Top eight soft boys in video games
What is a soft boy, you might ask? Unlike their f**k boy counterparts, a soft boy usually presents as a non-threatening, friendly dude who rejects most of society’s typically masculine norms.
While the majority aren’t seeking anything in return, there’s a special breed of toxic soft boys - basically f**k boys without the good hair but with equally shite patter.
Plenty of soft boys have appeared in video games, usually with the sole aim of doing a good thing for someone - usually a woman, but not always - in the hope that they might earn their affection or at least a quick glance in their general direction.
With Animal Crossing: New Horizons releasing soon, it’s the perfect time to discuss the top eight soft boys in video games.
Top eight video game soft boys
Mario
The original peach chaser, Mario is a strong contender for the most dedicated soft boy out there. He’s rescued the Princess from way too many castles and loses his mind after a quick peck on the nose. Luigi, on the other hand, strikes me as a bit of a foot man.
Link
Similar to Mario, Link has rescued his Princess in several different scenarios and represents the oblivious soft boy, wherein he thinks he’s just galavanting around doing good things when really his endgame is that quick embrace in the closing moments.
It’s quite telling that he gets friendzoned repeatedly by the Princess who really just wanted to get the f**k out of that dungeon or wherever she was being held, as opposed to getting laid by a dude in a unitard.
Stardew Valley
While you can play as an extension of yourself, the male protagonist in Stardew Valley is definitely a soft boy. You are literally giving your wannabe love interest vegetables in the hope they’ll marry you. Imagine doing that in real life - handing your crush carrots over and over, waiting for the day they’ll suggest you join them on the farm to make some co-op mayonnaise. You deviant, you.
Animal Crossing
Unlike Stardew Valley, you can’t romance anyone in Animal Crossing. Almost everyone is friendly and sweet towards you, and you can befriend everyone, but relationships are off the table. You can pretend you’re in a relationship if you want but that’s as far as your soft boy tendencies will take you.
If you think about it, everyone is a soft boy in Animal Crossing. If they were Twitter soft boys, they’d definitely reply almost exclusively to women and tell them how much they value their friendship, even though they’ve never met. They’d probably also call people “friendo”.
Master Chief
Unlike most of the choices so far, Chief represents a non-toxic soft boy. Yeah, he risks a lot to try and rescue Cortana and there are many fan theories about their “love”, but unlike Mass Effect 3, there’s no sexy robot body he can screw. Half the time he’s doing his best to follow orders and save the world like a good boy, the rest of the time he’s practically ghosting everyone by remaining mostly silent.
Final Fantasy 15’s four good boys
Let’s be real; Noctis and his pals are all soft boys. One cheers you on, one feeds you and makes dad jokes, one will go to the ends of the earth to protect you and the other is Noctis, who can’t see the forest for the trees if the forest is Lady Lunafreya’s lady bits.
In my opinion, Gladio is the softest boy. As the saying goes: he protec, he attac, but most importantly, he always got your bac.
Geralt of Rivia
When he’s not being distracted by endless side quests and attractive sorceresses, Geralt is a big ol’ soft boi. Whether you romance Triss or Yen, we see a real sensitivity, cluelessness and vulnerability in Geralt that everyone bar himself concludes he can’t feel on the account of being a big bad Witcher.
He borders on being toxic soft boy, though, as he attempts to have a threesome with Triss and Yen and shags his way around the Northern Realms in his poor attempts to woo Yen back. Still would, though, so maybe he’s a soft boy/f**k boy hybrid of some kind.
Garrus Vakarian
I was tempted to go with Wrex, as he’s a real soft boy for Tuchanka and Eve, but Garrus is the original Mass Effect soft boy. Despite being a C-Sec officer and eventually a high ranking General in the Turian hierarchy, Garrus is a bit of an idiot when it comes to romance.
What starts out as a journey to expose Saren’s betrayal and lies becomes a series of bad one-liners, weird attempts at flirting with your superior officer and watching vids to understand what it is human females want. Even Mordin chimes in with a suggestion about not ingesting Turian j**z and a warning about chafing, which is more than you’ll get from your regular GP.