Silent or vocal protagonist?

Anyone who's played basically any game ever made has seen this. What do you think is better? A silent or vocal protagonist? Or both? And why?

I actually grew up in the 80's and 90's where it was a mostly silent protagonist. I have played modern games where the protagonist fortunately or unfortunately depending on the person's POV has spoken. Some of is really deep and thoughtful. It brings more depth to the character and more insight. I think a good example of this is .hack//Gu with Haseo where you can always hear his raw emotions deep in his voice but it can come out subdued and tired when need be. Some of it can be slightly annoying. Like for me Tidus's voice during most of Final Fantasy X because of how overemotional and sometimes whiny it got. Not including the laughing scene, a stark contrast to Haseo in Gu. Then it goes to where it was a gamekiller for me, mostly Mario's voice. And I know that some like Mario's voice, which I won't go to because of spam. Also the reason why I worry about the LOZ series going the same way. And yes, I know people do enjoy both voices and a lot of other ones like this, but my tastes don't, so I apologize if I offended someone.

So I lean towards either, but it has to be a good strong voice without too much emotion. It has to show a good balance to it without going way too far.

 

Lets look at Legend of Zelda. This is a game series in which having the hero be silent is a good thing. It can let you make the personality of Link instead of have a built in one. Other games that have a voice to them though are nice in that it tells a story of a character and how they feel about what has happened on an inner and outer level. Now lets reach the middle ground with Metroid. Samus used to be a silent type bounty hunter and then came Other M. As much as I liked her vocals, most people did not. It just shows that when a series goes though with a certain trend, it usually sticks to the fan base and a small change can upset the balance.

 

People always rip on silent heroes for having no personality, but that's... kind of the point? It allows you to project on them, or interpret them how you please. It leads to some interesting fan art/writings, that's for sure. Think of how many versions of Red exist in the world today.

Some people might look at that and say the developer's making you do the work they should be doing, developing the character and all that, but... eh. They say the same thing about Minecraft.

I like them both, but the quiet ones will always have a special place in my heart. They remind me of simpler times. <3

Plus look at this lil' cutie how can you not love him

 

No matter what game it's designed to be, a lot of people feel as if they're playing a unique role when they step into Link's shoes. It's about more than making excessively simplistic moral choices; it's about seeing through someone's eyes, being implanted in a body in another world, a fantastic world, and being able to interact with its denizens and shape its future. Even if most of the path is on rails, it still instills a sense of power and acute control - and besides, that, the player always has the ultimate choice of quitting the game, leaving the story unresolved.

The reason Link remains silent is mostly for nostalgia, yes, but do you ever ask yourself where that nostalgia comes from? It's not all about blind devotion to tradition, y'know. Maybe there's something charming about a quiet hero, one who lets actions speak for him - and can take any number of actions at any one time. Every experience is different, no matter how many of them are tied to Yes-No prompts or "Pet-Mug-Kill" scenarios.

Aaaand Zelda has all of those going for it. Why are we wanting to change it again?

You just listed several ways voice acting can spoil a game completely independent of the number of good-evil prompts it offers, and now you're saying if you don't have one, you've gotta have the other. ????

I don't think it'd outright damage the series. But it would have to be handled with care. There's a different version of Link for every person who's played a Zelda title; no matter how many options a game offers, that has never been a limiting factor on people's creativity and imagination in shaping the characters the way they see them. The advantage of a silent protagonist is that the freedom of interpretation is exponentially greater; if Nintendo were to remove that, they'd have to supplant something at least as good.

 

OK GOT KH-V BACK

Thankfully I saved this behemoth :'D Well, unfortunately for everyone but me

That's an incredibly literal way to look at it. How many RPGs do you know where you can significantly change the outcome? At best, most western games these days offer you exactly two choices, which are always available to you, impacted little to not at all by any choices made up to that point, and terminating after the decision is made, with no sense of punishment or reward aside from a flashy cut scene or a bored-sounding monologue; and often, it it gets a sequel, it doesn't even matter which of the choices you went with, because they both have the same general result.

You change the way other characters view Link by progressing in the game. You follow him on his journey, one that for its linearity is allowed to be richer and more fulfilling than many RPGs can boast. There is a real and actual sense of change in the environment around you as you perform tasks, solve puzzles, and defeat enemies. Instead of focusing on the destination and how to influence it, it enriches the journey, making every little sensation unique within the parameters it can manage.

And yes, you can imagine yourself in a character's shoes, no matter the perspective. It's not a matter of point of view, but of empathy. That's how other forms of media make the viewer invested in the characters' struggles. You have to make them vivid enough that the player wants them to succeed. Silent protagonists are a little flat in actual personality, but that's usually the only thing about them that's flat; they employ negative space strategically to encourage the players to project whatever aspects they deem suitable, then color that player's perspective by thrusting them into a unique environment. It's an involved process, one that you can't debase just by looking at a particular character involved in it.

No I didn't. I'm saying that that's what it boils down to. It's something that modern RPGs are trying to tell us is so fantastic and so unlike anything we've ever experienced, when really it's just a fancy redressing of the classic "Will you help us on our quest?" question, to which there really is only one right answer. Precious few games have defied this, and not all of them are RPGs; so it's not a point of pride for RPGs specifically, it's not a defense of the formula, and it's not proof that no one is playing a role in a Zelda game.

And it would be a very different experience. Not necessarily a better or worse one, is my point. You're saying we should throw out the old ways because they're old. That's ignorant. We should throw them out if they fail to work, but we should first endeavor to understand why they worked then, how they can work now, and then - if they can't work - how to supplant them without losing more than we gain. It's as true in the gaming industry as in any other: If you toss it out, you better be 100% sure it's garbage, or you'll regret it.

It is fixed in much the way a blank sheet of paper is fixed, yes.

When you introduce elements of personality to a character who was previously open to interpretation, you have to expect they will conflict with how players view the characters to be. It takes a delicate hand not to upset the accepted view of a character like that. It doesn't matter how Link speaks, it's that he speak at all that's a point of contention; the actual element of voice just makes the equation more complex.

So will every RPG character you can name. There's no other way for it to be. That's how games work. That's how ANY work of fiction works. The only way to transcend that inevitability is to interpret the character as you please. This is what makes it a creative endeavor.

"A book, once it is printed and published, becomes individual. It is by its publication as decisively severed from its author as in parturition a child is cut off from its parent. The book 'means' thereafter, perforce, — both grammatically and actually, — whatever meaning this or that reader gets out of it." ~James Branch Cabell

Similarly, a game is in one part the will of its designers and in another part the reaction of its players. Both parts are equally defining in the game's reception, and neither is absent from ANY game out there. The only difference between RPGs and any other genre of game is that RPG developers often get it in their heads that they can come up with better interpretations of a character than anyone else in the world, and lock you into a few distinct paths; whereas a lot of other games dare to let the player wonder what their character's face looks like or voice sounds like, or if maybe the whole adventure hasn't just been some wondrous dream, or something else.

I disagree. Third-person PoV allows a lot more freedom of action and movement, for one; in first-person, everything has to be restricted to a degree, has to make sense from that perspective, or else it's liable to induce nausea. Mirror's Edge is a great example of that - mildly successful, but largely disorienting. It is not possible to perfectly replicate the perspective through which we actually see the world in reality - not yet, anyway. Even if we could, that'd be pretty stressful, don't you think? Not everybody's looking for a cognitive work-out when they play a game. If you ask me, trying and failing to replicate one perspective is a damn sight worse than simply using another perspective, one with different rules and conventions, and making it the best it can possibly be.

Digressing a little bit, but I feel it bears mention that I hate first-person horror games. They're just not scary to me at all. Especially not for the reason you give above. You are the character? No I'm not. I'm just dragging around some nameless putz I can't see and don't care about. You die with the character? No I don't. I just have to watch him fall over and gurgle as the screen fades to black before I can try again. Pardon my French, but who gives a shit? At least in third-person games I can occasionally see how frustrated they are by a locked door or difficult puzzle, or how terrified they are when the monster appears.

People place so much importance on changing the formula when it goes sour instead of trying to improve it. There's more than one way to make an old series fresh again. And like I said, if you don't respect the history of silent protagonism and truly understand why it's been so successful in the past, all you can make out of changing it is a lack-luster product that makes people pine for the good old days.

 

I honestly don't see Link ever speaking. IF they did a good job, maybe. If they handled it like Mario, I think I'd go in a corner and cry because I love Link even more than Mario. His silence in games helps me keep that image of a strong, silent hero.

Sometimes I do enjoy voice actors, but sometimes my favorite thing to do is try to Voice Act them myself. If you ever see Video Games Awesome and/or LteBlight on Youtube, they do non-voice acted games and do the voices themselves. Both have different ways of presenting each voice. Video Games Awesome does comedy which the host tries to do a stoned out valley girl Zelda. *not sure if that's what it is* For Zelda, Mia from Phoenix Wright, and several others. He uses the most grating, annoying voice for Toad and so on. It's entertaining to watch and makes it even more fun. LteBlight on the other hand does the voices in the way he thought they would sound like. Again, depending on the character. Both have very different ways of voice acting, but both come out very entertaining.

The silent protagonist lets you picture your own mental picture of what the character is like in your own mind. Hell, I know a reviewer who makes his own stories for the silent protagonist and backgrounds just to make himself more immersed.

 

I guess it depends on the game itself as well as how the character is meant to be portrayed.

For a silent protagonist, the game is mostly revolved around a dark, mysterious atmospheric game (Something like the Half-Life games). It's not always the case say like Legend of Zelda games or Mario (Well Mario sometimes talks, but not in sentences or stuff like that). These characters are usually left leaving a small thought on how that character is or how did they become what they are. This also applies to Make-Your-Character games (MMOs, Fallout games, Elder Scrolls) since the game cannot have a DEFINITIVE confirmation on how you view your character.

On the other hand, speaking protagonists are in games that usually have a focus on story/plot. Genres mostly targeting story and plot is usually RPGs and adventure games. These type of games require a lot of development and progression through characters. A silent character may frustrate those people, especially if that character is an extremely interesting character.

In the end. I believe that each type of protagonist can work as long as the game behind them can follow the pace and match the character's mood.

 

Just curious, have you played Skyward Sword ? I' ve set my disgut for the Wii-mote aside for a while and played it, every now and then it asks the player to choose between three possible lines for Link to say. Granted, not often and still without a voice, but it looks like they' re testing waters on that front.

But yeah, someone mentionned Other M earlier, but what ruined Samus Aran wasn' t her voice in and of itself, it was her lines. She went from being a one-woman army taking orders from no one to being her daddy' s obediant doormat.

I' m not sure it' d be that risky when it comes to Link since he' s almost always a character we' ve never actually met before (he just happens to have the same name and outfit as the other Links), but suddenly filling in the origins of a long established character who didn' t need to have them spelled out loud to be awesome up until now is pretty much a guaranteed way to upset 50% of the fanbase minimum. Who said Darth Vader ?

 

The interesting thing about the Fallout series is that decision making really wasn't made until the THIRD game when it came to dialogue. There was still customization like D&D for the character in the first two, and you had a TON of options of playing the game to the point where there was no way of making the same game twice unless you wrote down everything you did in the first game. And not making the same character doesn't count, every level gave you tons of different branches to go to when it came to your character. I started playing Fallout a year ago and still think it's one of the hardest but most rewarding and fun games I've ever played.

Anywho, Link is mostly set up by the developer, his storyline, his actions, etc.... That doesn't retract from the character. A lot of silent protagonists already have a set storyline. Chrono, Link, etc... Does that retract from the character? No, it doesn't. Is it as immersive as say, Mass Effect where every line of dialogue seems to shape your character? Not really. You can still put yourself in the shoes of the silent character. I've heard people say that it helps you fill it in with your own thoughts, your own voice. I'm inclined to agree. I can probably think of some great dialogue for a silent protagonist, especially silent Link and the chickens.[DOUBLEPOST=1369012504][/DOUBLEPOST]

Don't say that, if they do a prequel like Star Wars I-III which I know some people liked. Don't get in a fight about it. For the Legend of Zelda, I think I will kill myself.