Kotaku's Simon Carless - Nov. 21 2007:
Over at Midway studio Surreal's "Surreal Game Design" developer weblog, Rick Luebbers, has found a blight infecting games, and he's not afraid to shout about it. What is it?
"This evil, this disease, is the idea of a Silent Protagonist. Its symptoms are easy to diagnose: the protagonist never speaks and as seemingly important events fly by he/she says nothing... further, all the NPCs go to great lengths to talk around the player and advance the story almost in spite of him... It appears as a terrible, horrific, mark upon otherwise good or even great games. Half-Life 2 and Dragon Quest 8 are perfect high profile examples in people's recent memories."
Luebbers believes that "...the whole premise is counter-productive and totally immersion breaking" - but how about gamers like you? Are you happy for the main character to shut up and 'be you' while you play?
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Silent protagonist >>> masterchief & lame 80s style one-liner dropping meatheads like marcus fenix
Have you noticed how when you select what to say, the character then says something different...and then you sit there saying to your self.."Hay, I didn't tell you to say that".
Also, if you go through and play the first part of the game again and select different options...they infect say the exact same thing. This kind of thing kills the whole submersion thing for me, because I don't have any real control over the conversation at all.
I agree with the guys overall point about silent protagonists. If the person was that important in the story then they would have a lot to say about the events happening around them. So when the character doesn't say a thing the realistic immersion breaks. His Hollywood example was rubbish though. The silent protagonist doesn't work in hollywood because you never assume control of the person you would be playing so the immersion is broken there and then.
But in reality I like the silent protagonist. The feeling that the other characters are talking to you does increase the immersion in the game. However some games do it better than others.
I actually think that Half Life is a bad example of the silent protagonist. The reason for this is that they show you what the protagonist looks like and tells you who he is so in effect you *know* this person is not you which for me completely breaks the belief that I am actually in the game.
A far superior example of the silent hero is the Myst series. In Myst, you aren't shown what the character looks like, you aren't given a name or details of the person you are playing so your imagination is left to fill in the blanks which it will naturally do by putting you in the role of the hero. I think the silent protagonist can work really well if it is done like this.
I like how he rails against the silent protagonist yet he chooses a game like Half Life 2 that totally obliterates his thesis. Choosing a game that has won somewhere around 35 game of the year awards and has sold millions of copies to try and prove that no one likes a silent protagonist proves that he is clueless and has no grasp on game design or what players want. Also to counter his point FPS's with silent protagonists that never take you out of the player's perspective are the most immersive games and gives you the feeling that you aren't just playing as a character, but you are that character. It only takes one generic line like "Come get some" to totally shatter that experience.
Never bothered me by playing Half Life nor Dragon Quest games.