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[dishmoth]

if Link had been a speaking character throughout the entire series, how would that have changed the games today? Players would be used to him speaking, I assume, and would say that he would not be the same without his no doubt awesome dialogue. Just as today they say that if he spoke it wouldn't be the same -- it wouldn't be Zelda. And both arguments would be valid, having different histories. But still, I wonder...

Pure speculation, but I wonder whether audience age is a factor in this.

It seems to me that 'kid-friendly' games (the majority of Nintendo games, for example) are more likely to have silent (give or take the odd catch-phrase) protagonists compared with more 'mature' games.  Perhaps Nintendo did once create a prototype Zelda with a really chatty Link - and discovered that no one under the age of ten found it fun to play.

Perhaps older players are better able to cope with the disjoint in the game reality that comes from controlling the protagonist's actions but not being able to control their thoughts or speech.

As I say, just speculation...

[Shambrook]

i cant think of an excuse not to do exactly what HL2 did in a FPS game.

You can't skip the cutscenes. Wich in my oppinion is a major no no.

Ok first time something happens, its cool to walk around and have interactivity untill it stops.

Then you die, have to go through a scene again.

This time you're bored, you pick shit up and throw stuff around cause you've heard this conversation before.

Die and have to do it again

You're trapped in a fucking room with people telling you the same shit again and again and you can't do shit to get them to hurry the fuck up.


In halflife two, at the begining there is that long scene when you go into the teleporter and it malfunctions and you end up outside, my pc crashed as soon as it was over and I had to sit through it again and it was fucking painfull.

Not being able to skip cutscenes is bad enough on itself. But not being able to skip it when you're in direct controll of the person the entire time is even more painfull for some reason.

[Corpus]

I've never had to re-"watch" a "cutscene" in HL2 as a result of death. I don't even know if it's possible. At what point in the game can you die and respawn at the beginning of a cutscene?

[Hideous]

I've had to a few times. But that was probably because I was playing SMOD, and I killed one of the NPCs that were supposed to talk.

[Shambrook]

I've never had to re-"watch" a "cutscene" in HL2 as a result of death. I don't even know if it's possible. At what point in the game can you die and respawn at the beginning of a cutscene?

Well my experience was due to crashing, but still sucked.

[Akhel]

Using your logic, the devs should also make it so that you're able to skip that really really painful boss battle just in case your computer crashes before the auto-save that happens five seconds after it ends.

You can save at any time in HL(2), so it's very unlikely that you'll have to play large or especially boring/hard segments of the game again, since you'll just quicksave when they're over.

Finally, the game makes it so that, even if you've already seen the cutscene (if you're playing again or something), you can, well, jump and throw stuff around. Much less boring than just sitting and re-watching.

The cutscenes are part of the game (HL(2) specifically), not a complement.

[Shambrook]

Using your logic, the devs should also make it so that you're able to skip that really really painful boss battle just in case your computer crashes before the auto-save that happens five seconds after it ends.

No because a boss battle is actual gameplay.
I want to be able to skip the 15 minutes of them explaining how the teleporter works because honestly, after I've heard it once I really don't give a shit.

I actully liked the interactive cut scenes in Half Life, its just that moment stood out to me as an inherent flaw in the system it used.

A game that tried the same thing but ended up far more frustrating using it was Assassins Creed, I know not a first person game but dear god it got lame being locked in a tiny little area and having to listen to the master yap on about crap. Atleast in a cut scene you're charecter actully emotes and acts the part, it makes it more interesting to watch because while yes it takes out the interactivity element it's still two people conveying a story and is interesting in the same way that a movie is. Leaving the charecter in controll of themselves but with no real chance to effect the outcome is kind of like having a movie were everyone else is an actor and has read the script and then one guy has no fuckin idea whats going on.

Personly I prefer the method that Mass Effect used in that you have a limtied amount of controll of what you're charecter actully does in the cut scenes then they are acted out.

The main problem I have with a silent protagonist is that then the main charecter has no depth really.
Take Chrono Trigger, love the game, first RPG I ever played. With a silent protagonist.

Everyone else in the game gets this rich backstory built up around them, with all these complex motivations as to why they're on this quest, who they hate who they like etc. But Chrono? Nothing, all you know is he's some dude who lives with his mum. Why the fuck is he travelling across time with a frog a robot and a vampire in order to kill an unspeakable horror from space? You're guess is as good as mine.

Compare that to Assassins Creed, wich despite my protests about the cut scene style earlier I absolutly dug the fuck out of as well. By the end of the game I didn't even care about Altier, I was just playing through those sequences as quickly as I could so I could find out what happend next to Desmond. When you play as him you can't do anything, there are no controlls besides the joystick to walk and b to interact with stuff in a vague way. But because of his dialogue and his charecter he became the bit of the game that most intrested me, and as such it made the end fucking awsome.

None of his dialogue was esspecialy crittical to the game though, they could have pretty easily had him as a silent protagonist and not affected the main story in the least but it wouldn't have grabbed me at all then. Of course its a double edged sword because you might end up with an awsome interesting charecter but you might also end up with an infurtiatingly shitty charecter that could ruin a game.

But IMO when it works, a charecter that actully has... well charecter is superior to a silent one.

[Bree]

The reason Half-Life 1 worked, in my opinion, was that Gordon was a nobody; he was just one of the scientists working at Black Mesa who just happened to get caught up in all of the Resonance Cascade mess. Nobody's going to expect him to respond or ask any questions- he's just an employee.

Half-Life 2, on the other hand, throws all of this out the window. The dialogue still works fairly well, but it's made a little more awkward by the fact that you are now apparently the planet's savior, the "Free Man" (lol puns). You, the new messiah, whom everyone adores and respects, and you don't say a single word? It was very off-putting for me.

On a side note, I am curious to see just how ironic that name was intended to be: Think back to the G-Man's choice at the end of Half-Life 1. (SPOILER! SPOILER! SPOILER! SPOILER!) Exactly what freedom does this "Free Man" have? Sure, you can choose to be killed on Xen by various beasties, but what kind of a choice is that? And how about the end of Half-Life 2? The G-Man simply puts you away like a used tool, smirks, and leaves you in utter darkness.

Back on topic: Zelda would have sucked if Link had a voice because then they would have had to actually flesh out the character, which would be a nightmarish affair. "Excuuuuuuuuse me, princess!" Just saying.

Speaking protagonists can work, but only if the writers are actually half-decent, and create an avatar charming enough that we actually care about his soddy little quest to save some princess or whatever.

On another side note, I think this might be of interest for reading:
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/873/873866p1.html

[Melly]

I'm so hungry, I could eat an octorock!

[Zaphos]

The cutscenes are part of the game (HL(2) specifically), not a complement.

Cut scenes have less replayability than gameplay.  When a game is divided in to portions that are fun to replay and portions that aren't, it makes sense for the player to want to skip the un-fun bits.

Also HL2 crashed a lot for me, often when I tried to save, so I have a lot of empathy for Benza.

Half-Life 2, on the other hand, throws all of this out the window. The dialogue still works fairly well, but it's made a little more awkward by the fact that you are now apparently the planet's savior, the "Free Man" (lol puns). You, the new messiah, whom everyone adores and respects, and you don't say a single word? It was very off-putting for me.

Definitely agree -- in this case having a silent protagonist really broke immersion for me, since the character relationships just aren't plausible without dialog.


I think sometimes people assume immersion is about being able to believe that you personally are that character, so the more ambiguous the character the more chance for immersion.  But really for me it's more about being able to believe in the character and the world as a logically-consistent place that I can put myself in to.  What ruins immersion is not "hey wait, I'm not a scientist gone to the future to save humanity!" or, "hey, I don't talk like that!"  Rather, what ruins immersion is when the world doesn't react in a sensible way to my character, or if my character doesn't react in a sensible way to the world.

Speaking protagonists can work, but only if the writers are actually half-decent, and create an avatar charming enough that we actually care about his soddy little quest to save some princess or whatever.

Doesn't this apply to speaking characters in general?  The more incompetent the writers, the less you want them to write.
I suppose it is emphasized with the protagonist, though.

[Bree]

Otherwise you get this:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=-5FTJxfV3pc

[Shambrook]

Otherwise you get this:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=-5FTJxfV3pc

Do you know how much therapy it took for me to forget that scene...

I think I've finnaly figured out how to describe the cutscenes in half life 2 and whats wrong with them. The charecters are like robots. They're programmed with a specific thing to do and won't deviate from that regardless of what you do. Someone brought up the comparison of running in circles in a shop for ages and the shop keeper not doing anything, but the diffrence is that you arn't actully interacting directly with the shop keeper. In half-life 2 it might be some emotional bonding moment between Alyx and Gordon, then you throw a brick at her head, and she doesn't react at it at all. It's just... weird.

I think sometimes people assume immersion is about being able to believe that you personally are that character, so the more ambiguous the character the more chance for immersion.  But really for me it's more about being able to believe in the character and the world as a logically-consistent place that I can put myself in to.  What ruins immersion is not "hey wait, I'm not a scientist gone to the future to save humanity!" or, "hey, I don't talk like that!"  Rather, what ruins immersion is when the world doesn't react in a sensible way to my character, or if my character doesn't react in a sensible way to the world.

I agree with this completly.

[Xion]

I think sometimes people assume immersion is about being able to believe that you personally are that character, so the more ambiguous the character the more chance for immersion.  But really for me it's more about being able to believe in the character and the world as a logically-consistent place that I can put myself in to.  What ruins immersion is not "hey wait, I'm not a scientist gone to the future to save humanity!" or, "hey, I don't talk like that!"  Rather, what ruins immersion is when the world doesn't react in a sensible way to my character, or if my character doesn't react in a sensible way to the world.

I agree with this completely.

[mewse]

I think sometimes people assume immersion is about being able to believe that you personally are that character, so the more ambiguous the character the more chance for immersion.  But really for me it's more about being able to believe in the character and the world as a logically-consistent place that I can put myself in to.  What ruins immersion is not "hey wait, I'm not a scientist gone to the future to save humanity!" or, "hey, I don't talk like that!"  Rather, what ruins immersion is when the world doesn't react in a sensible way to my character, or if my character doesn't react in a sensible way to the world.

Okay, I'll admit that this comment is almost entirely about semantics.  Apologies in advance, but I find this sort of topic very interesting. 

Immersion is the quality which causes you to lose yourself inside a video game, movie, book, or etc.  If you've stopped being aware of the chair you're sitting on, then you're immersed in the experience.  All sorts of things can break immersion, some from inside the activity, some from the outside world.

What you're talking about here is mimesis, which I've never really heard anybody but Interactive Fiction fans talk about much.  Mimesis (in this context) is basically how consistently and predictably a video game world behaves;  once the video game world starts behaving inconsistantly, then it stops being a world with rules you can learn.  And yeah, that's one way to break immersion really fast, because once a game is breaking mimesis, you'll never be sure what the outcome of an action within the game will be.

So if the game taught you to pick up bricks, and you then discover a brick or brick-like object that you can't pick up, then that will break mimesis;  the world has stopped behaving in a predictable, internally-consistent way.  The same is true if throwing a brick at an enemy makes them yell in pain, but throwing it at a friendly character gets no response.  The same is true of how GTA IV teaches you to shoot a doorknob off a door to unlock it, but then won't let you do that to other doorknobs.  When game rules work differently in different places or at different times for no obvious reason, that's broken mimesis, and will pull people straight out of their immersion.

The neatest thing about mimesis is that it isn't about behaving like the real world;  it's about keeping the game's own rules predictable, throughout the play experience.  Not being able to shoot locks to open doors wouldn't break mimesis and pull you out of your immersion, except that GTA IV had already established that you could do it, and then inexplicably wouldn't let you do it again.

[cyber95]

Immersion is when my friend played Final Fantasy (5 I think. It was an SNES one), and found out that the world was gonna be destroyed due to some crystal being destroyed, and didn't want to talk about it, as if the world were really going to end.

He wouldn't believe me when I told him that it's just a game.

[Akhel]

Immersion is when my friend played Final Fantasy (5 I think. It was an SNES one), and found out that the world was gonna be destroyed due to some crystal being destroyed, and didn't want to talk about it, as if the world were really going to end.

He wouldn't believe me when I told him that it's just a game.

That's not immersion, it's madness!

No, actually, it's Sparta, but I'm not going there.

[Bree]

*Insert tired 300 joke here*

The only tricky bit, then, is ensuring that the game always works consistently. Besides good design, you also have to make sure that the game world doesn't suddenly crash or act weird. Even Gran Turismo has had bugs, only now they'll look even more awkward with those shiny photorealistic graphics. That's a huge mimesis-killer, but just how can we stop it?

[AdamAtomic]

Some thoughts that hopefully aren't too tangential:

1 - First person games are really, really weird.  To date I have seen only two "first person" films (Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield) and both were fun but really flawed.  But the point is they are really, really rare in cinema, which is the only art form where on-screen motion has a language and set of rules, etc.  However they make up a huge proportion of games.  I find this odd!

2 - Both of those films have protagonists which speak, though in Cloverfield it tends to be lines in the vein of "oh shit oh shit we're all gonna die!!"  While this can get annoying, it definitely makes me wonder what has made someone like Gordon Freeman so very, very stoic that he can't even utter an expletive or two when some striders assault the remnants of humanity?

3 - I was going to say that something like Metal Gear Solid (the original for PC/PS1) is a great example of how much immersion good voice-acting can add to a game, ESPECIALLY for the player/main character.  But in this case, the immersion is a feeling of being Snake, versus a feeling of being You.  The flipside would be that in the Half-Life or Zelda games you feel like You, as there is no character personality taking over your actions.  However, these games are so limited in their interactions and are largely so linear in story and progression that I generally still feel mostly like Link or Gordon when I am playing.  So...I'm not sure what point I'm trying to make here.  Maybe that we have no way to know how much better those games could be if the characters DID have dialog and it was voiced well?

4 - Somebody mentioned a kind of Uncanny Valley personality problem, but I think that might just be one facet of a weird thing going on.  In HL2 there are parts where people are directly addressing You, saying stuff like "remember when we were back at MIT?"  Which is...I dunno, it's odd.  So maybe it's not that you are occupying Link or Gordon, but you are constructing I guess a fantasy version of yourself to occupy these characters?  I think this is closer to the truth anyways. 

So, my thoughts are going to conclude something like this I think:

Silent protagonists do not let you truly occupy their role, but they do leave you room to invent a character that is somewhere between your own imagination and emotions and motivations and those the game designer intended.  All in all, I think this is a very noble effort and close to the heart of what games mean, are, and can/will be as an art form.  They are part of the long-standing tradition of "less is more," but like Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield I think they are flawed too.

[Bree]

Side Note: A Cloverfield game would justify my very existence. Just saying.

Also- AdamAtomic, I think you've nailed it right on the head.

[Akhel]

The big difference between movies and games is that while the former shows you the protagonist and what he does, the latter have you be the protagonist and decide what he does. So it's not strange for a movie protagonist to speak (hey, why did he say that?), but it may be for a game one to (what? I didn't want to say that!).