The Silent Protagonist

Not sure if this has been discussed, but I would like to ramble about my qualms with the Silent Protagonist.

I recently played through Half Life 2, and it's following two episodes and found them to be amazing games with surprising depth. I say surprising because it is hard to believe they got any narration out of it with a lead character who never speaks or contributes anything to the game outside of player control.

I understand the intent of this. I believe it to be that game creators want to create an immersive experience where the player feels like s/he is a part of the game world itself, and not merely a witness to its events. But you see...I think it's also laziness. I mean, how much time and money do the save by giving us this "immersive experience" and denying us a true narrator. Half-Life 2 had no narration, the same goes for FEAR, and many other FPSers.

It is really too bad that this happens the way it does. If the game creators TRULY wanted to give an immersive experience, take a look at the playbook of Top Cow. Their game, The Darkness, while flawed in several ways, had so much depth because of the lead characters strong narrative capabilities. I felt infinitely more drawn in by this then by turning on a game and looking forward to 6 levels strewn together by 6 lines of conversation.

I can't speak for everyone, but I play games primarily for a good story. Fun gameplay is a close, close second, but I will not spend 60 bucks on a game that plays great but has no story. Just won't do it.

These are just my opinions though. Any thoughts?

Yeah it's a little too late for Gordon to start talking now, so I am willing to let that go...but I think RPG's should embrace BioWares concept, where you can choose what is said. That is VERY immersive, and accomplished what is set out.

Though I would credit Suikoden as being one of the first RPG's to make complicated choices up to the player (i.e. whether to recruit a former enemy, or decapitate him)

I am curious as to what kind of reasoning compelled you to equate a silent protagonist with no narrative...

I am curious as to what kind of reasoning compelled you to equate a silent protagonist with no narrative...

UpInFlames

Well I say that because a vast majority of games with a silent protagonist don't have a narrator...thus not truly a narrative. The common example here seems to be Half-Life...really, only observing gamers can figure out any real details of that game. I credit myself as being very intuitive with games, and yet even I have looked up just what exactly is going on.

Don't get me wrong, I love when a game leaves little things to find, such as random letters or newspaper articles to fill in small gaps, but when the game is entirely dependent on me finding everything out on my own, without any kind of reaction from the guy I'm playing, it's sorta weird.Again, I'm not saying this is a concrete bad thing, it's just my opinion.

I find it to be an extremely lazy decision on the developers half. Wander in Shadow of the Colossus isn't silent and he is the character that I find myself attached to the most. So obviously, being silent has nothing to do with immersing the player.foxhound_fox

Exactly. I would say my favorite character in gaming would be Raziel from the Legacy of Kain series...and this was ENTIRELY due to his incredible narration of the games events.

Though a side note, I was not a fan of Shadow of the Colossus. Great imagery, great concept, but it felt too loose. It's like, I didn't feel good about defeating a colossus. It was like "Good job, you beat that one...now go kill another one over there"...as opposed to "You get this for doing that, you are more skilled now, congrats!" Just my opinion. Also, the fact that they were too lazy to translate it really irritated me.

I'm discovering that I am very picky haha lol

Though a side note, I was not a fan of Shadow of the Colossus. Great imagery, great concept, but it felt too loose. It's like, I didn't feel good about defeating a colossus. It was like "Good job, you beat that one...now go kill another one over there"...as opposed to "You get this for doing that, you are more skilled now, congrats!" Just my opinion. Also, the fact that they were too lazy to translate it really irritated me.

I'm discovering that I am very picky haha lol

kluc05

[QUOTE="kluc05"]Though a side note, I was not a fan of Shadow of the Colossus. Great imagery, great concept, but it felt too loose. It's like, I didn't feel good about defeating a colossus. It was like "Good job, you beat that one...now go kill another one over there"...as opposed to "You get this for doing that, you are more skilled now, congrats!" Just my opinion. Also, the fact that they were too lazy to translate it really irritated me.

I'm discovering that I am very picky haha lol

foxhound_fox

This is my story...lol Anyways even though shadow of the colossus didn't use narations and had almost no dialougs other than the dormin explaining to wanda what should he be doing, the characters speak for themselves through gameplay, you know how wanda's condition changes the more colossus he kills, the music changes to victory music once you're close to killing a colossi, the variation of landscape as to show how enormous the forbidden land is and the size of colossus. Keeping the main character silent sometimes worrks more than having narrations. did you watch 3iron? it's a whole korean movie with silent main characters...

The last great silent protagonist in a RPG I played was Suikoden II. Instead of just having the mute character as a gimmick or a cliche, the silent thing actually was very important to the development of the characters, the story, and the relationships to the other characters.

And when it comes to games like Final Fantasy X, I would much rather have had them leave it in Japanese.foxhound_fox

Final Fantasy X is the kind of game that could use silent protagonists.

About HL2, I think it'd be better if Freeman chewed out a few words now and then: as he is he's a completely unlikable character, even though he's a book-worm turned rambo, which would be a great premise. You can grow attached to Alyx, Eli Vance, even Barney... but Gordon Freeman is voiceless, faceless and lifeless. The cutscenes in HL2 are great, but having all these characters relentlessly talking without any reply by GF is not realistic. C'mon, even Master Chief, a rude brain-dead marine enforcer, has some lines to speak and yeah, you don't see his face either, but for a reason. Nonetheless, Half Life 2 is amazing and one of my all-time favourites.

I can see why people enjoyed it, but personally I just more so enjoy a game with dialogue and breaks from continuous going about and killing things. I actually DID enjoy that the game felt no need to insert little monsters to fight in between fighting Colossi, that would have taken away from it. I don't know, I just found it frustrating to do these things for what seemed to me as an unmotivated task for me, the player. I can understand it is a story of love, but for me I would have connected more if they had spoken about it, had deep moments where this comes out, instead of "He loves her, he wants to save her" *rides off to save her*

Again, just my opinion.

I can see why people enjoyed it, but personally I just more so enjoy a game with dialogue and breaks from continuous going about and killing things. I actually DID enjoy that the game felt no need to insert little monsters to fight in between fighting Colossi, that would have taken away from it. I don't know, I just found it frustrating to do these things for what seemed to me as an unmotivated task for me, the player. I can understand it is a story of love, but for me I would have connected more if they had spoken about it, had deep moments where this comes out, instead of "He loves her, he wants to save her" *rides off to save her*

Again, just my opinion.

kluc05

I do respect your opinion but I said that everything else in the game tells you about the story without narrations which could be something too predictable or something you heard in ever game or a movie.. you know a cliche...

Also, the game has a fantasy setting and the language they used as my rfiend foxhound-fox pointed out is Japanese and latin reversed.. it'd be hard for an actor to talk and explain the story while talking in that language and even if they made it in english, it would ruin the atmosphere and make it repetitve and noring and predictable just as I mentioned.