Arknights' Protagonist 'Doctor' Only Gets 7% of Story Screen Time — Players Roast: 'That's WAY Too Generous'

A gacha game running for five years, and its protagonist only shows up in 7% of the story? When this data dropped on NGA, the question of whether Arknights' (aka 'Porridge'/粥) Doctor (Dokutah/刀客塔) even counts as a protagonist blew up into a full-blown debate.

The original post shared data showing the Doctor appears in roughly 7% of the game's total story content. But here's the plot twist — the comments section wasn't outraged that the number was too low. They were shocked it was even that HIGH. One player flatly said '7% is way too generous,' while another quipped, 'Wait, it's not 0.7%?' One veteran roasted: 'The Doctor is literally just a camera. Zero combat ability. You just sit there watching the writers run geopolitical simulations across all of Terra's factions.'

A deeper dive into the methodology revealed even more damning context. One commenter noted: 'The OP said it counts scenes where the Doctor is PRESENT — so scenes where the Doctor is there but other characters do all the talking probably count too. If it's just the Doctor's own dialogue making up 7%, that's already insanely high.' In other words, the Doctor spends most of the story as a silent bystander watching other characters steal the show.

The discussion quickly spiraled into the Doctor's identity crisis as a character. An ex-player who quit ages ago asked, 'Has the Doctor shown their face yet? Are they male or female?' The answer: 'Nope, still a mystery.' Another player added, 'They haven't shown up in Arknights, but did appear in Arknights: Endfield,' while a lore theorist dropped: 'The Endfield Administrator is probably a genomic clone of the Doctor. The OG Doctor is presumably sitting on the toilet somewhere, just logging in whenever called upon' — a cross-game headcanon that had everyone dying laughing.

One player's take basically summed up the entire thread: 'Of course it's true. This is exactly why Arknights' story has zero immersion. They call it an ensemble narrative, but only a handful of medium-length event stories are actually well-written — the moment they try long-form main story content, the cracks show. The Doctor doesn't show up in side stories, fine. But barely appearing in the MAIN plot? That's just absurd.' This nailed the Doctor's biggest identity crisis — supposedly the player avatar, but in practice, even random NPCs get more screen time.