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Your opinions for Avatar/silent protagonists in other games


henrymidfields
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While avatars in recent FE games haven't been all that popular in this forum, I wonder what are your thoughts for avatars and silent protagonists in other games? We're talking about characters like Minako, Yu, or Ren in Persona 3-5 (which I think Byleth was based on) or any other avatars.

I haven't really experienced Ren in Persona 5, so I won't comment on that one. I liked Minako in Persona 3 and to a lesser extent Yu in Persona 4. Specifically, I liked that for example, both had an implied personality in a few of their possible replies to NPCs, yet I still have a sense of agency as myself in moving the story forward. I personally prefer Minako, as she seem to have a clearer personality with her answers, and that a few of Yu's responses in Persona 4 (particularly his response to Yosuke) kind of comes off as insensitive.

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I think they're fine, historically, in series like Pokemon. That said, in the latest few games, having the protagonist with a dumb smile perpetually on their face, while other characters emote to the plot, is really unfortunate. 

Also, I think they have a harder time in games with otherwise-full voice acting. There's a whole new axis by which characters are given expression and personality, and the protagonist gets to take no part in it.

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It varies on the game in question.:

  • Pokemon- It's perfectly fine.
  • Dragon Quest- It's perfectly fine. It goes back to ye olden days of RPGs, and Dragon Quest does nothing wrong by occupying that niche.
  • Story of Seasons- Fine. Although Rune Factory has shown letting the MC talk works fine too, even when the game is partly a dating sim
  • Xenoblade Chronicles X- Elma is the real main protagonist, and the game excellently brushes Cross out of the story 95% of the time after the first couple of introductory chapters. It's MMO-esque for all the sidequests, so silence for Cross is fine.
  • Ys- I've only played Lacrimosa of Dana out the Ys franchise, but given Adol has to be the main character in pretty much every game, I'm fine with him being roughly one step above Link at best. One character over so many games who could speak would eventually painfully plateau in character development.
  • Shin Megami Tensei, mainline- Perfectly fine. Characters here are usually relatively flat anyhow. Better this than witness what kind of pure cringe quips could be invented if the protagonist could speak and embrace law or chaos.
  • Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor- It's fine, it's a close enough experience to mainline to make it work, and the other characters are actually well-written IMO in this and its sequel. 

------------------ Gap of Quality

  • Golden Sun- Issac and Felix were silent, so I shouldn't have been troubled by Matthew being silent as well. Except, the lack of good characterization on practically anyone in the three Golden Sun games was dawning with Dark Dawn. And Matthew's newly-added emoji responses which his dad and uncle never had, was "improving" a silent protagonist in a so very wrong way. It makes me 😡.
  • Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha- The first game has but one ending, and the second's ending doesn't really change that much based on Raidou's alignment. Worse than that, the games are supposed to be a little silly in their narratives, and having a protagonist who is silent cool and can't contribute more to a vibe of silliness is bad. You can have cool, but talkative, it's Cloud Strife's entire surface-level schtick. And Atlus agrees, because most of the time when their silent protagonists show up in a game where they aren't the protagonist, they actually do speak.
  • Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga- Serph not speaking, despite the opening trailer for the first half of the duology showing him speaking, really bites the games. There is but one ending to both halves, and decision-making is very minimal. Serph should've spoken.
  • Persona 2- This is a disaster. Maya, the energetic and a little reckless optimist, capable of showing all the other facets of human personality in Innocent Sin, was practically murdered by muting her in Eternal Punishment. All because Atlus insists on making all its main protagonists mute, because they're supposed to be the player. Tatsuya went from mute in Innocent Sin, to talkative in Eternal Punishment, because his tenure as the main protagonist was over. And I very much like Tatsuya in Eternal Punishment, but I feel like I'm missing the first half of his character arc, because he was silent throughout it, so I never really saw it. Both P2 protagonists are good, but frustratingly incomplete.
Edited by Interdimensional Observer
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Why is Link always left out of the conversation? I've seen lots of these "silent protagonists bad" posts for a while now but no one ever brings up what is probably the most iconic mute.

What makes him "better" or at least "inoffensive" compared other silent protagonists in gaming that he is often free from criticism?

For the record, I like silent protagonists as a whole unless it's cases like Golden Sun where the same character is inconsistent between games.

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4 minutes ago, NegativeExponents- said:

Why is Link always left out of the conversation? I've seen lots of these "silent protagonists bad" posts for a while now but no one ever brings up what is probably the most iconic mute.

What makes him "better" or at least "inoffensive" compared other silent protagonists in gaming that he is often free from criticism?

Personally, it's a combination of.:

  • The Zelda franchise has never really ever been about the plot. Some people might really be into that one moment in WW, or BotW as a whole, and SS bills treats itself as plot-heavier, all of which I acknowledge, but none of this is relevant in the greater scheme. Zelda might be plot-heavier than Mario, but it's still well below so very much of gaming.
    • Mario tangent- Mario works as silent b/c the razor thin plot of most Mario games. And the RPGs where Mario has significant plot, are lighthearted games, where the zany world and other characters are the colorful soul of the adventure, not Mario (and Luigi) himself.
  • Link is the same character being recycled again and again. Sure they're technically different people, and Toon Link does have palpable differences in general flavor from his more-realistically shaped counterparts. Yet, Link's enduring heroic personally remains the same, what OoT Link did or did not, I could envision TP/SS/BotW/ALttP doing or not doing the exact same.
    • Since Link is always the same, imagine if he spoke. His words and demeanor would always be the same, his character arc would always follow the same trajectory. Link, the main guy thrusted into the spotlight again and again, would be a stagnant character. Some would never cease to love him, but others would find him boring, and wish someone else took his job.
      • See some fans of the Ace Attorney franchise, who find forcing Phoenix into being playable in games after the original trilogy a bad idea. Phoenix got his character arc in the first game, although second character arcs aren't impossible in theory, these critics don't see that happening.
      • Or, see the Devil May Cry franchise. Dante is still around after DMC3, but with 4 he gave over a good bit of the limelight to Nero, and with DMC5, he splits it with Nero and V. Thereby reducing Dante's story load, a good idea for an already-developed talking character.
    • By keeping Link silent, he is better able to be a person who just so happens to be there when stuff happens, as opposed to the person whom stuff is happening to. It shifts the focus off of Link, and onto the world and everyone else, which are freer to vary in substance and keep things interesting.
      • I'm reminded of why Ian Fleming chose to name his famed British spy "James Bond"- he said it was short and very boring, forgettable. Bond, like Link, is someone who exists for the sake of the adventures, the adventures do not exist for him. This seems to find precedent in Western novels going back to the early 1700s, and perhaps one could argue ancient literature like the Odyssey, where Odysseus has a lot of varied things happen to him on his long journey home.

-Again, this is just me.

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44 minutes ago, NegativeExponents- said:

Why is Link always left out of the conversation? I've seen lots of these "silent protagonists bad" posts for a while now but no one ever brings up what is probably the most iconic mute.

What makes him "better" or at least "inoffensive" compared other silent protagonists in gaming that he is often free from criticism?

For the record, I like silent protagonists as a whole unless it's cases like Golden Sun where the same character is inconsistent between games.

For me I always thought he didn't really count. Or at least many of them don't count. 

The point with many silent protagonists is that they aren't real characters but empty vessels the player is supposed to project themselves on. But Link(despite the name) often doesn't have that. There's nothing to project in the overly dorky Botw Link and especially not in the hyperactive spaz that is Toon Link. They display their own personality which leaves no room for the player to go around imprinting his own personality on them.

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It generally depends on what the goals are for the developers, but the general idea is that the more voice work you put into a game, the less dialogue you'll get.  And in terms of customizable protagonists, they vary in spectrum.

To go against the grain, I'm going to say silent protagonists can be great if they're executed well and if their silence is used to an advantage.  For example, in Fallout: New Vegas, the protagonist has no voiced lines (though they do have voiced efforts - grunts and the like), but that doesn't mean they don't have dialogue of their own... in fact, the Courier can be given a fairly colorful, if possibly sometimes inconsistent, personality.  Because the developers don't have to blow half the VO budget on making the protagonist have voiced lines for every possible option they're allowed to allocate that budget towards voicing more NPC dialogue, which means more dialogue overall in the game.  You compare this to Fallout 4, which has practically no actual roleplaying options besides who you want to stand besides when you nuke a shifty university (or if you want to become the leader of said shifty university), consistently four dialogue options that almost always suck, and a story and world with the width of an ocean and the depth of a puddle, and you'll understand why older fans of the Fallout series will stand by the argument that voiced protagonists ruin open-world RPGs with customizable protagonists.

That said, I think often times developers don't use the advantages of a silent protagonist to great effect.  At least, not beyond simply lengthening the overall game's playtime.  You can do a lot with the extra budget and time afforded you from not voicing a protagonist, and I'd like to see more devs really take advantage of that by implementing stuff that better enhances the gameplay like what was done with Fallout: New Vegas rather than just throwing on additional padding.  And this isn't to downplay the impact good acting can have - a lot of scenes are greatly enhanced by quality acting - but if the character is meant to be a relative blank slate then I don't want them to have voiced dialogue because I think it's a lot of money and time spent for not a lot of payoff.

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It would be better if they spoke. I mean, sure, in some games it's justified. Silent protagonists don't bother me in stuff like Xenoblade X, Zelda, Metroid (yes i know Samus occasionally speaks but shhh, she rarely has people to talk to), basically whenever the plot doesn't really matter or said silent protagonist is just there, off to the side.

It becomes an issue when the silent protagonist starts being thrust front and center in a game's story. At that point, they should be talking, because when they don't, it comes off as jarring. I haven't played a Persona game yet but from an outsider, it really feels like they overcompensate for their protagonist's inability to speak. Yu is made out to be this chad king in basically everything that isn't Persona 4 itself. Joker is really flashy and stuff that's just to cover up the fact that he doesn't talk.

The only time a silent protagonist being front and center is fine is if their silent-ness is an actual part of the plot. I don't mean Three Houses' "oh Byleth rarely emotes because he was stillborn" shit, i mean something like CrossCode, where the protagonist, Lea, is canonically mute and part of her character is finding ways to get people to understand what she's trying to say, which is why she's extremely expressive. Even when she manages to say some words, her vocabulary is extremely limited, unable to form complete sentences.

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Games with silent protagonists often end up putting words into your mouth anyway, and modern games now give even silent protagonists some kind of voice in the form of grunts and whatnot, so it feels like a mostly pointless trope. Considering the protagonist is the character we see the most of, making them a boring non-character seems like a bad idea.

That said, BotW handled it in an interesting way. Link is confirmed to talk off-screen, he just tends to be quiet. And to be fair, there are people even in real life who tend not to speak all that much. So his being a mostly silent protagonist is at least justified.

Dragon Quest XI, on the other hand, absolutely botched the trope. The Luminary is barely a character most of the time, but more egregiously, his younger child self talks during flashbacks. It'd be one thing if they committed to the silent protagonist bit for the whole game, but they themselves break from that convention specifically for his kid self, making the trope even more egregious than it usually is.

Silent protagonists (or at least, protagonists with no fixed dialogue) work for something like Skyrim where you get to choose your character's race, gender, etc. and where your dialogue choices can actually matter, or when the game itself is light on dialogue or story, or prefers to focus on atmosphere, or when the protagonist is an animal or other creature that isn't expected to talk human language anyway, but Dragon Quest XI's Luminary has a fixed design, a fixed gender, a fixed race, is human, and has fixed dialogue that he spoke in the past. There was absolutely no reason for him to be a silent protagonist other than "JRPG", and even that is a flimsy excuse since there are plenty of JRPGs with protagonists that talk.

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