Silent Protagonists: The Tiresome Blank Slate

[Ketzal]

So, recently I've been trying out a couple of Dragon Quest games on my DS. Right off the bat, I will say that I like the series and find it enjoyable. It's not perfect, though, and I have some grievances with the couple of games that I've played.

Some of those grievances are minor in all honesty, but then there are problems that I just can't get over. One of those being the silent protagonists.

If there is one thing that I've seriously gotten tired of lately, it's the standard freaking mute character in an RPG setting. Now I'm not saying that it happens in every RPG I've ever seen, but it definitely happens enough to really chap my hide. Why is there such an interest in making characters that don't give a word of dialogue throughout the whole damn game? Why make it so we can't hear them explain something that's going on, or let them comment about a serious event, especially when it impacts them personally?

Now I'm not saying that silent protagonists are a bad thing period. I had a lot of fun with Skyrim, for instance, role-playing as a number of different characters with their own morals and goals within the realm that I was playing in. The number of side quests and characters and companions and guilds pretty much gave you the tools to make your own story, whether it involved the central conflict or not.

In that situation, a silent protagonist definitely works. But what about a game that's wanting to tell a central story, one that doesn't deviate from a main narrative nearly as much as games like Skyrim does? When that happens, I expect the game to have events and characters that keep me invested, that make me want to keep following that main story to its end and see what happens to the protagonists.

But when the protagonist can't talk or even display any manner of emotion? That is a serious problem.

It's fine if the developers want the player to still be able to put themselves in the shoes of the hero, to make their own conclusions and have their own reactions. But how much does that matter if it has no input to the story? I forgave Dragon Age for doing this because there were a lot of different decisions you could make when playing as your character, even with them being a blank slate, and it contributed to how the story played out. But in games like Dragon Quest 9? Nope, sorry. If you didn't like your boring bland oatmeal of a character and his decisions (or lack thereof), too bad. That was just how the story was playing out.

This really frustrates me when moments happen in the game that are downright idiotic. For instance, you have to gather a certain item in DQ9 for the main story, and at one point you have to get one of these items from a stuck-up princess that is ruining her whole freaking city's water supply by sitting in a giant bath place all day. This is already making me hate the princess, but whatever, I just need to get the item I need for my quest. Well, she promises to give you the item if you find her pet lizard. Sounds good. Annoying, but whatever.

When you finally find the lizard and return it to her, you expect the reward, right? Nope! Not only does she say that she won't give you the item in question, but that she will also DESTROY the item in order to make her next bath even better.

I'm sorry, what? THIS is a scenario where I have no say, no decisions? THIS is a situation that my character doesn't react to, doesn't scream in frustration, doesn't even give a damn frown? WHY?

I have a quest, I want to get things done, I want to see the story continue, but this isn't a part of the damn story! This is a roadblock that is meant to lengthen the section of the game, something that just means I have to run around like an idiot just because my character has no means of reacting to the situations before him/her. I really wanted the character to do something in this situation, but no! You have to have a freaking fairy side character make all the reactions for you, and it's only through her suggestion that you actually do something about it and get the damn item for the quest.

I'm getting too rant-y here, so my TL;DR point is this: silent protagonists suck in a game that's trying to focus on a central narrative. They're not bad in general, they work for more open world and sandbox stuff like Skyrim. But when a game has a story that it wants to stick to, I feel like it needs a main character that has a personality and reacts to the situations given by the story. Wonder Bread Mute Hero is not going to keep me invested all the way through, and that's a real problem when half of what keeps you interested in that particular game is the freaking story.

[Nuff]

Rant all you like no one can hear you, you're a silent protagonist

[Insomniac]

Okay I admit, that was funny as all get out, Nuff. My take on silent protagonists...It's okay if none of the characters are voiced AND the protagonist has dialogue. Or if he/she is the ONLY character in the game, MAYBE. But in a game where EVERYONE ELSE has a voice? Unacceptable. And I'm sorry, but I cannot put myself in the shoes of the slagging Dragonborn, or of Link, or of Gordon frak-mothering Freeman. I cannot put myself in the shoes of any of the great heroes of the world or whatever that most silent protagonists are. I can MAYBE put myself in the shoes of a Vault Dweller from Fallout, but I don't even particularly ENJOY Fallout, at least not Fallout 3 (which is admittedly the only one I've played). There are exceptions though, if the silence is justified like in New Vegas where you survived the minor injury of being SHOT IN THE FACE. And even THEN you still have fragging dialogue! This...This is just...BAH!

[tony1695]

It's a throwback to when it simply couldn't be done, due to hardware limitations. It continues nowadays because, in the case of the Dragon Quest, nostalgia, or with other games needing to get more voice actors to do lines. And the last thing the developers want to pay for is some voice actor to come in, do lines, and then have customers never hear the guy because they happen to decide to play the female version of the protagonist. And because people would surely complain about the guy they got in to do the voice, things like 'fake accent' or 'he sounded pretentious', not having any voiced dialogue makes it so much easier.

[Insomniac]

It's a throwback to when it simply couldn't be done, due to hardware limitations. It continues nowadays because, in the case of the Dragon Quest, nostalgia, or with other games needing to get more voice actors to do lines. And the last thing the developers want to pay for is some voice actor to come in, do lines, and then have customers never hear the guy because they happen to decide to play the female version of the protagonist. And because people would surely complain about the guy they got in to do the voice, things like 'fake accent' or 'he sounded pretentious', not having any voiced dialogue makes it so much easier.

I personally consider that last bit to be a copout on the part of any developer who uses it as an excuse, and a damn shameful one. There are a plethora of amazing professional voice actors out there. Ask any fan of anime or western animation. Hell, look at Jennifer Hale, who's voiced literally dozens of video game characters alone since the mid 90's, or Jen Taylor, who's had nearly as many game roles going back even before her role as Cortana in Halo. There are so many amazing voice actors out there that saying it's 'easier' to do silent protagonists is just a plain, bold-faced copout, especially in games where everyone else has a voice, and some of those games have given us some truly iconic characters other than the main.

[Lief]

It's certainly cheaper and less time-consuming to do the whole silent protag thing.

Take Skyrim, for instance. To voice the Dragonborn they'd have had to have a VA voice hundreds if not thousands of lines. That's a bit much. Especially since half of them may never get heard anyways. And then you've gotta do it again with a female VA?

[tony1695]

It's certainly cheaper and less time-consuming to do the whole silent protag thing.

Take Skyrim, for instance. To voice the Dragonborn they'd have had to have a VA voice hundreds if not thousands of lines. That's a bit much. Especially since half of them may never get heard anyways. And then you've gotta do it again with a female VA?

And don't forget that each race has a specific accent on top of that. So, 20 VAs at a bare minimum, and that's before taking into account things like being able to change how old the protag is, which would also affect how they sound.

[Ketzal]

It's certainly cheaper and less time-consuming to do the whole silent protag thing.

Take Skyrim, for instance. To voice the Dragonborn they'd have had to have a VA voice hundreds if not thousands of lines. That's a bit much. Especially since half of them may never get heard anyways. And then you've gotta do it again with a female VA?

But like I said, a silent protagonist DOES work in that scenario. The scenario where I hate a silent protagonist is in Dragon Quest's case, where there is a centralized plot without any real dialogue options outside of the standard yes or no. Hell, they wouldn't even need to hire any voice actors since everything is done through text in that game! In that case, it's just laziness and/or for nostalgia's sakes, which I could frankly do without.

[Schrodinger]

It's a throwback to when it simply couldn't be done, due to hardware limitations. It continues nowadays because, in the case of the Dragon Quest, nostalgia, or with other games needing to get more voice actors to do lines. And the last thing the developers want to pay for is some voice actor to come in, do lines, and then have customers never hear the guy because they happen to decide to play the female version of the protagonist. And because people would surely complain about the guy they got in to do the voice, things like 'fake accent' or 'he sounded pretentious', not having any voiced dialogue makes it so much easier.

There's also the idea of "Player Avatar" where a player will project onto a character because the characters is left undefined. Now there are times when a character does have a defined personality such as the case with games like the Metro series or the objective logs in Dead Space or the Mementos in Bastion. In these cases we can glean information about the character but because they have no face and no voice. In my examples Artyom doesn't speak during gameplay, the Kid has no voice and no name, and Isaac Clarke didn't have a face until the end of the first Dead Space and wasn't voiced until the sequel so the player is left to fill in the gaps and in doing so becomes the proxy by which the player interacts with the world. Instead of the player merely acting as an outside force driving the characters to the narrative conclusion the player is immersed in the universe and experiencing the story along side the characters.

[Insomniac]

It's a throwback to when it simply couldn't be done, due to hardware limitations. It continues nowadays because, in the case of the Dragon Quest, nostalgia, or with other games needing to get more voice actors to do lines. And the last thing the developers want to pay for is some voice actor to come in, do lines, and then have customers never hear the guy because they happen to decide to play the female version of the protagonist. And because people would surely complain about the guy they got in to do the voice, things like 'fake accent' or 'he sounded pretentious', not having any voiced dialogue makes it so much easier.

There's also the idea of "Player Avatar" where a player will project onto a character because the characters is left undefined. Now there are times when a character does have a defined personality such as the case with games like the Metro series or the objective logs in Dead Space or the Mementos in Bastion. In these cases we can glean information about the character but because they have no face and no voice. In my examples Artyom doesn't speak during gameplay, the Kid has no voice and no name, and Isaac Clarke didn't have a face until the end of the first Dead Space and wasn't voiced until the sequel so the player is left to fill in the gaps and in doing so becomes the proxy by which the player interacts with the world. Instead of the player merely acting as an outside force driving the characters to the narrative conclusion the player is immersed in the universe and experiencing the story along side the characters.

That, right there, what you mention at the end. Immersion. If everyone else is talking, a silent protagonist takes me out of it, breaks immersion completely. It reminds me that I'm playing a game, and takes away from the overall experience because of the complete breakdown of immersion.

[Ketzal]

Instead of the player merely acting as an outside force driving the characters to the narrative conclusion the player is immersed in the universe and experiencing the story along side the characters.[/color]

That, right there, what you mention at the end. Immersion. If everyone else is talking, a silent protagonist takes me out of it, breaks immersion completely. It reminds me that I'm playing a game, and takes away from the overall experience because of the complete breakdown of immersion.

Agreed!

And that's the thing, is that games have so many different ways of immersing the player. Sandbox games do it by giving players an ungodly amount of freedom with how they interact with the established setting, while some RPGs do it by taking the player through a story centered around a hero or group of protagonists.

I love both methods of immersion, but some game design choices can really take away from the immersion. It's not an easy balance to establish (you could end up making a really annoying main character, for instance), but I do feel that some effort needs to be given to do that, and some games just go the safe (and mute) route.

Or hell, I'd be happy if they were just smarter about how they did it! Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga is one of my favorite games, and I loved the bros in that game despite them being semi-mute. They still acted and reacted to a ton of situations in the story, and that was often what made the game so damn funny and enjoyable.

[Schrodinger]

It's a throwback to when it simply couldn't be done, due to hardware limitations. It continues nowadays because, in the case of the Dragon Quest, nostalgia, or with other games needing to get more voice actors to do lines. And the last thing the developers want to pay for is some voice actor to come in, do lines, and then have customers never hear the guy because they happen to decide to play the female version of the protagonist. And because people would surely complain about the guy they got in to do the voice, things like 'fake accent' or 'he sounded pretentious', not having any voiced dialogue makes it so much easier.

There's also the idea of "Player Avatar" where a player will project onto a character because the characters is left undefined. Now there are times when a character does have a defined personality such as the case with games like the Metro series or the objective logs in Dead Space or the Mementos in Bastion. In these cases we can glean information about the character but because they have no face and no voice. In my examples Artyom doesn't speak during gameplay, the Kid has no voice and no name, and Isaac Clarke didn't have a face until the end of the first Dead Space and wasn't voiced until the sequel so the player is left to fill in the gaps and in doing so becomes the proxy by which the player interacts with the world. Instead of the player merely acting as an outside force driving the characters to the narrative conclusion the player is immersed in the universe and experiencing the story along side the characters.

That, right there, what you mention at the end. Immersion. If everyone else is talking, a silent protagonist takes me out of it, breaks immersion completely. It reminds me that I'm playing a game, and takes away from the overall experience because of the complete breakdown of immersion.

Like I said, it's an idea. A rather old fashioned one now. I've been seeing more and more people push against this theory of game design because it doesn't add anything to the narrative. As I stated before, Isaac Clarke was unvoiced in his debut game but was voiced in the sequels which fleshed out his character instead of leaving him a cipher. Now Issac could emote and interact with other characters, though he mostly kept silent when alone, and this allowed him to have agency in the narrative. Now he could make plans and come up with objectives on his own rather than rely on someone else to tell him what to do next. It's a better way to tell that story.

And that's the thing, is that games have so many different ways of immersing the player. Sandbox games do it by giving players an ungodly amount of freedom with how they interact with the established setting, while some RPGs do it by taking the player through a story centered around a hero or group of protagonists.

I love both methods of immersion, but some game design choices can really take away from the immersion. It's not an easy balance to establish (you could end up making a really annoying main character, for instance), but I do feel that some effort needs to be given to do that, and some games just go the safe (and mute) route.

Or hell, I'd be happy if they were just smarter about how they did it! Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga is one of my favorite games, and I loved the bros in that game despite them being semi-mute. They still acted and reacted to a ton of situations in the story, and that was often what made the game so damn funny and enjoyable.

Excellent points.

[Envy661]

I want to make a game where none of the main characters talk, and they all react to each other with head-bobs and hand gestures.
Everyone else in the game talks. All NPCs and some monsters talk, but for the main characters? No. Head-bobs and hand gestures all around.

Picture it like this:

Old Man: "I have a quest for you".
*Protag stares stoically into the old man's eyes.*
Old Man: "I need you to wipe out a bandit nest".
*Protag gazes seductively at his love interest*
Old Man: "These bandits have been harassing our town for nearly a year now, and the empire does nothing to stop them".
*The protag and the love interest undress each other with their eyes. Cheesy romance music plays in the background*
Old Man: "They are the remnants of the old empire, yet the current regime doesn't wish to do anything about them. This is CLEARLY IMPORTANT TO THE MAIN PLOT OF THE GAME".
*The protag and love interest completely disregard everything the old man is saying while raping each other with their eyes, standing perfectly still 5 feet away from each other.*

[Insomniac]

I want to make a game where none of the main characters talk, and they all react to each other with head-bobs and hand gestures.
Everyone else in the game talks. All NPCs and some monsters talk, but for the main characters? No. Head-bobs and hand gestures all around.

Picture it like this:

Old Man: "I have a quest for you".
*Protag stares stoically into the old man's eyes.*
Old Man: "I need you to wipe out a bandit nest".
*Protag gazes seductively at his love interest*
Old Man: "These bandits have been harassing our town for nearly a year now, and the empire does nothing to stop them".
*The protag and the love interest undress each other with their eyes. Cheesy romance music plays in the background*
Old Man: "They are the remnants of the old empire, yet the current regime doesn't wish to do anything about them. This is CLEARLY IMPORTANT TO THE MAIN PLOT OF THE GAME".
*The protag and love interest completely disregard everything the old man is saying while raping each other with their eyes, standing perfectly still 5 feet away from each other.*

This. This is my frustration with silent protagonists put into words much better than I ever could.