64Digits

Silent Protagonists? Y/N? [Kilin]

Posted by Castypher on Oct. 21, 2009, 11:38 p.m.

So yeah, I haven't been active on this place for at least a year now. I've jumped by once every few months to check on things.

So hello for the time being. Hopefully I'll see more of you guys on Messenger and such.

To the content:

So, this poll is asking for the opinion on a silent protagonist. For those of you who don't know what a silent protagonist is, please resort to slapping yourself in the face.

A silent protagonist is a lead character who doesn't talk. Not one word. At least not while you're playing him.

An example of this is Zelda games, or for the more crazy gamers *cough*Zane*cough*, the Mother series (Ness, Lucas, and all the other playable characters in the games).

Flint in Mother 3 would not talk while you were playing him, but he would talk when you were playing Lucas or another character. In essence, it's still the silent protagonist design.

A nonsilent protagonist responds verbally to confrontations and conversations, making him less a part of you and more his own character.

So here's the deal. I've been working on my own game, Legend of the Dark Moon (working title) for quite some time now, and I've been paying special attention to designing the main character.

So let's hear your thoughts. Please state your vote and your reasoning behind it. Help me out here.

A. Keep the lead character silent:

- He won't talk to other characters, but he'll respond with emoticons. The idea is to make your character more a part of you, since the game is a do anything deal anyway.

B. Let the lead character talk:

- Although you'll feel less in control of him, he has a mind and opinion of his own, giving you something to watch as he develops based on your choice of action.

I might make a female protagonist sometime in the future, just to please everyone.

So make your choice: A or B. Please remember to explain your reasoning.

Thanks for your time, and hello to all those I know.

EDIT: What the hell is this "Old Bean" badge?

EDIT2: How the DEVIL are we above 15,000 users? I haven't been gone THAT long.

Comments

Ferret 15 years, 3 months ago

The only time I feel that a silent protagonist is okay is if you never see the main character (like an FPS)

Kamira 15 years, 3 months ago

Now that I think about it, there ARE a lot of games with them. Halo ODST, Pokemon, Metroid, Mario(kind of), Zelda, Elder Scrolls…

Cesque 15 years, 3 months ago

I never liked silent protagonists. I don't agree with the suggestion that it makes the player more involved with the game - at least not when the game is heavily storyline-driven. You may claim that silent protagonists are impersonal representations of the player, but in most cases (Freeman, Link, Chrono) they're just a speech-deficient character with an otherwise specified personality - you can't really choose what to DO, so why not let the character choose what to SAY at least, or at least have him state his motivations?

So yes, you may say the game is about what you do, but in almost all cases it is not - you can't really have Freeman (not in HL2 at least) turn the side during Breen's speech or at least severely mess up with the rebels, you can't really have Link flip Zelda off, and you can't really have Chrono pick any course of action on his own… so why not bother giving them their own voice rather than having them dumbly nod and follow whatever happens around, which I find rather in conflict with the whole "hero" thing?

The games where you do get to choose what to do usually include speech, and giving a character an individual personality is not the opposite of letting him decide on a lot of matters (cf. most old point-and-click adventure games, when it comes to dialogues at least).

Of course, there are games that did the silent protagonist right, like GTA3. Not only was he (as later revealed, ie. retconned) a legitimate mute, but it gave him a bit of a psychopathic side, and some of his gesticulations were hilarious (ie. entering a yakuza boss's garden and trying to bow in greeting, only to get screamed at for incompetence). Portal is also good in this aspects, considering that the silence of the protagonist may be both the result of isolation and the sole fact that it doesn't make sense to speak to a heartless computer anyway.

While we're at it, your avatar sucks :P

Castypher 15 years, 3 months ago

Quote:

While we're at it, your avatar sucks :P

Tell that to DesertFox. Then give me a reason to change it at the very low frequency I visit this site.

Anyway, I think you're missing the point here.

The idea of the silent protagonist is not to make it seem like he's completely out of your control. In that sense, it *does* make him more a part of the player.

This doesn't mean that the character has to be mute. That seems like a rather lazy way to do it.

If the Mother games don't pretty accurately use the silent protagonist method, switch to the games where you can have a choice on what you do or say.

Example: Fable games. Your character never talks, but everything you do earns you a temporary reputation which has no relevance to the story.

Quote:

The only time I feel that a silent protagonist is okay is if you never see the main character (like an FPS)

Now that's awful; it's like giving you a reason not to have a character at all, just a floating gun shooting random monsters. It makes absolutely no sense for NPCs to talk to something that even you can't see.

On a more comic note, why give NPCs the privilege of seeing you, but not give the more powerful player the same privilege? Sounds like a nasty game design tactic to me.

For the record, I'm not being stubborn to everyone's opinion. I asked for them and their explanations, so I'm giving a decent argument. Thanks for the help though.