If I gave you the truth, would it keep you alive?

Drowned God is a 1996 PC game that really defies the ability to be summarized, partly because it blends a few genres, and partly because the plot is extremely convoluted and parts of it are obscured by the massive number of conspiracy theories that are 1. true and 2. contradictory even though they exist in the same universe. I'll try to summarize, but chunks of canon are up for debate even within canon.

Zak is implied to be in his early twenties - completed high school, mentioned to be in college still but is apparently competent enough to be writing papers for university publication - and is an archaeology major. He's been plagued all his life by memories that do not match up with the life he lived; his grandfather called them past life memories, but past lives are viewed as a New Age hippie idea in-universe, much like in our universe. Zak's grandfather was both the crazy old man of the family and genuinely a loving, caring grandfather who, upon his death, left his favorite grandchild an artifact called the Bequest Globe, as well as the key to the house his grandfather owned somewhere off the beaten path (implied to be somewhere in the rural Northeast of the United States).

The building is a treasure trove of magical-technology (magitech), complex puzzles, books on a wide array of subjects, portals to four other worlds, talking masks being used by nebulous conspiracy groups to try to manipulate Zak, and just generally a lot of things that don't make sense. Multiple groups contact him on night one to try to manipulate him into handing over all of the magitech within it. And Zak, bless his heart, does not run screaming into the night even though that would be a completely sane response to the physics-breaking architecture alone. He takes the Bequest Globe, his grandfather's research, and not much else and tries to solve the mystery he's been asked to: the mystery of the drowned god.

I play Zak from the midway point of the game, if only because that's when he's still somewhat connected to the normal world. He has parents he calls, siblings the ominous shadowy forces reference, and hilariously, if you take long enough solving a puzzle, pause the game for ten minutes and come back, coffee will appear, implying he either leaves for coffee or brought a whole coffee maker to the mountains with him. What may or may not be the god Baphomet roasts him for eating fast food too often. The Illuminati (who are real but kind of incompetent in this universe) watch him when he's at the bookstore, a line which at least implies Zak is still leaving the building regularly. Once he gets past the halfway point, he becomes a recluse and lowkey starts losing his sense of self. Midway point Zak is just using his fall semester break to look into things.

Pre-game Zak appears to have been a pretty normal bookworm, random memories from his last seven lives notwithstanding. Given his game came out in '96, he was an 80's kid and there's some indication he's not the coolest guy, but he loves his family, was close to his granddad, and seems to have his life on track. He's really only able to get as far as he does in his quest for the truth due to sheer force of intelligence and determination, because his grandfather didn't organize his research and information in any way. But if he has to stay in the same room working out a puzzle for five hours, he will. He's stubborn enough to try and smart enough to take notes and recognize patterns until he makes a breakthrough. He teaches himself basic Gematria and crams Egyptian mythology over a weekend. He's a nerd motivated by curiosity and familial love. At no point does he express any interest in the power that solving the mystery might promise. He is not interested in riches to the point where the shadowy organizations within the game stop trying to bribe him with that because it's so obviously not appealing to him. Zak wants to know the truth for the sake of knowing the truth. He's curious to a fault.

He's also kind of deadpan. The foundation of reality as he knew it is gone, multiple dimensions exist, magic might be real, global conspiracies and secret shadowy organizations exist, the god Baphomet is contained within a mask in his grandfather's basement, and he's just over here going, "...okay, then." He doesn't panic; instead, at some point shit got so ridiculous he stopped reacting to it entirely. How healthy that is isn't clear, but the salient point is that no weird shit any other character could throw at him would make him blink after the fall break he's had. He went sideways in time and played a board game with a reptile man outside of Stonehenge. They had wine by the fire. Weird no longer exists as a concept for Zak at this point.

In the midst of a genre full of sarcastic and smug main characters, Zak stands out by virtue of being humble. He has body image issues, sort of - he really, really hates the sight of his own face as a result of all those past life memories, because it looks wrong to him now. He refrains from making snide remarks to anyone, including characters who do nothing but insult and ridicule him, he agrees with Baphomet when he points out Zak isn't anything special, and he doesn't pretend to know what he's doing. He's not a God among men, and unlike many people who seek magical knowledge, he owns it. He is what he is and more importantly, he's alright with what he is, despite his discomfort with his own appearance. Everyone who references the last owner of the Bequest Globe and, for that matter, prior owners throughout history indicate they're used to dealing with people who use their past lives' knowledge to try to get ahead in life, as well as referencing them as self-important and self-aggrandizing. Zak doesn't have those aspects to him, even in the bad ending where he's explicitly become a worse version of himself. He's not here to save the world because he's some kind of genius badass, he's here to finish his grandfather's research because he loved him and, in every ending, to try to do the right thing, not the thing that'll bring him wealth and glory and recognition.

In any other game he'd be solid best friend NPC material. Instead, Drowned God being what it is, he's instead stuck on his own most of the time. Sadly, that means he's stuck with the memories of seven predecessors dancing around his mind, a cat, and echoes for company.