Once upon a time voice acting in a game was all but impossible, as such game designers opted to have written dialogue for their characters. This worked fine for the most part, but sometimes game designers noticed that players wouldn't really connect with the main characters in their stories, simply because that character's personality, what he chose to say and do, didn't mesh with how the player envisioned the character as a hero. The solution to this dilemma was deceptively simple, remove every single line of dialogue that the hero (the character in question and avatar of the player) had, turning them into a mute.
These days with voice-acting and stories that spoon-feed the player information as to how they should feel have become the norm, and many game designers have begun to declare that the era of the "silent hero" has passed. I think that they could not be more wrong. While I believe that voice acting has done more to improve storytelling in video games than anything else, and I very much enjoy games that have no silent protagonist (The Final Fantasy series comes to mind) and tell a definitive story, I do not think that the silent protagonist cannot coexist with these games.
The power of the silent protagonist comes from the players imagination; while the character may say nothing in the game, the player will almost always respond to the situations in their mind, deciding on a personality for the character that is similar to their own. This connection turns the silent protagonist into an avatar for the player who becomes much more invested in the story. The best part of this arrangement is that since the player "is" the protagonist, when that character inevitably saves the day, it's the player who gets to be the hero.
However, just like any design decision, there are some drawbacks and pitfalls that come with the silent protagonist. The designers must be very careful when making situations where the protagonist fails/looks like a fool/falls into an obvious trap as the player will take these as attacks upon themselves, or even worse, disrupts the personality that the player has created for their avatar. The other problem is that no matter how well you design the game, there are going to be points where the player's idea of what his character would do or care about is going to conflict with the designer's. A good example is Half-Life 2, there are a lot of people who like the Alex Vance character and enjoy her interplay with their character (Gordon Freeman), but there are people who don't like Alex's personality, and so when the game seems to be developing a relationship between the two characters the player feels that their own creative ideas (their idea of who Gordon Freeman is) have been snubbed, and nobody likes that feeling.
In the end I believe that as long as you recognize the risks that come with making a silent protagonist that it is a stronger format than the other option. Silent protagonists are the best heroes, they never say anything stupid, they never complain, and when push comes to shove they are ready without a word, and in my personal opinion they have made the best heroes to appear in video games: The Boy(Secret of Mana), Gordon Freeman(Half-Life/2/Episode-1/Episode-2), The Student(Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3), and of course Crono(Chrono Trigger).
-Cory Ragsdale
P.S. I am not one of those who hates Alex Vance, I mean come on, a strong, smart, hot girl with infinite ammo who doesn't have to be rescued from every single little headcrab that comes your way, sign me up!
Edit: The origins of silent characters that I mention are entirely my own thoughts, I'm pretty sure it was probably just lazy programmers who didn't want to get/pay a writer to come up with the dialogue. Also, I almost forgot, Persona 3 uses dialogue options given to the player to diminish the chances of interrupting a player's perception of the protagonist.
No comments:
Post a Comment