Is the Era of the Silent Protagonist Over? | Extra Punctuation
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- Опубликовано: 22 фев 2023
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Something interesting brought up regarding Dead Space was the dislike of a vocal protagonist in a horror game. Reason being that sometimes the protagonist would respond in horror and shock to something the player had no reaction to, or far worse, the opposite. A vocal protagonist in a horror game kills the mood if they're too vocal, but they also kill the mood if they have no response to something horrifying but respond in shock to mundane things. It's like having a laugh track - it can kill the pacing and makes it feel like the game has parts where it expects you to feel scared and parts where it doesn't, as judged by the protagonist's reaction.
I agree, it's nice that Isaac isn't screaming shrilly at every jump scare or talking about how afraid he is. But the times when he *does* sound scared land pretty well also, like when the game locks you in that tiny room with the Hunter and he's yelling at Daniels to get the door open. I think they hit the balance of isolated horror and talky Isaac very well in the remake!
Or it could kill it entirely by having the character react the exact same whether finding a disc or being attacked by a monstrosity. So out the window with that theory. It's lazy just like Yahtzee just mentioned.
@@aelechko I mean, not really. That would ruin the atmosphere. I love Resident Evil, and the characters are the best part imo, but if I was actually trying to be scared playing it, then Leons odd reactions to things would throw me off. When he lets out a terrified "What the hell?" to an enemy I've already seen, and also to the big boss monster, it makes the impact less.
Those are very good points. But I would like to add, sometimes when non-silent protagonists don't even acknowledge something creepy going on, it makes me feel like I'm going crazy (as in, question whether I am hallucinating or not).
Specifically, the famous scene in Silent Hill 1 where Harry explores the hospital for the first time. After checking all the rooms on the ground floor and basement, he/the player is forced to go to the 2nd and 3rd floor via elevator, only to find each of the subsequent doors locked. Of course, the player knows they've exhausted every door and can't find where to go. But on returning to the elevator, there's now inexplicably a 4th floor button where there was not one before, in a building with only three floors. I think it was more effective that Harry never acknowledged or drew attention to it, because it breaks the fourth wall. The player thinks "Wait... was it always there? No. Right?" But if Harry immediately drew attention to it and said "There wasn't a 4th floor button before!" it would have ruined the moment where the player questions their own memory and perception.
@@elhazthorn918 So all in all, having the protagonist react to horrific or creepy things is, like so many other game elements, a thing that can be done well or done poorly, and it depends on the talent of the designers. Damn, another thing that requires creative talent, sorry Games Industry.
Thinking about Doom Eternal / 2016, it's impressive how much personality they give the Slayer through his actions even though he has like three lines of dialogue across the entire game and two of them are in flashbacks. Stuff like menacingly turning to face the first Marauder even when he could easily have escaped, tauntingly showing the first Hellpriest the soul amulet, or opening a door by grabbing a keycard that's already around the neck of a human scientist and awkwardly dragging him over to the door.
I do love games and stories that do that, stop every once in a while to show how normal people react to the main character/group, it helps showcase the character/teams place in the world and some cases how far theyve come. Call it a projecting power trip thing but i love seeing a character go from being looked down on to everyone shutting up when they enter a room. it makes it clear their actions do effect the world around them not just them in a bubble and shows the infleunce of reputation. Like in Doom Eternal, you are the biggest badass and scary as shit and everyone acts accordingly, unlike in some books and games where you/mc kill half the cartel/ evil organisation and are gonna kill the reast, and then god but people still act like youre a low level erand boy.
The scene where Doomguy is going to remove the power core in Doom 2016 always gets me. He sizes it up, seemingly ignoring Hayden's warnings, and then smashes it. Same with his passing glance to the corpse in the elevator during the game's introduction. He doesn't have to say that he's at odds with Hayden and disagrees with not only his excuses for what he did but also his solutions because just his body language and where his focus is drawn when characters are speaking are enough to convey that.
And what's great is that it's clear that Hayden thinks he can talk to Doomguy in the opening but quickly catches on that he's nonverbal. Instead, he gets an idea of Doomguy's goals(and how they conflict with his) by his actions and the way he ignores him throughout the game. It's very, very good characterisation for a character who historically had zero personality. Also him saving VEGA is another nice way to establish his personality too. Always loved that detail.
@@terminalyuppie611 I just wanted to mention that Doomguy did have at least _some_ personality in the original games, even beyond the status bar face.
The manual for the first game states that he got sent to Mars as a punishment for beating the shit out of an officer who ordered him to fire on civilians, and there's also a bit during one of Doom 2's text screens that mentions how Doomguy, after finally releasing the ship holding all of Earth's survivors, simply sits back and waits for the demons to kill him, content with the fact he saved humanity. He only stands back up and continues fighting after he recieves a message from his fellow marines telling him that they found the main portal.
One of my favorite moments like that is in 2016, the first five minutes of the game when you’re in the elevator, and Hayden is talking about how everything that they were doing on Mars was for the good of mankind. And the Slayer looks at the body of a dead soldier, cracks his knuckles, and punches a terminal which cuts to the title card.
"Do you have anything to say to your creator, before you strike him down?"
"No"
I think the doomslayer works as an example of a silent protagonist since I think his voicelessness adds to his personality. His lack of speaking when he's interacting with someone makes him come off as uncanny like somethings missing. It also jives with his charachter since he always comes off as too focused on his next objective to do anything else even speaking.
Doomslayer an example where we know he can speak (he grunts all the time, and talks before killing the Dark Lord however briefly) he just chooses not to. When silent protags get weird is when they should or would talk but don't.
Not to mention the Doomslayer is actually the original doom marine from all the way back from the first game, so it keeps consistent with the previous games.
The Doom Slayer is characterized not by his voice, but by his actions. Not just in the way he breaks valuable equipment that brought Hell to Mars or how brutally he slaughters demons, but also in his defiant silence to characters like Samuel Hayden seeking to manipulate him.
He's not silent, if you count his expressiveness through body language.
@@sonicfan4511 when it comes to the mention of gordon freeman in this video though I thought I kinda like the fact he's mute and thought about why and I feel like it adds to some like, mystique around the character or something, a mystique a lot of things in half life have I guess, I feel like I'd be kinda put off if mr freeman talked
Stella from Spiritfarer is a good example of modern silent protagonist done well. She could've easily talked, but it feels like keeping her silent as she tends to the dying and allows them to find their peace helped the game's theme and tone (especially considering the ending and the truth learned about Stella at the end).
I also believe that giving her dialogue would have been a distraction more than a boon. I can't think of a single way for her to have dialogue and make me MORE invested in that world and it's characters, even if done well. Her gorgeous animations and enthusiasm for hugs were all that were required for her to express herself.
Probably worth noting that while she doesn't verbally speak to the other characters in-game; she seems to have plenty of things to say in her quest-tracking journal.
Bold artistic decision, but I think it paid off.
Nope, I can't have a emotional moment or be immersed in the story with these characters because they're not talking to the character I'm playing, they are talking at them to inform me of the "player" of their backstory or a plot point.
The problem with chatty protag is just that, they talk too much and speak nothing of substance. If the dialogue is charming and done in a good way it'll have so much more appeal. The only reason ppl hate the chatty characters is because it comes too often and it doesn't do much.
Agreed, spiritfarer remains one of the best games I’ve ever played, and the silent protagonist works so well with it
Absolutely! I really love this game as it is.
Her exaggerated movements and deep hugs revealed her personality very well. I don’t think speech will add much to it.
Also, silence provides room for the players to cultivate their own feelings. This game needs no “Hail to the king!”to guide our emotions. Everyone will (and should) have their own feelings depending on their experiences.
And after all, how would you react to one’s confession about death? You aren’t going to say “Oh that’s sad”, it’s best just to listen with full attention.
Artyom is also one of the weirdest implementation of a silent protagonists in gaming
Loved the part where he got separated from his team because of an accident or something and you hear them over the radio, basically begging him to respond because they didn't know if he was okay or not. But of course we gotta stick to the silent protagonist thing so he...just doesn't answer. Very immersive, totally not jarring at all.
@@Gear3k It's also bizarre because he reads his journal entries aloud during loading screens.
To add to the weirdness Artyom is also a main character from the books where he talks quite a bit.
It's like they would have made a Harry Potter game where Harry is silent.
Especially when you put the DLC Sam's Story into context.
What’s sad is that Artyom’s character in the books is very expressive and talkative. The games fucked his character up..
My favourite example of silent protagonist is Crosscode where the MC, Lea, cannot speak because her avatar' voice module is glitched, and she shows her annoyance to the fact through the game constantly. Best part? At some plot points, the characters themselves get fed up of her muteness, so the silent protagonist plot becomes relevant to the plot itself. It's just brilliant
What's funny is that she's not completely mute, but can only say certain words (yes, no, her name, etc) which leads to funny situations that make me think of Courage the Cowardly Dog trying to explain something.
Not really silent in the way we mean tho, she still answers and has a personality but just can't tall bacuse of plot reasons
It's funnt because in the recent AMA on reddit they said that they had the idea from Okami and tought it would be funny but it ended up being some great disability rappresentation for a videogame
Also PLAY CROSSCODE IT'S REALLY GOOD AND DESERVES MUCH MORE SUCCESS, IT HAS SO MUCH CONTENT THAT IT'S WORTH FULL PRICE
That reminds me of The Journeyman Project. The first game was primitive and could barely manage a few snippets of FMV dialogue. In the second, they added a wisecracking AI sidekick, but he said that his auditory sensors were broken so you couldn’t talk to him, you’d just hit the “comment” or “hint” buttons if you wanted his input. Then in the third, he was basically your voice. There were dialogue trees, but he’d take your answers and expand on them to be more ingratiating to the people you spoke with.
CrossCode is amazing, and I feel that the physical comedy (and drama) of Lea's half-muteness was completely accidental but nonetheless ended up working massively in the game's favor.
What I think is funny about this is that almost from the moment it stopped making sense for memory saving purposes for Link not to talk, they established that he CAN talk. They just don't give him any dialogue because most of the things he'd be required to say are just reiterating plot the player is already familiar with. Hell, we have actual clips of Link "speaking" in Skyward Sword at least, just zoomed out and through a window to give "plausible" reasons the audience can't hear him.
But despite going out of their way in BotW to establish Link as being either selectively mute or almost being under a vow of silence to explain the lack of VA, I think the answer is still that Link remains a cypher. Because that was always the intention of the character anyway.
True. Another thing that Zelda games did after there was enough memory that Link could theoretically talk was give Link a travelling companion that did all the talking for him; ever since Ocarina of Time, Link almost never adventured alone: Navi, Tatl, King of Red Lions, Midna, Zelda herself in Spirit Tracks, Fi; they all filled the silence in ways that, at their best (Midna and Zelda), complemented Link's continued silence.
I really enjoyed Breath of the Wild, but the absence of a travelling companion (Wolf Link amiibo doesn't count) was probably the thing that I missed the most when playing it. Since that game ended on Link and Zelda reuniting and setting out together, I really hoped that any sequel would do what Spirit Tracks did: have Zelda be the adventuring companion. Alas; it seems that Tears of the Kingdom is going to have Link adventuring solo again.
Actually, as someone pointed out in another post: if a character is given text dialog, it's not actually accurate to call them "silent." Because they have dialog, we just don't hear it. And, they're kind of right.
With that realization in mind, actually, Link isn't silent in BotW and hasn't been silent for a few games now. And, this bears out from interviews with the director and the devs in addition to the game. According to them, this was due to a plot point that Link WAS practically silent before BotW takes place due to the pressure of his position but having amnesia allowed him to lighten up a bit because that pressure is no longer there when he wakes up.
Zelda's diary in the game pretty clearly points that out and, furthermore, it really does explain the serious levels of "dad humor" he displays throughout the dialog in the game itself. I mean, I honestly cannot think of a single opportunity to make a pun that he *doesn't* take. LOL.
So, no, Link isn't silent anymore either but, I do believe that he remains un-voiced because of the fact that he's a legacy character. I think it's a case by this point, it doesn't matter WHO you get to voice him.... everyone's going to be unhappy with it. Oh sure, they'll complain that it's just that particular actor but, let's be real, it's going to be just a matter of them picking someone AT ALL.
Hell, look at how everyone reacted to Zelda herself for crying out loud, do you *really* think that's going to be a smaller reaction for Link? 😜
@@dallaynavokan5513 Yes, I think that's the distinction between a "silent" protagonist and an "unvoiced" protagonist. Unvoiced means that they do canonically speak in game (either because they have text dialogue, or because we're picking dialogue options for them), but we just never hear them.
BotW showed us why Link usually doesn't speak.
It's because he's a snarky asshole and I love it.
I remember seeing that Link’s name come from him being a ‘Link’ to the player, so I feel his lack of dialogue comes from Nintendo wanting to keep allowing the player to project themselves. Especially in BOTW with the open ended nature of… everything, locking Link into a personality other than ‘unexpectedly badass’ would’ve hurt the narrative, especially when his awkward distance to Zelda is a plot point.
Love Issac's bucket helmet
It’s perfect; It’s both futuristic and clunky, it works great for the overtly mechanistic aesthetic.
I think the death of the silent protagonist is also due to the sheer volume of AAA open world games. It would feel weird to constantly stare at our character with a distinct visual personality if they didn’t have an actual personality.
It makes sense for established characters that devs base the story around like Kratos, Issac Clarke and Aloy. Less so for custom protags since it implies things like visual personality are less important to that story.
I think that silent protagonists are actively necessary for some games. Especially role playing games such as the fallout series where the entire point is for the player to invent their own character. Something like voice acting would just get in the way of that.
@@arcadeassassin7176 Oh I definitely agree. What I should’ve said was linear narrative, third person, open world AAA games. For me, I like silent protags in choices matter games like fallout since the speaking voice is supposed to be my own, and I care less about what’s being said and more about the effect of what I’m saying.
I'm mildly surprised (and sad) that Yahtzee doesn't mention Freeman's Mind in this EP and the brief trend that it spawned of fan-made machinima series giving voice to the voiceless protagonists in FPS games. Some of the things he says in this video (and has said in past ones) make me think that he's watched FM.
He has watched FM, he mentioned it in the most recent Slightly Something Else when Marty brought up Machinima
I was completely sure he would mention it as soon as he started talking about Halflife but I was struck by disappointment like never before.
He's definitely watched it. Could have sworn he's gushed about it on ZP before, but maybe that was actually with Gabe on Let's Drown Out (I still miss... that whole era, I guess, not Gabe specifically - but also Gabe, specifically).
He mentioned agreeing with creator Ross Scott in a recent stream on something recently, think it was regarding testing legal grey areas in court regarding video games. They totally know each other.
FWIW, I feel like he gives FM a bit of a nod without mentioning it in his original Half Life ZP when he's praising the silent character aspect.
@@rossbatchelor Pardon me but what the devil does FWIW even mean? I‘ve never heard that before.
I think there is a few subsections here like a "Silent protagonist but you're constantly followed around by your assigned jester who will talk to NPC's for you" or a "Silent protagonist except when there is a dialogue tree that clearly shows you talking" or finally a "I am staring at you, emotionless. I will move after you are done talking"
I love Isaac, even as a silent protagonist in the first Dead Space. Most of that is based on character design, and the fact that he seems like a pretty capable engineer who's thrust into a situation entirely out of his league. In Dead Space 2, he's also great in his speaking roles. I'll take him either way.
Personally, I don't understand how one can love someone who never speaks. But then again I like Mario, I guess.
Isaac Clarke communicating with caveman grunts as he furiously stomped his way through the Ishimura’s entire personnel and storage containers gave him all the characterisation he needed.
Honestly I’m more on bored with characters just shutting up unless they have something interesting to say instead of babbling on.
Remake Dead Space have Isaac voice lines, but I don’t think it made much difference.
@@TheOneGreat People loved his outfit in Dead Space 1. Not his actual character, most of which you did not even get unless you went into NG+ for some text logs
@@s7robin105
There is a lot of character to Isaac Clarke even before the text logs and mission "descriptions"
The fact he has a personal stake in this mission, the little grunts of pure rage when you stomp on necromorphs, the nervous breathing as you explore the dark corners of the ship, the visible (if cheesy) reaction to Nicole's reveal, his handiness at handling all the engineering equipment, etc; the fact is that through the game's actions you can communicate bits and pieces of a character's personality.
The suit helps yes, but we need a man inside the suit; otherwise people wouldn't latch unto other silent characters like Samus, Link and what have you.
@@Firestorm6651 word
To be fair J.C going " a bomb !" is one of the greatest moments in any video game and you can't convince me otherwise.
J. C. Denton's completely dead pan delivery regardless of the situation is an artistic peak we are unlikely to ever surpass and I am not even sure whether I am joking.
"Well excuuuse me, princess." - says Non-Canon Link
Still better than Non-Canon Samus
“Oh boy! I’m so hungry. I could eat an Octorok!”
"Oh boy! Smooching time!"
- Also Link, moments before assaulting a royal
@@Roronoa2zoro that made me laugh out loud from how horribly stupid it was.
“YOU'RE NOT WELCOME HERE!!”
Now it's the era of the over talkative MC
Oh, god, in other words, Forspoken.
@@elhazthorn918 also unfortunately Atomic Heart
@@domidoodoo Game would be so much better with a silent protag.
@@domidoodoocrispy critters
@@anubis7457nah it shit. make your character look disconnect
The only thing I dislike about unsilent protagonists is connnnstant chatter. “Smells like snow.” “Dad can we go now.” “What Hell is that thing?”
I appreciated that Forspoken had a Do The Thing Less toggle. I would ask future game devs take it a stop further with a Don’t Do The Thing Beyond What Is Strictly Necessary for Plot or Character Development setting.
At the very least I would like a Stop Side Kicks From Spoiling the Puzzle setting.
Alloy: I think I should pull that lever to open the door
Me: I just arrived but seeing as how you already told me the answer you might as well enter the controller inputs to complete it too.
"Wind's *howling*"
I'm playing through Jedi: Fallen Order, and I think they do a good job avoiding this by having a little droid ride on Cal's back. Now when he's talking out loud, he's just talking to BD-1. And BD-1 can't get annoying either because he only speaks in beeps and boops.
Wind’s howling
Reminds me of something that Valve mentioned in the dev commentary for Half Life Alyx. They originally had Alyx talk quite a lot, commenting on almost everything (you can see this in the gameplay demo videos). Playtesters got annoyed with that, so they cut it back significantly. Now it's limited to actual conversation, very specific story beats, and stuff like "ugh, no ammo" since that's a meaningful hint. Otherwise, silence. More games need to follow that lead.
I understand and approve of the use of silent protagonists when it is a situation like in fallout games previous to 4, where once you engage in conversation the replies are fully written out, so you will read it in your head, choose it and immediately get the response, unlike in 4 where you pick an option based on a single word and hope that the character will say something close to what you assume he would say
"Silent protagonist" is not to be taken literally though. A character with whole selectable written answers is not a silent protagonist. In Games with written dialogue, protagonists who can only answers with yes or no, or exist in a world written in a way that everybody else talks but somehow things work out they don't have to, are silent Protagonists.
Oh, yes. I think Mass Effect 1 pioneered this style of dialogue, and I always hated it, especially since older BioWare games had fully-written player choices.
I recently played through Astral Chain and this is the exact conversation I started having. The game makes you pick between the twins at the very beginning and then the one you pick becomes a silent protag while the other essentially becomes every emotion that you could be feeling. Eventually it comes off like you don't care about anything while the other twin cares too much.
It also created this effect where your siblings but only really cause the game said so. I still wonder what the game would have been like if they had made both characters a character.
Super Mario RPG on the SNES was a great example of the silent protagonist. I loved the way Mario "communicated" in that game
I think the biggest reason some games would choose not to have a voice protagonist, is the tone and emotions. having your character say something IS going to set a tone for them whether you like it or not and in games where the protagonist has a character but the developers still want you to project your own feelings and tone on to the main character. imagine I am playing a game where I am killing hordes of enemies and the protagonist says something like "HELL YEAH", that implies that the developers wanted you to feel excited. now if that line wasn't said at all, depending on my own mood and feelings, I could, say, either be hyped and energetic or fucked up and gasping for air in front of my lap top. if the original developers of DeadSpace intended on Issac being an emotional vessel for the player it would have been out of place for him to shout in fear every time he slices a monster in half while the player is a psychopath who enjoys the smell of blood in the morning and it was one of the things devs expected.
so long story short (or if you don't want to read all that) a voiceless protagonist, even one with an established character, will give the player more freedom to project their own tone and feelings.
I disagree entirely, once you start adding charactization to a character they're no longer a self-insert at that point and thus should have a speaking voice. It only works when the character is truly a self-insert like the Dragonborn
@@YetiCoolBrother my point was not to self insert yourself onto the character but only your moment to moment feelings. it is hard to pull off but having a protagonist with an established character that leaves the room open for the projection of your feelings on to them is very much possible, if you want to do it that is. the reason that this is rarely seen is because they are a bit at odds with each other, to have a character and leave their feelings open to the player. but it is not impossible only situational. I think isaac from the OG deadspace is a 50% ok example.
@@blue3094 What about Ajay Ghale in Far Cry 4? That's a character who has so little character that he's basically still a vessel for the player, BUT he isn't silent. He has a voice, and he sounds like an action hero. When people are talking to him, he says what you the player would think and react with 99% of the time. Conversely, Far Cry 5 had a protagonist with no voice, no character, not even a name. It felt very weird any time an NPC or character would talk directly to you, but you couldn't say anything back. Any scene trying to be emotional or have some kind of a dialogue just fell flat when the conversation goes only 1-way.
And think of Soap in Call of Duty. He's now one of the most iconic characters, but in the first Modern Warfare he's a silent character because he's the player character. If Soap never returned in MW2 and 3, nobody would have remembered him. He only became memorable and likable once he had a face and a voice. MW3 did a good compromise. The player character in that game was Yuri, who would talk in cutscenes, but not during gameplay, which was a decent compromise. But the Black Ops games had no problem with talking protaginists, and were all the better for it.
@@UnchainedEruption well you made some absolutely great example and I think that there really isn't a wrong or right answer here because it was never a question to begin with. it just boils down to what the creators wanted and how much they succeeded in achieving those things. you see I really liked your far cry 4 and 5 examples. I do think that in the case of the far cry 4 having that voice helps the game because it enforces or just perhaps suggests the action tone of the game. you are after all an action hero after all. and in the case of the fifth game it is clear that they wanted to make it so that players can inject 100% of their own character into the game but they completely forgot to make any sort of foundations. so all and all at the end of the day having a silent protagonist is neither right nor wrong, it is only a tool be it an specific one but a tool none the less.
Silent protagonist works well in a sandbox game like Skyrim. Where you can play as a old Norse, a female cat or a teenage lizard and go explore and do random crap.
Not in a sandboxy game that tells a specific story with a defined character.
They're not really silent though, they just don't have voicw acting.
Yeah I wouldn't say that's a silent protagonist, like Fallout 3/NV, speech is a major part of the games, but voicing it would be an error as it railroads what kind of character you make.
Like Fallout 4
@@142doddy its major thing for those games because if they had to put a voice in them , a lot of game's design would have changed..
Voiced protagonists limits options that you would have.
if they have dialogue they aren't silent, even if its text dialogue.
The protagonist of Elder Scrolls Online is "mute" but the dialogue options have a lot of character to do, certainly more than Skyrim. It's less a case of a silent protagonist and more a case of "Choose what kind of protagonist you want to be from a list of options".
Either approach *can* work. The silence of Master Chief is part of the atmosphere of the original Halo. He barely speaks at all in the first game outside of short buts of dialogue in cutscenes. Conversely, Booker DeWitt from Bioshock Infinite would be incomplete without his dialogue. They're both good in the right context.
You nailed it.
I think HL2 works great with silent Gordon Freeman because it really makes for a game that feels oppressively lonely, and rightfully so. Like you said with Halo: atmosphere.
@rockyquartzedm7943 hl2 doesn't work. Silent protagonist is great during gameplay but it gets really bad in some dialog sequences. Especially when other characters acknowledge that freeman isn't responding, but don't think it's weird that he's been completely silent the whole time. It makes them look deranged
Idk man, it worked for me. *shrug^
@@gabrielscoccola5960 Pretty much this. I don't know about half life, but plenty of games with those quiet pauses and the characters stare at you and react even though you didn't say anything is definitely disconnecting. To which you'd probably make a joke about it. A line choice prompt would help with that.
Transistor put a twist on the subject by making it a plot point that the protagonist became mute because of an event in the game intro.
Of course she can still hum, so not completely silent, but still. It makes the ending where she finally speaks feel a little more special.
I think there's still some places where the silent protagonist has a place, Ultrakill I think is a good example because that story shows from the outset that V1 is supposed to be an emotionless mute and a quite literal killing machine so having them talk would run counter to V1's objective of harvesting as much blood as physically possible.
Also there's only like 2 characters that actually talk to V1 at time of writing so V1's kind of in a doom marine scenario anyway.
I think Samus Aran is a good example of a (mostly)silent protagonist nowadays, and also of the transition to allow a silent protagonist to start speaking.
And no, I am not talking about Metroid: Other M. I am talking about Metroid Dread. (Spoilers below)
Metroid Dread conveys vast amounts of Samus's character though Samus's mannerisms alone. The cool collected way she faces threats, keeping her gun trained on things until she can discern if its a threat or not. Her facing recurring boss Krade, and initially sizing him up, then lowering her gun as if to say "Oh, it's only you". Her finally letting her guard down when she comes face to face with a friendly NPC, and for the first time actually looking relaxed for a moment.
But she does speak in this game.
One line of dialogue to that friendly NPC. And it isn't even spoken in English, it's spoken in the Chozo tongue, the language of Samus's adoptive people.
Which is entirely in character for her.
She's usually mute because she works alone, fights alone, and succeeds alone, and if not is surrounded by monster or military or an AI. But when faced with a member of her people, the first she's seen in a long time, she assures them she'll get the job done.
And there's also some furious screaming during the final boss fight.
I don't think silent protagonists are dead. Silent characters can communicate and have character through means other than dialogue, which can often be more interesting. But a quiet character can still speak. It just has to fit why they would choose to speak now.
I think it will come round again. There is a trend, not just in games, but in music and technology where something becomes obselete/old/out-dated and then eventually, there will be nostalgia which leads to it becoming retro and they worm their way back in.
And given that S Club 7 announced a new tour this week, I think this is a pretty good example. Also see Boomer Shooters.
So yes, the silent protaganist will return most definately. If they ever do a Dragon Age Origins remake I think I'll get a bit pissy if they didn't use a silent Hero.
I like the theory of Freeman's silence/anti-social behavior despite his high intelligence comes from him having Aspergers and just being very shy
or he's just, ya know, a mute? a thing people are? feels like people are forgetting thats a real thing
@@Sopsy_Hallow Kind of makes Alyx's (and possibly others') comments seem insensitive in that case.
@@henryambrose8607 Insensitivity can be great fun though, as long as the Freeman is in on it :)
More like nonverbal autistic then? Asperger's would mean having intact language ability in both speech and writing, I think
@@Sopsy_Hallow not only does is it weird as hell to call someone “a mute,” I’ve got some wild news for you about a certain condition that can lead to nonverbal behavior.
I think it still has a place in an artsy or stylistic game.
Undertale technically has a silent protag; despite the fallen human having battle commands like flirt or brag we never actually read any direct dialogue from them, it's all narrated at us for artsy fartsy reasons. Although you could easily argue that the narration implying speech is enough to make them not a silent protag
Undertale protag is more of a blank slate tho..
The protag does clearly speak in at least one instance: when they first reveal their name.
@@Mernom They talk all the time. Toriel gives you a phone, and you can use it to call her and interact.
@@NYKevin100 that's not direct dialog, it's presented as second person narration
It isn't just a character that literally never speaks but also a character we never hear, not just in terms of voice but we never see their actual response or what they say.
We see other characters saying their name but not them.
But this is the point, is it not? We are supposed to project our own interpretation of what did they say and in this version of the silent protagonist this is the point.
One of the strongest impressions that I got from the original Dead Space was the very last scene (SPOILER WARNING)
When you finally manage to escape, Isaac sits in the pilot seat of his spaceship and takes his helmet off. It is very close to a shot-for-shot homage to the end of Halo: Combat Evolved where the Master Chief does the same thing in almost the exact same situation - except instead of not showing us his face and letting the camera fade out as he says an action hero-cliche, the camera pans around and shows us Isaac's face for the first time in the game - and he breaks down into dry sobs. It's a fantastic foil to the Master Chief/Doom Marine-like PC that he's resembled throughout the entire game: a power armor-clad, silent, faceless killing machine who takes the horrors that the game throws at him and (literally) stomps on them. But at the end, we see that he's not that, he's just a regular guy and this experience has psychologically destroyed him.
One of my primary critiques about the remake is that the ending sequence feels less impactful. Isaac looks and feels much less distressed over the events he's just escaped from. That 1000 yard stare and shuddering misery of the original really hit hard.
@Yuri Sonovab plus the way Nicole looked in that scene looked so silly
They should have had him talk in the beginning and then stop talking after the horror starts.
It wasn’t the first time you see his face, a lot of people seem to forget you can spin the camera at the start
@@yurisonovab3892 Disagree. Theres a clear difference shown between the start of the game and the end. He was clean and bright eyed at the starting scene and then when compared to the end he’s covered in oil, blood, and dust. He’s broken in more ways than one. I’m pretty sure he even looked more pale as well.
I love how Metroid Dread subverts the silent protagonist trope by having Samus speak only once in the entire game. At about the middle point there is a long cutscene where you find the only non-hostile being on the planet and he explains backstory and the villains plan and other exposition. He ends his monologue in such a way that you would expect an answer from Samus, but she hasn't said a word the entire game. And then the camera focuses on her, heroic music begins to swell up and right as you're thinking, "Wait, is she..." she talks. It's just two sentences, basic hero dialogue, spoken in a language you don't understand so you need to read the subtitles, but somehow it's enough to get your blood pumping. Sakamoto really took criticism from Other M to heart, sometimes even a bit too much, and it shows.
It's such a badass moment. Plus, it tells a lot about her personality that the only time she decides to speak is to a Chozo scientist, and basically her only active ally in the entire game.
> Sakamoto really took criticism from Other M to heart, sometimes even a bit too much
Some say many issues with Samus' characterisation in Other M weren't present in the Japanese script, or at least not so badly, so I can believe that he could have been overly impressed by the reception. However, I did love that scene, I really expected Samus to just nod or bow.
Did... people not play Metroid Fusion? She spoke plenty in that game. Dread is just overcompensating for Other M's criticisms. That scene where Samus speaks would've been much better had Samus had a more human reaction to Quiet Robe's death.
Also don't forget the part where she screams. You can just feel the pure, unbridled fury in it. Chills every time.
Not just that, but two words in that are spoken in “Chozo”, which because nobody speaks it natively (though it just english but with a new funny words), it keeps a level of ambiguity that would be removed if the scene was in the players chosen language
Atomic Heart certainly made me wish silent protagonists were more common these days.
True
Preach it's so annoying that he never knows how to shut the fuck up which certainly ruins the more atmospheric moments in the game
Came here to say this exact thing
@@jlev1028 this is true. I actually switched over to the Russian audio for awhile and the voice acting is so much better. Don’t speak any Russian so had to rely on subtitles but the tone and delivery sounded more natural
@@Rhyno012345 I would consider this if 1. the text wasn't so tiny and 2. so much of the dialogue occurred durring gameplay
Anyone remember the Soma review where he had the opposite problem of feeling like he was piloting a guy because the dialogue was having an existential crisis while he was using the hands to poke various things?
How in the world did Yahtzee get through this video without mentioning Dark Souls?
Well, it is implied that the Chosen Undead does talk. Almost every NPC line of dialogue in that game starts with them reiterating the question that the Chosen Undead just asked them.
I think Chell from Portal is an example of a silent protagonist done well. There's no humans left in the facility and the only voice talking to her in the first game is a robot leading her through tests and eventually trying to kill her. Along with insulting. I wouldn't have anything to say either.
I think at this point Link's silence is too iconic to change. And by now he's still developed as a character besides being an audience insert.
I'm not so sure about that. I personally love protagonists with deep writing and dialogue who are allowed to express their emotions. Link may have some more context for his silence, but his character himself is still treated as a blank slate. He shows next to no reaction when experiencing his memories, freeing his friends and saving Hyrule in BOTW. That just isn't good character writing and more laziness than an actual stylistic choice. One can't go out of their way to write a backstory and conflict for Link and then neglect to have him show literally anything of it through his own actions. He may not necessarily need voice-acting, (though I would love it if the creators gave it a genuine try at least once), but at this point he should be more than a blank slate considering the context he exists in.
I’d argue the opposite. Stuck out horribly in all of Botw’s actual cutscenes since everyone else was speaking now and the in-game reason for his silence was just stupid.
Link has never felt like a player insert to me either, since he’s clearly his own guy. The second the manual called him ‘Link’ I thought this.
Link spoke in Wind Waker, and nobody cared or even noticed. Link has dialogue in his dialogue options, but people seem to not count that, even though it's him talking as much as any of the other NPCs you meet on the road. Link has a personality told through actions, minor dialogue moments and everyone's perception of him (he's a bit of a dork).
@@LordSusaga Link did not speak in Wind Waker. If Wind Waker briefly exclaiming "come on!" when commanding an ally in the earth/wind temple to move to his location counts, then every noise grunt almost every Link has ever made counts. They don't count, so Wind Waker Link is a silent protagonist.
@@raltor20 Funny you say that, since the name "Link" literally comes from him being the *link* (pun very much intended by Nintendo) between the player and the game, and Link being a silent protagonist is for that purpose: Link being the link.
The reason that Link being silent stood out in Breath of the Wild was due to that game lacking something that filled the silence in almost every other Zelda game: a travelling companion. Ever since Ocarina of Time, Link has almost never adventured alone: Navi, Midna, The King of Red Lions, Linebeck and Zelda herself in Spirit Tracks are some notable examples. The obvious solution is not to give Link a voice, but to give him a travelling companion. I hoped that Zelda would be that adventuring companion in Tears of the Kingdom, but alas; it seems that Link is travelling alone again.
What I like about them giving Isaac a voice in the remake is that he comes up with solutions thanks to his engineering background. Instead of just blindly following whatever instructions are given to him.
And have emotions behind his descent to madness that a space engineer in his 40's can feel being angry and broken by three colossal organizations who took everything from him to the point he actually embraces the marker in the remake ending.
I feel like what many fail to address about silent protagonists (including, to my own surprise, Yahtzee here), especially relating to the Dead Space remake, is that certain plots simply cannot function effectively if the main character does speak. In the case of Dead Space, keeping Isaac mute for the first instalment was justified by the fact that if he spoke a single word during any of his hallucinations of Nicole or talked about her to the other characters (as he does in the remake), the player would inevitably catch on to the fact that he isn't completely lucid and that Nicole is a hallucination.
Perhaps a better example of a similar plot type with a silent protagonist, however, is Bioshock. First thing's first: even without Isaac speaking, Dead Space's twist does get much easier to predict as the plot goes on (mainly through the way Nicole talks to you and the fact that we're explicitly informed that other characters suffer from hallucinations as a result of exposure to the Marker), whereas Bioshock's twist is so outlandish, even by the standards of what you see and hear in Rapture, that it is fundamentally unpredictable. Even if on your first playthrough you caught that moment where you find the corpse of Andrew Ryan's escort and see the flashing image of your mother on the fake family photo, you probably couldn't really tell exactly what to make of it, because 1) the game doesn't go any further out of its way to communicate its meaning until the twist itself and 2) by this point it has already been well established that use of plasmids alters your genetic code thus making you see other people's memories. You had next to no way of deriving from this glimpse that, all along, your character was a programmed zombie, put through expedited growth and psychosomatically conditioned to respond to certain phrases. And of course, much like Isaac Clarke, if your character did speak in response to anyone, in this especially Atlas, it would quite literally have given the game away, as your characters words would probably often amount to something like "Yes, master. I shall obey."
In both Dead Space and Bioshock, the developers were very well aware of the narrative threat a speaking protagonist would pose, but I consider Bioshock the superior example, not only because its twist is better hidden, but also because the character's silence is much more strongly recontextualised after the twist has happened. Once you realise Jack is what he is, you can understand his disinclination to speak, because he was essentially robbed of any human agency at birth or very shortly afterwards. This lack of agency also in turn can make the player think about their own sense of agency (similarly to Spec Ops: The Line) as someone who is controlling this other person with no volition of their own to act upon. I think Frank Fontaine really drives this point home with this line "You can knock Ryan all you want, but the old man was bingo on one point of fact: you won't even walk till somebody says 'go!'" This is almost directly calling out you, the player, either as another puppeteer pulling the strings of this poor slave to make him do what you want him to do just like Fontaine or Tenenbaum, or as yourself being a slave to the game or the characters, doing as your objective marker tells you to do.
Speaking of Andrew Ryan, the twist also recontextualises him as an antagonist. Though we come to know him as this horrible man who says horrible things at great length and has little to no regard for anyone else, the twist manages to place us below even him in terms of human qualities, because as much of an asshole he was and as fond as he was of hearing himself talk, killing him loses a lot of its cathartic value, to the point of becoming bittersweet, because we are now forced to accept that the person who kills him is someone who couldn't even vocalise a thought of their own, much less act upon it, and only killed him because he was commanded to (by Ryan himself, to boot).
Lastly, I also want to point out that the use of a silent protagonist also allows for more wiggle room when it comes to a protagonist's sense of morality. In Bioshock this is exemplified by the Little Sisters, as the options you have for dealing with them are so binary and so opposing to one another yet completely up to the player's whim at all times, that giving the character a voice (which inevitably means giving them a personality that is conveyed through the performance of the voice actor), means risking terribly inconsistent characterisation. The same is true for Dishonored and technically for Undertale as well (in both cases, the protagonists can and does diegetically speak but not in any way that really conveys personality to the player or contradicts any decisions made by the player) but not for Dead Space, as the latter contains no decision-making whatsoever other than how best to kill the necromorphs. Far Cry 2, however, is an interesting case study on this front. Unlike Bioshock or Dead Space, it has no big twist that necessitates a silent protagonist, and unlike Dishonored or Undertale, it has no moral choices that are of any lasting consequence (doing buddy missions is really more of a utility-driven question than a moral one, plus your buddy's reason for offering you their alternative objective always varies from self-serving to altruistic, depending on the mission and who your best buddy is). In fact, the central idea that could otherwise have been saved for a late-game twist, is actually spoken to your face by the main antagonist at the very start of the game. "You had your shot, but now it's over. And since men like you only work for money, you're no longer my problem." Say what you will about Far Cry 2, but this line does more of the characterisation for your own character than any line spoken by himself ever could, as evidenced by the fact that it stays perfectly applicable to any of the people you choose to play as, regardless of where they came from or what their prior experiences were. And by the end, the Jackal gives you a glimpse into the bigger picture as to how people like your chosen character (and people like him) are part of a much bigger problem: how the constant ransacking of an abundantly rich continent leaves its inhabitants perpetually poor. That too is something your chosen protagonist could never have conveyed vocally, because if he was capable of thinking about his own presence in the country that way, he would have left as soon as the game's introduction ended, or never have come at all. It's worth noting that if you pick any other protagonist than Marty Alencar, who was likely the intended default character since he replaces whomever you did decide to play as as an NPC, your journal will describe him as "Loves the action. Not exactly an intellectual." To close this whole thing off: I think a silent protagonist can be a powerful vehicle to the same idea from this quote that is often attributed to Malcolm X: "A man who stands for nothing, will fall for anything."
Didn't expect this to get so lengthy. I apologise, but I hope you found it stimulating nonetheless.
I thoroughly enjoyed this, some excellent points made. I am sorry i have nothing to offer in return, other than I think the silent protagonist, and Link specifically, can also allow for interesting characterisation via comedy, in the vein of silent films, and in a way that would not be possible if the character was voiced.
@@Dagenham_Swish I appreciate the compliment, and I'll take your word on the point you make, because I've never played any Zelda games. I suppose the original Saints Row is a good example of what you mean as well though, mainly because the main character does break their silence on 4 separate occasions, to mixed responses from the supporting characters.
I'm so glad you did this video. Your next video should be about how mapping melee attack buttons to R2 is also outdated.
Kinda surprised Link didn't get more than a nod in this, he's always felt like an outlier in this sense. He's purposely kept silent and designed to be androgynous so that more people are able to see themselves in him, yet has a ton of his own characterization in some of the games. Especially in BotW where we're well past the age of the silent protagonist, he's still a weird half-cipher.
This is why The Luminary in Dragon Quest XI infuriated me. He makes noises (i.e. grunts and grimaces and so forth) so he has a voice but he never talks and always has a zoned out look on his face. There are moments where it's implied he talks and the characters respond like he has, but we don't hear it. The nadir of this is when he and his grandfather have this memorial for his parents. His grandfather is emotional and crying out of joy and sadness as he talks to his departed daughter and son-in-law. It's a touching moment. And then it cuts to the Luminary standing there stoically with no emotion on his face and not saying or reacting at all. It takes me right out of the moment. Another moment is when it's implied by a villain that the Luminary is giving in to despair; but again, this isn't shown on his face because he doesn't emote.
It is just overwhelmingly out of place for a character like that in this game, especially as the main character. He has this backstory and prophecy and yet he has no personality. I get he's supposed to be player-surrogate and "that's how DQ has always done it" (which is a lame excuse BTW), but it makes him stand out in a bad way. The other characters have motivations and emotions and I genuinely enjoy almost all of them. There's no reason for a game like that in this day and age to have a silent protagonist. It just feels lazy.
This is interesting; I think this is one of very few of Yahtzee's opinions that I completely disagree with.
I loved Isaac's silence in the first Dead Space game because, while he was an individual with his own life, thoughts, and feelings, his silence put us in a fascinating state of suspension- he wasn't an empty vessel for the player to place themselves within, but he wasn't entirely his own person, either. Dead Space was obsessed by diagesis; every element of that game was designed to pull you in, to convince you you were there. Isaac talking is an enormous impediment to that illusion- it asserts him as a person entirely separate from the player, with their own thoughts and desires. It's a curb stomp into the fourth wall; it's jarring, and nauseating, and does enormous damage to the otherwise impeccably crafted atmosphere. Silent Isaac is perfect- it completely separates you from your sense of self. The more the game pulls you in, the more you begin to think like Isaac would think, responding viscerally and immediately to the environment; the more you think like Isaac, the more you forget that another "you" exists. At the same time, though, Isaac is just present enough to exist as well. The third person POV places him not out of sight, but in our periphery. We are guided to forget ourselves, and latch onto Isaac as our persona; we become the predefined character. It's a fourth-person game, the player within the character rather than vice versa. And it's not too unbelievable that Isaac would never speak; the few sane characters that he interacts with are either scared out of their minds or seem to see him as more of a repair tool than a person, never really giving him the chance to respond.
I think Half-Life's silence works for a similar reason, though the first-person perspective means that we tend to lose sight of Gordon during the lengthier combat sections. The whole game, like Dead Space, is designed to be as immersive as possible. The world was insanely reactive for a game from 1998; the main character being silent prevents the fourth-wall curb-stomp I mentioned earlier, and enough effort is put into the environmental storytelling in the introduction that we really get a sense of what kind of person Gordon is. At least, enough to latch onto. I haven't played HL2, but from what I can tell interactivity and immersion remain central goals. I also think there's a possible diagetic explanation for Gordon's silence- the whole "nonverbal genius scientist" thing is heavily ASD-coded, which, if true, is a little archaic implementation-wise but I think really does add a new and compelling dimension to his character.
I believe at some point in Saints Row 4, the character says "I was too scared to talk back then" when acknowledging events relating to the first game (where they actually did talk, just very very rarely. I think there are a total of 4 lines).
There's also something to be said of player created RPG protagonists in dialogue heavy games. While they *technically* speak in the sense of the player selecting a dialogue option, the player never hears the words read aloud. This works wonders for the genre since the dialogue options are only limited by the writer's imagination and time.
When you fully voice the protagonist in that kind of game (like in Fallout 4) you are inherently adding limitations to the formula. Now it's not just the writer's imagination or the development schedule that needs to be considered. Studio time and the salary of an extra voice actor (or more if multiple voices are available depending on the complexity of the character creator) must also be taken into account. This is how you end up with limited choices that are all different ways of making the exact same choice.
I prefer them in RPG's where you make your own character, especially if it has dialogue trees. Really voice acting in general hurts those games because it gimps the dialogue to only what the writers feel like getting voice acted, and has to limit what the player can do in case the character only had the set few voice acted lines. I.e. character is set to be captured and interrogated by the enemy but is always set to die no matter how fast the player is because only their interrogation lines got voice acted. Where as in a non voice acted game you could actually save them and have your build and decisions matter.
I'd really love it if RPGs tried to provide more options for the character building. Not insofar that I want more numbers or systems, but rather it would be cool if there were more voices and remarks that fit the type of character you imagine. And that choice of character type, alignment and so on would then also play into the reactivity of the dialogue. It's probably too much to ask, but it would really be neat if games could respond extensively to at least a few character types. I suppose at that point it's much easier to just have a few pre-defined characters instead of letting the player choose.
Same. I like it when there are dialogue options so our character clearly is talking with NPCs and such, but there isn't an actual voice to go along with it. I'm perfectly fine with that and I'll take that any day over characters who don't when to stop talking. Nearly all of my favorite games just happen to have non-voiced characters even if it's clear they're talking to someone. BioShock Infinite is an exception, but Booker also isn't annoying af when he talks and he doesn't talk all the time and make banal observations, unlike some other characters I could name.
I don't know if a game with dialogue trees can really be said to have a silent protagonist. The protagonists of Fallout games prior to Fallout 4 all have plenty of lines they can speak, some really memorable. They aren't voiced, and with very few exceptions they never speak of their own volition without the player's input, but they still speak - a lot, actually. Anyway besides what you said, I also think that giving a player character in an RPG a voice goes quite a lot of the way towards giving them a defined personality just based on their tone, accent, inflection etc. alone, so it's definitely not always desirable for games that want players to be able to play characters of very different personalities and backgrounds.
Even though I also like fully silent protagonists like Chell from Portal, I'd say it's for the best not to get Portal-style silent protags and Fallout-style "silent protags" mixed up, as I think a lot of people might struggle to see the value of the former these days but could much more easily be convinced of the benefits of the latter.
@@diodamke1007 That's actually a pretty good point tbh
@@diodamke1007 For all the things Baldur's Gate 3 gets right, that's something that I think they got really, really wrong. The way PC voice acting is implemented in that game is a really awkward halfway point, where your dialogue with other characters is unvoiced (which I generally prefer for RPGs for all the reasons you listed), but you still choose a voice for your character's combat grunts and exploration commentary. To make matters worse, there are only a few voice options, and they're all pretty samey in terms of accent and vocal quality, which is somewhat worsened by how much flexibility you have in the character creator. Like... I'm playing a big burly half orc with a high intimidation score, and none of the 3 or so different soft spoken British voices fit in the slightest. It just makes it jarring, more than anything. Tyranny did a similar thing, but at least there the limited voice options were all very distinct in terms of both delivery and vocal quality, as well as the general personality assigned to their combat and exploration chatter.
I don't mind the Gordon Freeman angle, he's iconic for his silence at this point, removing it is like removing Superman's terrible Clark Kent disguise. Then there's the meta narrative of the Vortigaunts knowing "something secret steers us both" and "your bright face obscures your darker mask," so while unusual to fit in the narrative, it's an inalienable part of the series at this point. Plus, you can recruit NPCs and press the use key to "talk" in the games so I never bought that he was 100% literally mute in-game.
The hollow knight is another good example of a good silent protagonist, since the themes of emptiness and loneliness are emphasized by the fact that the main character who never says a word.
The Knight quite literally does not have a mouth, they're silent by design in every sense of the term.
Never a "TALK" prompt, only ever "LISTEN".
"No voice to cry suffering."
@@SingABrightSong True though many other bugs talk despite not having mouths.
Sure. But then you also have no idea what the actual plot is for most of the game so any "story" sequence is just white noise. Definitely a good thing that Hollow Knight 2 is going to have a voiced protagonist.
An excellent analysis of something I hadn't even realized deserves one. I love this guy.
considering that like 95% of my gaming time is spent with soulslikes and grim dark metroidvanias, I'm a big fan of a silent protagonist, as it very well fits within that framework - it helps establish the world as lonely and detached
To be fair the protag in Saint's Row 1 _does_ speak like, three or four lines. One at each of the main missions. I think Johnny Gat is the only one who's genuinely surprised
"hope you don't mind Hepatitis"
@@genarozetto4285 IMO that's the _second_ best, both for Johnny's reaction and the buildup of Playa with that shit eating grin.
But the _best_ line is "Bullshit, that's last year's fall collection!" and then _pulling a gun on Luz when she tries to lie about it_
Chrono Trigger was the first time I noticed a silent protagonist game. Unless you count his one line in one of the dozen endings.
It's one of the few MS-Dos/SNES/Megadrive era games where they managed to give the protagonist enough personality to make silent protagonist thing work. When the protagonist of the sequal couldn't shut up with his inner monologues for a second it had me very confused, but I guess it can't be helped since it was a quasi text based game.
Overall I preferred the non silent protagonists of that era, even though the protagonists of the best RPG game series of that era (Realms of Arkania) were silent.
Samus Aran speaking in Dread was great. She gets one line of Chozo, then screams bloody murder at the end. Only made me love the character more.
She spoke in fusion and Zero mission
@@isauldron4337 I didn't know that. Not played those ones. Text only though, I assume?
@@wanderingrandomer Both were GBA games, so yeah, text boxes only.
One good use of a possible talking Gordon Freeman is the Freeman's Mind series on the Accursed Farms RUclips channel. It's a bit funny of how he is portrayed in it a bit.
I personally think it works in games where you create your own character. See Fire Emblem Fates (or even Awakening but Robin wasn't so insufferable). If your avatar character gets their own personality but it clashes completely with your own, it destroys the link between the avatar and the player (in my opinion).
I like the modern style of Zelda where they give Link the opportunity to say the same things in different ways. It makes no difference but at least we still have a choice over how he says things. Of course, this only works in a non-voiced example.
Here's a question: Do all video games need voice acting?
Not at all. It would take away from many of them to have voice acting, or to have a speaking player character. Definitely in RPGs where the player creates their character there doesn't need to be voicing for that character beyond reacting to being hit and such. I'm fine with having dialogue options where the character clearly is speaking with NPCs but there isn't an actual voice to them. That works perfectly.
Voice acting protagonists with dialogue choices is very jarring because the character is just repeating the line that the player already just read; or worse, the devs choose to not reveal the full line and then your character speaks it in a completely different tone than the player intended. Even worse when you got to design your character but the voice breaks the roleplay.
I appreciate voice acting but I don't need every single line fully voice acted, sometimes generic voice cues or no voice at all turns out cleaner and less distracting (and gives devs more opportunities for content). However, only games that don't go for realistic fidelity can vary the amount of voice acting at different situations, so I don't expect AAA devs to stop voice acting and adding dumb quips to every single sequence.
This is why people prefer silence
Definitely not. For one, it basically eliminates the possibility of the solo-developer game. Even if you have the skills to do everything else yourself, the minute you need to voice a character of the opposite sex, you're heading down the rabbit hole of "How the hell do I find a voice actor and hire them?".
I grew up playing JRPG's and they pretty quickly moved away from silent protagonists (like Final Fantasy 2 or Fire Emblem), but they I know modern RPG's like to keep people silent because it helps with making your character a self-insert. That, and it saves them money when hiring a variety of voice actors to read all of your character's lines.
Then you have things like Final Fantasy XIV where everyone acknowledges your character prefers action over words (until later expansions).
With a lot of CRPGs esp. ones from Bethesda, it's very clear your character does speak because you're picking options from a dialogue tree, but you just don't have a spoken voice.
Dragon Quest XI is the only time I've felt really off-put by a silent JRPG protagonist, because they out and out establish he CAN speak in the flashback/time travel whatever sequence and a child version of him speaks just fine. He just sort of gormlessly stares open-mouthed at things in the present because... Dragon Quest.
FFXIV, even back in A Realm Reborn had a mix of dialogue options and a lot of the Legend of Zelda style "Implied Dialogue" where either the Warrior of Light is shown to be speaking without showing exactly what they say, or simply other characters doing that kind of "Slightly restating something that you were implied to have said, allowing you to imagine how you said it." I think for games with custom characters it works well enough honestly as I became very attached to my WoL, and even someone like Link from LoZ has a lot of character despite only ever "speaking" in that specific manner.
Fire Emblem is a weird reference there considering only one protagonist (Byleth in Three Houses) has ever been silent. Unless you're counting Mark in FE7 but they were so unimportant the game can literally cut them out.
@@tendrilartist3609 I am fine with my WoL not actually speaking, but I *do* very much appreciate the increased number of actual dialogue options in more recent expansions
In today's oversaturated media landscape, it is an unbelievable skill to be so interesting that people want to listen to everything you say and want more once you're done. I realized that Yahtzee is such a good writer-presenter that if I accidentally zone out for a while I'll immediately rewind and listen to what I missed, because I'm just that hungry for what he has to say.
Truly a hero in games journalism, a gem of games media in general.
Fantastic work
Hmm, don't know how much I agree with Yathzee here. Sure, I think there can be reason to have a silent protag, be it in helping immersion or to focus on the other characters or even gameplay more. Sometimes you wish the protag could talk but a lot of other times don't, it's tied to the writing I'd say; if the other characters do something very stupid and if my character could solve some stuff by talking to them, then yeah, it detracts from the experience...otherwise, I wouldn't say so
Well, that's exactly what Yahtzee is saying; agreeing that the silent protagonist as a default no longer really works, and arguably never quite did, except under specific circumstances and stylistic tones where it becomes an ideal option
Games like Atomic Heart or Resident Evil 8 Village prove that sometimes a silent protagonist might be preferable.
Play atomic heart in russian english dub is always kinda sukc
You're the one who's cursed
@@BardFromEntry A dead body?!
Also Forspoken
@@alphaenemyplus8376 that's not a game that's just a pile of poo
I do think it works in BOTW, where the dialogue is written so that you can get by with nodding, shaking your head, or in desperate situations pointing at something. Although I think in other Zelda games you're meant to assume that Link responds but we've skipped over it for timesaving in the same way we've skipped over the cheeky piss in a bush.
I'd just like to point out, playa did have spoken lines in the first Saints Row - 3 of them in fact, each one being said at a finale of each gang mission line
In theory, the "silent protagonist" will be completely done within a few years, because the AI systems will be "good enough" that the NPC's will actually call you by the name you give yourself. "Why hello there misterpoopoopants23, welcome to the team!" and "misterpoopoopants23, please put some pants on!", and you will be able to actually speak into your $5 radio shack microphone as though the AI NPC players will understand anything. In practice, these games will be designed around the player not speaking, and ignoring everything but the sentiment given by the human player. If you give an angry response back, the NPC's will tell you to quit being an assclown or whatever.
But here's the other side of the coin. If a game does not require conversations to progress, why have the illusion of choice in one? A game like Mass Effect, where the original version called the player Shepard, regardless of the name entered could be enhanced to actually call the player by their name, and render every line that involves the player name with a TTS voice. The player could have their own AI voice either sampled from their real voice, someone elses voice, or picked from some presets, and suddenly the game no longer has any need for 0.25GB of audio per hour of dialog.
I am honestly surprised he doesn’t mention dark souls at all.
The two cases where silent protags work are A) The usual Self insert where you're supposed to map yourself on your character. And B) to allow you more options for roleplay and personalization.
If your story ends up supplying a ton of characterization for your silent protag, that USUALLY means they didn't need to be silent.
There are some well-written cases that fall into category B (roleplay options) and still supply some framework for the character's personality. Some RPGs and MMOs come to mind.
But in the case of most first person games, if you aren't focusing on self insert or roleplay options... just give the character a voice.
@3:18 Gordon Freeman has a voice. He sounds like Ross Scott from Accursed Farms.
4 minutes in, it occurs to me that this video is a really aimless tangent which is meandering all over the place
Yet also, i don't want it to stop. I wish i could listen to you talk about this for 4 hours
Yeah, it didn't feel convincing. In the end I either like the voice acting enough to not mind or I would like people to shut up. I don't think I have ever run into a silent protagonist where it was more than a minor problem.
The silent protagonist is always a way for the player to put themselves into the place of the main character.
Though it can have the opposite effect as well. In games were everybody talks but the protagonist, it makes the protagonist stand out as someone who can't talk outside of yes and no. Which isn't really the way I view myself, so I can't relate well to them, they become the other you are forced to follow despite preferring to follow literally anybody else in the game.
That was the best take on video game silent protagonism that I've ever heard, back then it might not have landed, but these days it makes sense.
Been watching since early 2010s and I love Yahtzee's unwavering questions about everything, curiosity killed the cat but why did the cat kill himself?
Only the curious would understand he was going through a very tough time after his owner passed away and he was left no choice but
to either find a way to eat the decomposing body, or just jump out the window of the skyscraper to see if he really did have another 8 lives to live.
Ive always loved Gordon Freeman's silence in Half-Life 1 and 2 because it serves his role as the "right man in the wrong place." Everyone lauds him (the player) for saving Black Mesa from the alien onslaught, but he (we) basically keeps accidentally ending up the hero because the game (Fate) just keeps dragging him along. To me its like a meta-commentary on game design. He speaks through his actions, and he never knows where hes going, he puts faith in the system governing him. It works perfectly in tandem with player agency because he doesnt know whats going to happen next and of course neither do we, but the joke is everyone thinks he does, that we do
i like that isaac the engineer, who they brought specifically for his knowledge of engineering, actually gets to be the one to say how to solve the engineering problems now
It's impossible for me to be objective about Zelda games, but if Link is ever given audible dialogue, it will probably bounce off me like a rubber ball and leave a similar sting. Much like in the "Gordon Freeman in Half Life 1" example, I like that we never hear his in-universe dialogue, yet he still has it with other characters and thus still feels like an active agent. And I hard disagree that a character "lacks personality" just because they don't verbalize their exact emotions at the camera in dramatic monologues- inference and interpolation can fill in a lot. (BotW even did the thing of explicitly calling out his pseudo-silent nature, but rather than joking about it, they used it to build character by establishing it as a symptom of severe societal expectation-induced anxiety.) And if a given character has a similar dynamic and it aids in their appeal, then they may as well be silent.
Outside of that specific dynamic, though, yeah, may as well have the character talk if you're just gonna mock the fact that they're not- but, as Yahtz points out, that's more a reflection of poor writing than the silence itself inherently working or not working.
Meh. At this point, Link has been characterized so much that I find it difficult to project onto him. I'm not sold at the in-universe justification for his muteness. If they're going to do everything you mentioned anyway, they might as well run the whole nine.
@Some Bonehead Fair enough on your end, but on mine, still can't disagree much harder on that. But then, I've never projected myself onto Link nor really tried to, nor do I generally do that with any fictional characters, so his bits of characterization never get in the way of that.
I agree; Link being a silent protagonist is a core part of the character much like the green hat and Link being left-handed *(remembers that Breath of the Wild got rid of both of those for no good reason)* okay; bad examples, but the point remains. The reason Link has the name "Link" is that he is the link between the player and the game world (the dev team confirmed as much in interviews), and him being a silent protagonist is part of that.
Incidentally, one thing that past Zelda games usually did to fill the silence was give Link an adventuring companion that would do all the talking (sometimes too much talking in the cases of Navi and Fi). At their best (Midna and Spirit Tracks Zelda), they complemented Link extremely well and became beloved characters. I really missed the adventuring companion characters when playing Breath of the Wild, and I'm saddened that Link seems to be adventuring solo again in Tears of the Kingdom.
This reminds me of the very first fit of rage i had in regards to something gaming related online. It was either a ign or gamefaqs poll for best character ever where the finals were between gordon freeman and link.
Also hooray for a Jak reference
First two games I played were harry potter 1&2 on ps1 and I always enjoyed seeing harry talk in the second game since in the first he was vocally restricted to "caput draconis" and "flipendo"
When you have a game character with a pre-defined backstory and identity, like Isaac, it comes off as just weird and uncomfortable when they don't speak at all. Metro Exodus was also really awkward because of this at times
I never thought so. It's not like I expected him to start talking complex philosophy. It was easy enough imagining (not actively of course) basic responses. In general a lot of stories in games suffer from being unremarkable anyway. Having the voice acting on top of it often just adds insult to injury. Or at least doesn't improve it.
@@burningsheep4473 He had a character and with a lack of a voice for him it makes him come across as a psycho in the first game. He never says anything when he sees his girlfriend who he had no idea if she was alive or not up until the end of the game. It just comes off as odd in a modern horror game, even the resident evil games had voiced characters
@@s7robin105 Yeah, with that story beat in particular it's more understandable, but it wasn't something that they had to include.
@@burningsheep4473 the issue is that we're expected to believe this person who doesn't ever speak clearly has in the past, otherwise he wouldn't have all these relationships and experiences with other people. Silent protagonists really only work in instances where they're meant to be a blank slate, or instances where the character's feelings and relationships don't exist/matter. Skyrim and Doom are probably the best examples of both of these.
@@nyyfandan And then you compare that with fallout 4 where they decided to have a voiced character and it ruined the experience for a lot of people. Just depends on what the game is for me
I feel like the idea of "putting yourself" into the role just doesn't work as a concept, I feel more immersed when the character I'm playing as has a distinct personality and a reason for being there. If "I'm" supposed to be the character then why do "I" keep being forced into situations "I" would never allow myself to be in because I refuse to speak up?
One of my favorite silent protagonist tropes is when the protagonist breaks the trope and starts talking at surprising moments, either for comedic effect or for dramatic purposes. The Kingdom Hearts mobile game has a player-generated silent protagonist whose only line early in the game is introducing themselves as "Hi, I'm [blank]" and then stay quiet for most of the adventure. Then comes the end of vanilla X's campaign, where the protagonist is informed that a friend has a passed away, and when they confront the supposed villain who supposedly killed the friend, the silent protagonist gives this AWESOME speech of defiance and resistance, committing to take them down for their actions.
After that, aside from a quick visit to Aladdin's world, the protagonist continually keeps talking during important conversations, providing an insight to their thoughts and opinions to events, as well as helping propel the main plot forward. When the Union X campaign started, the protagonist was sorta self-rebooted back to silent as they go on more fun Disney adventures in the self-insert style, up until the very end when plot starts happening again and they decide to start talking once more. Which is fine as is, but still doesn't top that epic speech from much earlier in the game.
I love how they did write dialogue for Issac in the remake. Hes always the one to take initiative, the one that comes up with the plans because hes the engineer. Hes never the one being told his next objective its always "I gotta go do this to fix the ship." But he only talks during cut scenes where it makes sense, any time else during gameplay he shuts up, they could've easily wrote him with quipy one liners.
Only time he does talk during game play is specific scenarios, like if you continuously stomp on a dead enemy or if you completely run out of ammo for a weapon, he'll let out a panicked "holy shit"
I want a silent protagonist that is acknowledged as actually mute, maybe even using sign language to communicate.
Breath of the Wild kind-of had that. It's established that Link doesn't talk at all in flashbacks, and that the reason for it is that he basically went mute and stoic as a way of coping with the pressure he was under.
@@matthewmuir8884 that's not mute though, that's just refusing to communicate.
All true, but it would still feel weird if Link started talking. I guess, at least some of the established silent protagonists will stay that way. Hell, it felt weird to me the first time spoken dialog was introduced to any character in the Zelda universe.
Samus' spoke in fusion and Zero mission
Never forget!
Shining Force 3 had an interesting version of this. The main character always replied with "...", yet when you play the other main characters in the corresponding scenarios, your old main char actually has lines, the one you're playing now responds with "...". So it's up to you to fill in the blanks in the scenario you're playing.
I really liked how they did Isaac in the Remake. His silence was always weird to me - I mean (Spoiler Alert) the guy tries to find his girlfriend, then finally finds her in the monster infested hellscape that is the USG Ishimura and then finds out she was just an illusion and the real Nicole is very very dead. All without any reaction or questions? The remake did a great job correcting this. Isaac is now a massive tech-nerd (as he should in his job) who comes up with a lot of ideas for solutions in the dialogue with his colleagues. And *thank god* they also keep him silent, when there's no need for him to talk! He doesn't backseat on the tasks you have to complete and he also doesn't constantly mumble his entire backstory into your ears as he's cutting down necromorphs.
I think Link is still the gold standard of silent protagonists and I really don't think that should ever change even with the rest of the game finally getting VO. People often misunderstand the actual character of Link. He is the platonic ideal of a hero. In BotW you can find Zelda's diary and she describes him as stoic and resolute. He doesn't waste time discussing his plan of action. He knows the action that must be taken and does it without hesitation or complaint. Game Design wise it also lets you take control of his action and while never contradicting the narrative. If i'm not actively saving the princess it's because Link had some other hero shit he needed to do. Aloy really gets on my tits with that one. She can't go five second without reminding the player that there's totally imminent danger and I'm wasting time putting it off. It makes it feel like I'm not so much controlling this hero but dragging her behind me on a leash while the worlds is destroyed. Silent protagonists can serve a rare purpose these days, but, again, the bigger problem is getting the talkative ones to shut the fuck up more often.
Stoic and resolute has nothing to do with whether you can talk to the shop owner or have to rely on their telapathy. It's not based on Links personality, it's a stylistic game design choice. One you are free to like and I'm free to dislike.
He's only the "gold standard" in Wind Waker where he properly expresses himself.
In later Zelda games he's just a bland blondie.
We need more content like this.
There’s a book called The Vagrant by Peter Newman where the main character is a silent protagonist by choice, and the reason is honestly fair and adds an important plot point. More protagonists should be like that where their silence has some correlation to their past experiences.
The first Dishonored is a great example of how not to do a silent protagonist. It's downright silly how awkward Corvo's silence makes things. That said, it's clear that Arkane learned from this because their subsequent games all have voiced protags.
I'd rather have that over how annoying they made the self dialogue in Dishonored 2. I have eyes, I don't need the game to tell me what I'm seeing every 5 seconds.
There's one possibility for why Freeman is silent in Half-Life 2 that I rarely see brought up: perhaps he can no longer speak. He's only alive because of his deal with G-Man - maybe losing his voice was part of that deal, or a consequence of the methods G-Man used. That would explain why people react to his unspoken dialogue in Half-Life 1, but not 2.
4:15 This line reminds me of a sequence from Call of Duty 3. This is a rather obscure reference. Isabel, a member of the French resistance (Maquis) hands you a bag of explosives and tells you to be careful with them. When your silent protagonist says nothing in return, she says "A man of few words. I like that." I wonder now if that line was a reference to Half Life.
I’ve only played original dead space 1, but when I think back to it, I think how perhaps him being silent maybe have somewhat added to the eerie and sort of psychological horror to it. Like, he’s traumatized, like we are, of being in that position in the first place.
Also, if when walking through the hallways and you hear those creepy whispers, he were to be like “…what are those voices??” It’d really shift the sort of horror that that game uniquely produces I think
I prefer a silent protagonist over an annoyingly voiced one. Going one further: I prefer a silent *game*! Make me imagine my own voices, they're always perfectly suited - in contrast to voice acting in many games.
I wonder how long it will take before a game where you're supposed to self-insert as a protagonist has the player generate an AI voice model at the start so the game can deliver their lines in their voice
Honestly? That would be cool, specially if it allows player voice imput so that you become the MC
That is a good idea. For that matter how long until we have an AI natural language chat bot included to generate original npc dialogue?
Not sure how well that would work in helping immersion. If people hear a recording of their own voice, they often feel it doesn't sound like them. Since we don't hear our own voice just through the medium of air waves, but in part reverberate directly through our bodies into our ears.
But I guess if you have voice-creation as part of character creation, you could have the flexibility to make the voice sound like everything, be it what you yourself think you sound, or give them the voice of your favorite youtube game reviewer or whatever...
Cybernetic dystopia here I come! 🤖
@@Sebastian1786 It might not work for immersion as well (unless you had the voice algorithm account for how you hear your own voice somehow, which would be neat), but imagine what it'd do for streamers
Also, they rewrote some of the dialogue to make it seem like Clarke is the actual "man for the job" coming up with the clever engineering solutions, compared to the original's dialogue where the office lady just shouts at you what you need to do over comms this felt a more sensible approach
We can only hope
I hope not. Silent protagonists are great for immersion when the point is to emphasize that the protagonist is the 'link' between the player and the game's world; that's literally the reason that Link from Legend of Zelda has the name Link. We the player naturally fill in the space with whatever we think the protagonist would say.
For Link in particular, Link being a silent protagonist is a core part of the character, much like the green hat and Link being left-handed *(remembers that Breath of the Wild got rid of both of those for no good reason)* okay; bad examples, but the point remains.
It was Skyward Sword or Twilight Princess that got rid of him being Left-handed, so that you could use the wii remote for his sword arm
@@KyriosHeptagrammaton Skyward Sword got rid of it with the excuse of the Wii remote (and it was a poor excuse; they could've easily added a left-handed mode), but Breath of the Wild got rid of it with _no excuse at all._ Aonuma was frequently asked why Link is right-handed in Breath of the Wild, and every single time, he gave a different, nonsensical and contradictory answer.
@@matthewmuir8884 surely the obvious answer is "It's not always the same Link"? This is already well established do I don't understand why he wouldn't lean into it
@@Dagenham_Swish Aonuma, to my knowledge, never used that answer. Here's some examples of answers he did use:
_"The attack button is on the right side of the controller"_ This has been true for every Nintendo console since the NES. It doesn't affect anything.
_"It was a matter of chance that Link was left-handed in the original Zelda game."_ It was not chance; it's well-documented that Miyamoto is ambidextrous and favours using his left hand and loves making left-handed characters, and that he deliberately had multiple Nintendo characters be left-handed, including Link and Bowser Jr.
'It's not always the same Link' might work if Link originally being left-handed was just some incidental thing, but, over the decades, it became a lot more than that: it became a symbol of positive left-handed representation in video games and popular media in general. If you ask people to name a left-handed hero in fiction, the answer given is usually Link, mainly because there are very few other well-known examples in modern fiction, and basically no other well-known examples in video games specifically.
Honestly, I'm willing to bet that the real answer for why Link is right-handed in Breath of the Wild is, "The art designer was used to drawing him right-handed because of Skyward Sword, and no one noticed the mistake until it was too late to change it, so we just rolled with it and hoped no one would notice." Of course, if that is the case, good luck ever getting Nintendo to admit it.
I’d say it’s the opposite I think silent protagonists are gonna come back stronger cause most people are now getting tired of the joke telling and the fact that most of them are becoming more annoying
Something I hate is when people see a silent protagonist, and assume they're canonically a mute. Like Link is so often joked as being a mute, when it's very obvious with the slightest bit of scrutiny that he isn't.
Many times in the series Link is asked a question, you respond, and the NPC reacts... As if you talked. Some of these dialogue options actually have flavor, like allowing you to straight up insult characters.
In a game like Owlboy where the character is canomically a mute, no problems, just don't force it onto the canon when it isn't said.
Thanks!
This guy sounds a lot like Mortimer
Link isn't a silent protagonist, we, as the audience, just skip over his dialogue. That is all.
That makes sense and that's how I always interpreted it, but that still doesn't justify why the practice is still in use today.
@@somebonehead Spelling out implied dialogue, at least in LoZ, would add nothing IMO and only serve to change the experience in a way no one is asking for. Truly silent protagonists are definitely outdated, though.
That still makes him a silent protagonist since we as the audience never hear it. It's like that 'unanswerable' question that actually has a correct answer: "If a tree falls in a forest, and no one hears it, does it make a sound?" The answer is no; it simply makes vibrations that can only become sound if picked up by an ear; i.e. if someone hears it.
@@matthewmuir8884 No it doesn't. Gordon Freeman is a silent protagonist because no one ever responds in a way that implies he said something. Characters speaking to Link, on the other hand, respond in ways that would only be possible if he spoke, e.g. when they ask his name and then say, "Oh, it's nice to meet you, Link."
@@nickprime1116 Definition of silent protagonist: "A player character who lacks any dialogue for the entire duration of the game, with the possible exception of occasional interjections or short phrases. […] *Not all silent protagonists are necessarily mute or do not speak to other characters; they may simply not produce any dialogue audible to the player."*
Well, that sums it up nicely: Link is a silent protagonist; it doesn't matter if he is audible to other characters, since he isn't audible to us.
I like to believe that the link is not mute, he just keeps his mouth shut and gets the job done
I think another good use for voiceless main characters would be something like your fallouts or elder scrolls where even tho you as player are choosing Dialogue for your character to say you dont actually hear them say it so you can project any sort of voice you want on to the character