Theory: Was Louis the original protagonist?

Louis is definatley one of the main driving forces of the story but you were never meant to play him, nothing was reworked you were meant to create your character from the beginning. The game is similar to god eater in that there is a character who drives the story forward and your character is experiencing the story unfold.

Aw man this is something I've thought about for a long time across various games and franchises so I'mma 'boutta vomit a shit tonne of words at you hold onta ya butts.

TL:DR: Yes Because Voices.

I think this probably happened, but very early on. I don't think this was a post-actual-development change, but rather something that happened during writing.

I also think this is something that has happened in all of the God Eater games as well, as they (GE2+3 at least, I haven't played GE1) also have Standard Dark Haired Anime Dude Characters who seem like the logical Protagonists for these sorts of stories and who the other characters seem like they're written to have the relationships they develop with the player, with these other characters. After taking a wiki-walk to browse some GE1 characters, the set of now four is probably; Tatsumi, Julius, Hugo, and Louis.

God Eater 2 is where I noticed it, though I couldn't quite put my finger on what I had noticed was kinda off. However I noticed that In GE2 our character is almost entirely a Third Wheel between what would otherwise be the obvious Romantic-Savior Relationship between Julius and Yuno. Now, some might say that Julius could never have been the main character because of the Spiral Tree Shenanigans that take up the second half of the game, but that's no problem, because in the original story I suspect that it was Yuno who sacrificed herself, and the second half was now her lover trying to save her. After all, even in the story we got, once the Spiral Tree emerges she is almost completely gone from the story and never has a direct impact on any subsequent events. You don't even unlock her as a Support Character until the Post-Game, after Julius, or her in the original, has been rescued from the Spiral Tree.

Hell, Julius' In-Game Blood Power is even similar to the Player's In-Narrative Blood Power in that it unlocks the limits on the combat power of his allies.

Code Vein is similar. Louis could have been a natural fit. He's got a relationship with several major characters, it would be trivial to write an additional relationship with Jack to give both of them additional backstory, and he is the character who would have the most direct anguish from the revelation that They Are The Queenslayer considering his implied Romantic Relationship with Cruz, a Revelation which has a conspicuously absent immediate effect on our character's personality or, really, any ramifications at all. Literally your partner doesn't even comment on whatever our physical body was doing while we restored that memory, one of the biggest missed opportunities of the game.

As for why this happens, it is not because of Character Customization itself, but rather because of one specific area of Character Customization which GE originally inherited from Monster Hunter which has been preserved in subsequent games and which the only Imitation MonHun/Soulsborne game to have a significant and developed Protagonist, Nioh, lacks entirely, and which is also lacked by other games which allow Character Customization yet still have defined Protagonist Characters who experience development like say the Mass Effect games;

The Ability to select from 10-20 Voices for your Protagonist in a game with Voiced Cutscenes.

After all, this same thing happened to Monster Hunter World, and resulted in the creation of The Handler, so she can have a single voice and speak for our character. It's even why Ghost exists in the Destiny Games, again to have a single voice that can speak in cutscenes for our character.

Because recording the same 1000 cutscenes with 40 different Voice Actors would be Bankruptingly Expensive. The Saint's Row Games didn't even get above ~6-7 Voices across both selectable sexes with a comparatively lighter story, and it (Among other things but I suspect this was a major cause of financial expense) still drove their Publisher out of business.

That's why, although in GE2, 3, and even in Code Vein our character does actually have a part where they speak in something other than the general combat callouts, they're always very brief and at the very end. In GE2 it's literally just a single word, of the character shouting out "JULIUS!!!". In Code Vein its a standard "I will save the world!" type of statement before facing off against the Final Boss and then a gasp of "Io!". In GE3 its actually surprisingly long-winded but I wasn't paying attention to it and couldn't hear it over the combat so my assumption is it basically boils down to my character yelling at Phym something along the lines of "You get out of that Giant Robot RIGHT NOW MISSY or you are GROUNDED FOREVER!!"

Voices are Expensive.

Everyone is wrong. The real protagonist is Io.

I didn't really feel he was more emphasized pre-launch, felt Mia was emphasized more.

We assume we are the main character, but it's false since we are always fighting with Io, Louis, Yakumo, Mia, Jack and Eva. All this people are the main character, the other secondary characters. The main characters follow the story, as opposed to the secondary characters since they are only appearance.

To be fair, the manga uses the default appearance for the MC, and they are their own unique character. Plus the default appearance was used on pretty much all of the promotional material. Louis is definitely one the most major characters in the game, though I think he was probably originally intended to be his own character. Still a neat theory, though.

Through my first playthru I kept shouting in my head "I DONT NEED TO BE HERE" or when Louis talks "Just be the MC Louis!". Really made my role as a character feeling pretty useless. Im just a giant Boss Key the group carries around.

But hey thats what you get for created characters.

If it makes you feel better, we are basically a "supporting protagonist" that helps the group to move through the story

It's actually something of a Japanese thing regarding RPG games (and JoJo, amusingly). The player character isn't the main character, but a crucial supporter of the main character. You are the 2nd most important character because the devs don't want to force the player to be a character that they may not like, so they make the main character's sidekick a blank slate helper which you are inserted into.

Maybe it's the same deal as Witcher III, while you do play as Geralt 90% of the time, the story is mainly about Ciri. Except for here, it's mostly a 60/ 40 split between focusing on the player character and Louis.

Louis was probably not going to be the "original protagonist". In GE3 (made by the same people as Code Vein), there is a similar character (Hugo) who is the 'real' protagonist that drives the story, while the player character is his right hand man. I think GE2 has a similar thing going on as well. It is highly likely that they decided Louis was going to fill in a role like Hugo early on.

I just started the game, so I'm a bit late to the party. But yeah, early game, Louis feels like the MC. And in my opinion, this is due to the silent protagonist trope; This one game design essentially turns your character into a walking MacGuffin.

In Memories of ____ we actually learn he hasn't woken up yet. Karen and Aurora talk about this as soon as you leave the tent. He's definitely the driving force behind the story but you aren't meant to play him. The true protag is Coco, and we're just seeing a vestige of a memory that happened to interact with her at this point.