will most likely always be.
What I'm trying to get to is that in this age where photo realism is the main goal, the idea of a character that isn't human in a AAA title is just really hard to come by. Instead of showcasing their creative talents, all the people working on huge games, for the most part are spending their time squabbling among themselves over who has the strongest grip on human anatomy. If you want to find a creative protagonist, you've got to go into indie territory.
I think that's also part of the reason why independent games have such a huge following today, they showcase the kind of creativity that you just can't find anymore walking down the aisles of your typical big chain store. The big thing in AAA titles is not what kind of creature we can play as, but instead what race the character(s) is/are. I'm not saying that there shouldn't be any more human (or in-game lore equivalent) protagonists, but where is the creativity? There are just about limitless things that we could take the role of, yet we seem to be just self-centered enough that all we want to do is be ourselves. What's up with that?
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