Silent Game Protagonists Shouldn’t be Banished to Obscurity

Historically speaking, silent characters have rarely worked. A voice is a powerful tool, perhaps the most powerful, when it comes to bringing a character to life. Without one, there’s often little for a player to latch onto and use to define the character they’re seeing on screen. The problems grows even deeper when that character is the game’s protagonist. Now, silent avatars aren’t an issue. Their whole purpose is to serve as a bridge between the player and the game world. It’s when they are treated as a character that the problem arises. When the game tells the player that they’re playing as an interesting person, then the player will naturally want to understand why that is. Unfortunately, most games with silent protagonists fail to provide that much-desired insight. As a result, the silent protagonist has largely fallen out of use in modern gaming. It’s a shame because they still have so much storytelling potential. Bethesda demonstrated this through an obviously rage-filled Doom Slayer in Doom (2016). Supergiant Games took it even further and showed gaming that silence doesn’t have to handicap a character. It could even be said that the protagonist of their 2014 release, Transistor, benefits from it quite a bit.

[CrimsonWing69]

Nawwww

[MeteorPanda]

Wait what? Rarely worked? So zelda, crash, jak, banjo, etc are trash? a lot of platformers do well with non talking protagonists. Hell, mario himself despite the few phrases doesnt really converse

Every mmo player character literally say nothing but different ways of accepting quests