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[Guert]

The designer's workshop: The silent protagonist

Welcome to this second designer's workshop. The topic of the discussion will be the following:
The silent protagonist: What is this type of character and how can you implement it in your game design?

Let's start off with a bit of theory. In video games, a silent protagonist is a player controlled character that never speaks to the non-playable characters (NPC) populating the game world. The game's entire character storyline is driven by the NPCs speaches given to the player's avatar without ever getting a response. This technique is commonly used to immerse the player in the character he's controlling. This design philosophy follows the concept that if the character does not express himself, the player is free to pour it's own thoughts and answers into the hero and act naturaly as if he was actualy within the virtual universe. There are many titles that use this concept. The Legend of Zelda series, many Dragon Quest titles (Dragon warrior for north-americans), and on the indie scene, Cave Story, are all games that leave their main character silent. Gordon Freeman from the Half-life games is commonly associated with this design direction due to the game's poplarity and elaborated story, but he is definitively not the first hero to remain speechless through his adventures.    The concept of silent protagonist has been around since the beginning of video games: in most early titles, characters never

One of the most popular silent protagonist: Gordon Freeman (half-life serie)

spoke to the inhabitant of the virtual world or even commented on the events happening. Mario didn't not open his mouth until the late 1990's when the technology allowed him to. The character of Link from the Legend of Zelda never spoke a word despite communicating with thousands of NPCs. Of course, like many design decisions made in these days, the technology available and technical constraints, such has memory limitation, lead many creators down this path. With time, some continued to clear the road while other designers felt that another way should be taken.

  There is a debate going on about the general concept of the silent protagonist. Are players really more immersed when the hero is silent? Many designers believes that the hero's words help emphasize the player's

Gordon Freeman's opposite, Duke Nukem

action and helps to put the player in character. For example, Duke Nukem wouldn't be Duke Nukem if he didn't snap remarks on various occasions, such as when killing enemies or handing out money to a stripper. These remarks helped the player understand what game feel the creators were going for, which made the general universe beliveable to the player's eyes and the gaming experience satisfying. Without Duke inspiring the player with his one-liners, shooting down horny pigs in strip bars and stopping to urinate would have had quite another feel.   I do admit that other characters would have illustrated this example, perhaps even with more ease. For instance, the Final Fantasy games usualy feature heros with a lot more depth than Duke. Their many dialogues with the NPCs give the player the hero's state of mind and feelings while driving the storyline forward. But doing so would have prevented me from raising a completely unrelated sidenote from my behalf: Gordon Freeman is Duke Nukem's almost exact opposite. Of course that deserves a discussion of its own so shame on me for bringing that up here.

  So where do you stand as a designer when thinking about the silent protagonist concept? How do you see the use of this design philosophy in your games and at what extend do you want to use it?

Time for the traditional DISCUSS.

[Tom Quinn]

While it's said that actions speak louder than words, Gordon Freeman's always felt empty to me. It's eerie how the characters around him express so much emotion and open themselves up to him, but he never even dignifies them with a response. A silent protagonist can help to immerse the player in the game world, but that's not always a good thing. Immersion isn't equivalent to fun, and sometimes a silent protagonist is just downright creepy.

[AdamAtomic]

toastie can probably expound on this with more detail and authority than me, but gordon freeman is a kind of special case I think, in that Half-Life and especially Half-Life 2 have all these weird fourth-wall-breaking moments, especially with the G Man, in which you/Gordon are addressed directly by characters, but you kind of get the sense that YOU are being addressed moreso than Gordon on occasion.  I'll link him to this and see if he has more...lucid thoughts on the topic.

[Melly]

A silent protagonist does prevent things like unlikeable or annoying controllable characters from interfering with the experience, and does allow a bit more freedom for the player to put himself in there character's shoes instead of just following along with whatever the character decides, even if it's not exactly what you'd like him to do.

However, the problem here is that the silent protagonist is still a protagonist in the game, so conversations with him can feel very weird, as if the NPC's are talking to a mute, or sometimes completely ignoring his existence and just going on with eachother.

I feel that the best way to increase immersion of the player into his character is to give the player himself freedom of choosing his own responses and decisions. Even if there's no voice to accompany the phrases you tell your character to utter, you can still easily imagine yourself saying them, and watch the NPC's act accordingly, preventing the strange feeling Half Life conversations can have at times.

[fish]

i am for silent protagonists.
case in point: Tidus.

Gomez is mute.

[Lazer]

Stylized silent protagonists are my favorite. I can only really enjoy them if they're done RIGHT though. The NPC's dialogue have to work in such a manner that it doesn't seem out of place that the main character never has a response, verbal or otherwise.

I also really liked the way KOTOR handled it's dialogue.

[fish]

i really hate the whole "what you say? a dragon ate your uncle?!" type of NPC dialog.

[Camdag]

My favorite (mostly, anyways)silent protagonists are the Clint Eastwood types- There is a word for them, but I forget it now. They're slightly more in the know than the average person, have a mysterious or dangerous past, and are usually pretty cynical (but with soft sides!). The best way to have silent protagonists be 3-d, methinks.

[Camdag]

i am for silent protagonists.
case in point: Tidus.

Gomez is mute.

Is he mute because of his tragic past? Please say we get to do a flashback mission where his tragic past is revealed. That would be sweeeet.

[joshg]

Everyone thinks of Gordon Freeman because Valve made such a caricature of his silence in Halflife 2.  Which kind of makes HL2 a weird example since the game basically makes fun of the silent protagonist choice, even though outside of the lame self-referential humor it's fairly effective.

Also the silent protagonist thing in HL2 makes the romantic interest with Alyx feel really out of place for me.  She's got a crush on Gordon, but what does she know about a man who never speaks?  Or is she supposed to be having a crush on me, the player, which is just weird and pretty awkward when the player is in this case already happily married?  "Hi, I'm not crushing on Alyx, just trying to enjoy the game k thx bye"

So, yeah, silent protagonists are great until you want to introduce meaningful relationships with NPCs, in which case it gets awkward.  Unless you like that kind of thing, I guess.  (This is also why I couldn't play Facade for long despite having a tendency to go "YAY PROCEDURAL DRAMA".)

[Melly]

Everyone thinks of Gordon Freeman because Valve made such a caricature of his silence in Halflife 2.  Which kind of makes HL2 a weird example since the game basically makes fun of the silent protagonist choice, even though outside of the lame self-referential humor it's fairly effective.

Also the silent protagonist thing in HL2 makes the romantic interest with Alyx feel really out of place for me.  She's got a crush on Gordon, but what does she know about a man who never speaks?  Or is she supposed to be having a crush on me, the player, which is just weird and pretty awkward when the player is in this case already happily married?  "Hi, I'm not crushing on Alyx, just trying to enjoy the game k thx bye"

So, yeah, silent protagonists are great until you want to introduce meaningful relationships with NPCs, in which case it gets awkward.  Unless you like that kind of thing, I guess.  (This is also why I couldn't play Facade for long despite having a tendency to go "YAY PROCEDURAL DRAMA".)

Something akin to the 'uncanny valley' effect?

[joshg]

Maybe, kind of?  More like mixed signals as to who the NPC is supposed to be relating to: the PC, or me.

Usually, it's a strength of the silent protagonist that the player can more easily project him/herself into the PC's shoes.  But when the game then has NPCs having a crush on the PC, it becomes more like the NPC is having a crush on me, the player.  Which might be exactly what a bunch of people enjoy (teenage fantasy of cute chick crushing on you and all), but I don't.  It just feels weird.

[Lazer]

i really hate the whole "what you say? a dragon ate your uncle?!" type of NPC dialog.

Yes, exactly. The best silent protagonist dialouge is when the npc's really actually never TRY speaking to you, and generally just other npc's. Or if they do speak to you they never put words in your mouth or ask questions or anything to make you go "...shit I never say anything."

[Hideous]

Not very on-topic, but I also happen to find it annoying when the NPCs talk about buttons on the controller.

[cyber95]

Whenever I write a pseudo-game script, first thing I decide on is this.  It's between "Do actions speak louder than words?" or "Do words convey a more understandable message?"

[Zaphos]

Half Life is additionally weird in that it lets the player move around freely during dialog, and ignores the fact that movement in itself is an important part of communication.  So dialog in Half Life 2 for me often played out with Gordon jumping around like an idiot, or toying with his guns, or ... well, doing anything except standing still.  And the characters just completely ignore that behavior, of course, which can be frustratingly obvious.

In contrast to that, I think silent protagonist dialog works quite well if the dialog occurs while the player is busy doing something.  If lines are being delivered as the player is actively doing a task, the expectation that the body language is a part of the conversation is gone, so the problem is sidestepped.

[William Broom]

I think, basically, the less complicated your story is, the better a silent protagonist will work. That's why it worked well in HL1 and not so well in HL2. It's also to do with how well your character is connected to the story. For example, Cave Story has a pretty complex plot, but it's OK for Quote to be silent because, in the grand scheme of things, he's pretty irrelevant. (I haven't actually finished Cave Story yet, so maybe there is some more important connection revealed later on. But from what I've seen, Quote is basically poking his nose into other peoples' business.)

As for the immersion angle, I don't usually buy it. I mean, are we supposed to actually feel that we're one with the on-screen character? Personally, I always feel quite a separation between me and the protagonist, and that's OK. You wouldn't expect a book or a movie to be 'immersive'.
The only 'immersion' that really occurs in games IMO comes from a connection between the protagonist and the world, not the protagonist and the player. For example, GTA is immersive because the world seems realistic and reacts to your actions realistically, not because it tricks you into thinking that you're a Polish gangster. Similarly, when I create a character in an RPG, I don't create him to be 'just like me' - I create him to be someone who would I think would be interesting   to play as.

[Hideous]

I think the silentness worked extremely well in HL2.

[team_q]

I always loved how Half-Life 2 dodged the "We wrote this cinimatic and dammit you are going to wach it!" I think being able to throw shit around while important dialogue is cool, It keeps the experence in the control of the player, if you want to feel like you are paying attention, stand near them and watch their emotions, if you want to be a dick, go ahead, throw that mug at Alyx and her dad on the couch!

[Zaphos]

I always loved how Half-Life 2 dodged the "We wrote this cinimatic and dammit you are going to wach it!" I think being able to throw shit around while important dialogue is cool, It keeps the experence in the control of the player, if you want to feel like you are paying attention, stand near them and watch their emotions, if you want to be a dick, go ahead, throw that mug at Alyx and her dad on the couch!

But really the player controls the experience only in the most superficial sense -- sure they can throw that mug, but the world around them pretty much ignores that.  You still get this super linear experience with no meaningful control.

It's like a roller coaster ride with a steering wheel.  You're saying, look how cool it is that you can turn this wheel.  But it's not actually hooked up to anything, and if you actually try to use it all it does is remind you how much you're on rails.