The gaming landscape wasn’t always this loud.
March 14, 2023 11:39 AM Subscribe
Why video game protagonists have become so chatty [Polygon] “Whatever the reason, as gaming technology has advanced, and gaming itself has been increasingly recognized as an economic force, it seems like more and more protagonists have started to find their voice. They converse with companions who, unlike the blunt urgency of Navi’s “Hey! Listen!” in Ocarina of Time, have themselves become chattier, injected with personality. It’s another matter entirely, however, whether players want to hear what these characters have to say. Perhaps this trend partially exists because games have become so much bigger — bigger worlds with bigger budgets. [...] In this current “you can climb any mountain you see” era of marketing, in which each new release boasts another record broken for the size and scale of its world, games have given more empty space for the player to traverse — and, therefore, more opportunity for silence as the character travels from one quest to the next. And yet recent AAA games seem increasingly anxious of this silence.”
• Why Silent Video Game Protagonists Remain Popular [CBR]
• Why Silent Video Game Protagonists Remain Popular [CBR]
“This shift toward games becoming almost universally character-driven has happened at such a swift pace that audiences from 15 years ago would be overwhelmed. Having an iconic protagonist feels essential to the success of any mainstream contemporary release, as it's something most gamers now expect. Yet a look through the annals of history, and quite a few modern-day examples as well, reveals that games aren't always enhanced by having a relentless chatterbox as a hero or heroine. Sometimes, it's very much a creative decision to have a protagonist who doesn't utter a single word. The most obvious reasons for having a silent protagonist are purely practical. Older titles from the '70s and '80s utilized software that couldn't support complex sound inputs. As bleeps and bloops evolved into the primitive "Wahoos" of Mario or Donkey Kong's weird bellows, it was still a long time before developers used proper, spoken dialogue for their protagonists. [...] Sometimes, however, the decision goes beyond the merely technical or practical. The classic argument for keeping protagonists mute is that it allows players, the audience, to project themselves onto a blank canvas, offering more player immersion as they feel more involved in the action as it unfolds.”• Atomic Heart Will Leave You Dreaming of Silent Protagonists [Den of Geek]
“I’m talking about games like BioShock, Prey, Fallout, and Doom. You can see aspects of all of those games in Atomic Heart, but the biggest thing they all had that Atomic Heart does not are silent (or laconic) protagonists. Those games used protagonists that never (or rarely) talked because those games were designed to offer immersive experiences. BioShock and Prey even belong to the “Immersive Sim” genre that Atomic Heart is clearly modeled after. Games in that genre are meant to emphasize atmosphere in ways that will compel you to lose yourself in their worlds and narratives. In the case of Atomic Heart, it’s kind of hard to lose yourself in that world and that narrative when your character is not only constantly talking but is often saying things designed to break or mock aspects of that world and that narrative. It’s almost like the developers were ashamed or unsure of the world and game they were creating so they decided to be self-deprecating as a defense mechanism. However, I think they actually created a pretty compelling world, which makes it that much stranger that they chose to go that route. That’s the thing about silent protagonists. Silent (or mostly quiet) protagonists are not inherently superior to more talkative protagonists. I could go on and on about Link, Doom guy, and the other stellar examples of quiet heroes, but that would stray too far from the point. Both styles have their places.”• It’s Time to Rethink Voiceless Video Game Protagonists [Vice Gaming]
“Mute protagonists are supposed to make video games and video game stories more engrossing—since your character doesn't have a voice or a personality, you can more easily map yourself onto them and feel as if you yourself are inside the game. That's the pitch, but personally I don't think there's any faster way to kill the illusion of a video game world, or make me realize the artificialness of what I'm playing, than by using a voiceless character. [...] I dislike as well the pandering nature of mute protagonists, the dreadful, dull obsequiousness of embedding the player so entirely in the story. I don't want to decide what kind of person I'm controlling. I'm not so insecure that everything has to be about me, me, me, and what I would do, or what I would say. I want to be told a story. I want to hear and experience the point of view of somebody else. There's a tension, obviously, because no matter how my character behaves or speaks, when the game proper kicks in I can do whatever I want with them—”• Forspoken’s Dialogue is a Relic that May have Succeeded as a PS4 Launch Title [Game Rant]
“It's no secret that some of the dialogue choices in Forspoken, especially in relation to protagonist Frey Holland, can come off as overwritten and trying too hard to sound cool. However, this exact type of characterization through dialogue might have better served the reception of Forspoken if the game had launched closer to the original Luminous Engine tech demo Agni's Philosophy that influenced the final product. The reception to this dialogue itself is a great showing for the ways that tastes have changed and the evolution of media in the mainstream from the early 2010s to now. Additionally, it should be noted that the "try-hard" dialogue from Forspoken being passed around online isn't entirely indicative of the overall quality, nor is it the best or worst thing about how Frey Holland and Cuff speak. [...] Unfortunately for Forspoken, the current year of 2023 is a long way beyond the early 2010s when characters popping jokes in the middle of combat was a refreshing change from more classic action media. This has been the natural evolution of the cheesy 1980s post-kill one-liners from movies like Die Hard or Commando. However, as is the case with the evolution of writing directing and the presentation of media, being stuck with what is now an antiquated style has left Forspoken's dialogue open to heavy criticism.”
one of my absolute favorite things about Elden Ring was the ALMOST COMPLETE LACK OF VOICED DIALOGUE. i am so so sick of chatty protagonists.
posted by capnsue at 11:52 AM on March 14, 2023 [14 favorites]
posted by capnsue at 11:52 AM on March 14, 2023 [14 favorites]
I'm glad I'm not alone in thinking that the player character in Atomic Heart needed to shut up.
Oh, it seems pretty consistent across the board with all the streams/reviews I've consumed.
Forspoken had other issues that are more complicated: too many writers in the room, sexism, racism, not understanding the tone of the game or not fully believing in it enough to avoid using whedonesque dialogue that just punches down on anything in the world of the game.
posted by Fizz at 11:57 AM on March 14, 2023
Oh, it seems pretty consistent across the board with all the streams/reviews I've consumed.
Forspoken had other issues that are more complicated: too many writers in the room, sexism, racism, not understanding the tone of the game or not fully believing in it enough to avoid using whedonesque dialogue that just punches down on anything in the world of the game.
posted by Fizz at 11:57 AM on March 14, 2023
I usually don't mind it too much, but I am playing Horizon Forbidden West and every time a massive dialogue option tree comes up now I just groan. I get backstory and character development, but this is ridiculous.
I know in theory I can just skip out on them, but part of me feels like I have to thoroughly explore them for some critical piece of info I may need later in the game.
posted by Badgermann at 11:57 AM on March 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
I know in theory I can just skip out on them, but part of me feels like I have to thoroughly explore them for some critical piece of info I may need later in the game.
posted by Badgermann at 11:57 AM on March 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
It's a tricky balance to strike. Early games like Doom worked because there was, within the context of the game world, nothing to talk to. But once you add talkative NPCs, the one-sided conversations start to feel weird pretty much immediately - they just barely got away with it in Half Life 1, by having relatively few and very simple interactions with NPCs, but by Half Life 2, Gordon remaining silent while NPCs directed whole conversations at him felt pretty ridiculous (and got justifiably lampooned a lot at the time). I've always had a pet theory that this was the intractable design problem that made Half Life 3 impossible; I suspect they'd worked themselves into a corner where having Gordon Freeman continue to be a mute protagonist just couldn't work narratively, but it would also be too jarring to have him suddenly start speaking, three games in.
Anyways, if the game industry can strike a happy medium where the protagonists talk enough not to break immersion, but also don't talk so much that they break immersion, that'll be great. (We'll still never get Half Life 3 though.)
Random thought: now that we've got the technology to duplicate an actor's voice from voice clips, we can't be too far out from the first video-game protagonist with a voice that's based on the player's real voice, can we?
posted by mstokes650 at 12:04 PM on March 14, 2023 [7 favorites]
Anyways, if the game industry can strike a happy medium where the protagonists talk enough not to break immersion, but also don't talk so much that they break immersion, that'll be great. (We'll still never get Half Life 3 though.)
Random thought: now that we've got the technology to duplicate an actor's voice from voice clips, we can't be too far out from the first video-game protagonist with a voice that's based on the player's real voice, can we?
posted by mstokes650 at 12:04 PM on March 14, 2023 [7 favorites]
So much of this depends on writing, voice-acting/delivery, & the world-building inside of said game. Also, depending on when or how long your game is in development, the entire landscape of the gaming world can just move on or evolve into something else. And now something that worked in a lot of games just doesn't b/c the landscape has shifted so dramatically. I don't envy game developers when they consider all of this.
posted by Fizz at 12:06 PM on March 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Fizz at 12:06 PM on March 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
we can't be too far out from the first video-game protagonist with a voice that's based on the player's real voice, can we?
That's a minefield, though. Speaking only for myself, I suspect that nothing would pull me out of the game narrative faster than my own voice coming out of the player character's mouth.
posted by gauche at 12:08 PM on March 14, 2023 [9 favorites]
That's a minefield, though. Speaking only for myself, I suspect that nothing would pull me out of the game narrative faster than my own voice coming out of the player character's mouth.
posted by gauche at 12:08 PM on March 14, 2023 [9 favorites]
This is what happens when you invite extroverts to an introverted nerd party.
posted by srboisvert at 12:10 PM on March 14, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by srboisvert at 12:10 PM on March 14, 2023 [11 favorites]
I found it kind of jarring how Fallout 3's perspective character was always silent despite the game being really dialog heavy and fully voiced. When Fallout 4 came out with a Bioware-style dialog wheel and a fully voiced protagonist, I felt that was really jarring too, and it seemed to really damage the unique internality of being an FPS and an RPG.
So what I'm saying is I object to everything I guess. Generalized objection. Mario had it right in the 80s : I want a "boing" noise, a "plonk" noise, and an "oops" noise. Everything else is distracting decadence.
Seriously, I find this really interesting - thanks for the links. This is an element that's really key to the medium's storytelling and there isn't an agreed-upon metric for how to control that aspect of the experience. We're getting to watch creators and storytellers try to figure out how to navigate it as the form matures. That's kind of an exciting experience.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 12:11 PM on March 14, 2023 [4 favorites]
So what I'm saying is I object to everything I guess. Generalized objection. Mario had it right in the 80s : I want a "boing" noise, a "plonk" noise, and an "oops" noise. Everything else is distracting decadence.
Seriously, I find this really interesting - thanks for the links. This is an element that's really key to the medium's storytelling and there isn't an agreed-upon metric for how to control that aspect of the experience. We're getting to watch creators and storytellers try to figure out how to navigate it as the form matures. That's kind of an exciting experience.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 12:11 PM on March 14, 2023 [4 favorites]
I had finished Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and the amount of dialogue in the game is just frustrating. It seemed as if characters were talking past each other and waxing poetically about their goals. Each time I felt a cutscene could end and the gameplay could begin, there was another cutscene right after. The banter became too much for basic fetch quests. Xenoblades Chronicles 3 feels like a disappointment compared to Xenoblade Chronicles 1 purely because the banter hides the fact that the story and setting are lacking.
posted by DetriusXii at 12:12 PM on March 14, 2023
posted by DetriusXii at 12:12 PM on March 14, 2023
I usually don't mind it too much, but I am playing Horizon Forbidden West and every time a massive dialogue option tree comes up now I just groan. I get backstory and character development, but this is ridiculous.
Worse, half the time you can skip past the dialogue line by line, half the time you can only skip the whole goddamn conversation. As far as I could tell there was no rhyme or reason to it, either. Maybe the ones where it was all "Press [] to skip" were frankly not story critical, while the long chats with Gaia that you could hit X to skip phrases were, so they just figured they'd throw a bone to the faster readers? Frustrating.
posted by Kyol at 12:16 PM on March 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
Worse, half the time you can skip past the dialogue line by line, half the time you can only skip the whole goddamn conversation. As far as I could tell there was no rhyme or reason to it, either. Maybe the ones where it was all "Press [] to skip" were frankly not story critical, while the long chats with Gaia that you could hit X to skip phrases were, so they just figured they'd throw a bone to the faster readers? Frustrating.
posted by Kyol at 12:16 PM on March 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
...every time a massive dialogue option tree comes up now I just groan.
Ever since Mass Effect I've wanted an option in the menu somewhere to just say, "look I'm going to ask all the questions alright? Just play it as a cut scene." Pretending that i'm participating here by going down a list of prepared questions is less compelling than just watching the characters chat, if I'm into the story.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 12:17 PM on March 14, 2023 [16 favorites]
Ever since Mass Effect I've wanted an option in the menu somewhere to just say, "look I'm going to ask all the questions alright? Just play it as a cut scene." Pretending that i'm participating here by going down a list of prepared questions is less compelling than just watching the characters chat, if I'm into the story.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 12:17 PM on March 14, 2023 [16 favorites]
fallout 4 is especially bad in the sense of not knowing what you're going to actually say and the options usually meaning (not now), (yes: polite), (yes sarcastic), (more info) since it's a pretty sloppy interface that doesn't have a lot of room for actual problem solving.
posted by Ferreous at 12:20 PM on March 14, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by Ferreous at 12:20 PM on March 14, 2023 [7 favorites]
Having just got a steam deck, I'm catching up on thing. Just finished playing Fallout 4 and talk, talk, talk... I understand why people complained that it made it hard to roleplay as anything other than "I'm the good guy/girl". (which fine by me I always am.. can't bring myself to be an asshole even virtually)
Played through a bit of Skyrim, but got stuck at a bad point where I might lose lydia and I don't want to do that. Very little talking there.
And right now I'm playing FO3 and boy... I'd forgotten how grindingly monotone that game is. Plus it's funny to have Liam Neeson doing the Liam Neeson thing and there you are - mute as a mule. But break Dr Braun and having it switch between Betty's voice and his is hysterical so I'll allow it.
posted by drewbage1847 at 12:23 PM on March 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
Played through a bit of Skyrim, but got stuck at a bad point where I might lose lydia and I don't want to do that. Very little talking there.
And right now I'm playing FO3 and boy... I'd forgotten how grindingly monotone that game is. Plus it's funny to have Liam Neeson doing the Liam Neeson thing and there you are - mute as a mule. But break Dr Braun and having it switch between Betty's voice and his is hysterical so I'll allow it.
posted by drewbage1847 at 12:23 PM on March 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
Link in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild kind of straddles the divide perfectly. Link doesn't have dialogue but he does still make sounds, guttural noises, etc. And I like that. He's not totally a void but he's not a chatter-box either.
posted by Fizz at 12:26 PM on March 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Fizz at 12:26 PM on March 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
I am playing Horizon Forbidden West and every time a massive dialogue option tree comes up now I just groan. I get backstory and character development, but this is ridiculous.
Personally, my gripe about HFW is that Aloy never shuts the hell up. Especially for the myriad puzzle sections, you can't even look at the situation for five seconds without Aloy blurting out a blatant hint.
The endless dialogue trees were easily skimmable, really. Sorry to all those talented people who animated every line of dialogue, I just mashed X.
I tried the Forspoken demo and the chatter was annoying there too. The demo conveniently skips over the backstory of how our protagonist got all her fancy powers, but she seems awfully flippant about it.
(A silent protagonist causes some narrative dissonance, but does it matter? Stop pretending games are movies or books and you'll end up with better games. The best games lean into their game-ness.)
posted by neckro23 at 12:27 PM on March 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
Personally, my gripe about HFW is that Aloy never shuts the hell up. Especially for the myriad puzzle sections, you can't even look at the situation for five seconds without Aloy blurting out a blatant hint.
The endless dialogue trees were easily skimmable, really. Sorry to all those talented people who animated every line of dialogue, I just mashed X.
I tried the Forspoken demo and the chatter was annoying there too. The demo conveniently skips over the backstory of how our protagonist got all her fancy powers, but she seems awfully flippant about it.
(A silent protagonist causes some narrative dissonance, but does it matter? Stop pretending games are movies or books and you'll end up with better games. The best games lean into their game-ness.)
posted by neckro23 at 12:27 PM on March 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
I don't play many games where the protagonist does a lot of talking, maybe Hades was the last one. I guess the next step would be us actually talking and then the NPCs responding to us using some kind of AI. It could be a great way to interact but I could see the first couple of games overdoing it because of it's newness.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:29 PM on March 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:29 PM on March 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
I'm giving Code Vein a chance right now and ... I have the voice audio level set to 0. The companions just won't fucking shut up. And the acting is bad.
posted by seanmpuckett at 12:29 PM on March 14, 2023
posted by seanmpuckett at 12:29 PM on March 14, 2023
I'm giving Code Vein a chance right now and ... I have the voice audio level set to 0. The companions just won't fucking shut up. And the acting is bad.
Are you using English dubs or Japanese with subs?
B/c they are not the same. I find that for the most part, Japanese voice acting is better than English voice acting, though that has started to change a little as bigger-budget AAA games are investing in better actors.
posted by Fizz at 12:31 PM on March 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
Are you using English dubs or Japanese with subs?
B/c they are not the same. I find that for the most part, Japanese voice acting is better than English voice acting, though that has started to change a little as bigger-budget AAA games are investing in better actors.
posted by Fizz at 12:31 PM on March 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
I've been playing a lot of Final Fantasy XIV, which is handles this in a really funny way for a game that is otherwise SUPER wordy, which is that sometimes your character will just contribute to a conversation by doing a "yammer yammer yammer" pantomime with no sound, and the rest of the characters will just kind go like "oh hmm that's really interesting."
It's this really obvious acknowledgement of the narrative dissonance of the silent protagonist, in a way that doesn't undermine your idea of who the character is but doesn't leave them this weird mute force in a world of developed people. I kind of enjoy it.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 12:34 PM on March 14, 2023 [4 favorites]
It's this really obvious acknowledgement of the narrative dissonance of the silent protagonist, in a way that doesn't undermine your idea of who the character is but doesn't leave them this weird mute force in a world of developed people. I kind of enjoy it.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 12:34 PM on March 14, 2023 [4 favorites]
I can see both sides of this, as I have played big AAA games that were dialog heavy and games that literally have none. I do think for me at least, that silent protagonists generally make games more immersive. Or at the very least more dialog means the game's storyline had better be on point or else the dialog will be the first (usually painfully) obvious clue that it isn't.
<side rant> can we please get rid of games that rely on unskippable cut scenes for NPCs to deliver exposition</side rant>
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 12:35 PM on March 14, 2023
<side rant> can we please get rid of games that rely on unskippable cut scenes for NPCs to deliver exposition</side rant>
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 12:35 PM on March 14, 2023
Yeah, I switched the language in Dragon's Dogma to Japanese for that reason; the pawn's chatter was much better in Japanese.
Overall with Forbidden West I think the game missed having another couple weeks in polish, especially with some of the voicing. The thing that drove me spare was wandering into and out of quest areas; every time you crossed that invisible border there'd be some comment, repeated over and over. The thing needed some kind of squelch function like, "if someone has said line XXX in the past fifteen minutes, or maybe even couple of hours, just don't."
posted by seanmpuckett at 12:36 PM on March 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
Overall with Forbidden West I think the game missed having another couple weeks in polish, especially with some of the voicing. The thing that drove me spare was wandering into and out of quest areas; every time you crossed that invisible border there'd be some comment, repeated over and over. The thing needed some kind of squelch function like, "if someone has said line XXX in the past fifteen minutes, or maybe even couple of hours, just don't."
posted by seanmpuckett at 12:36 PM on March 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
I don't play enough of a variety of video games to have a strong preference on this one way or the other, I just feel like I know what I like in any given game. Like I agree with Fizz that Link hits a good balance for me: he makes sounds, but he has no voiced dialogue, even though you can choose things for him to say in dialogues with NPCs. (I also like that the things you can have him say can be hilariously obnoxious.) But in general, Link's silence feels right for BOTW.
In contrast, part of what makes Hades work so well is having so much well-acted dialogue that moves the narrative forward. You keep grinding it out through all those runs in the underworld specifically to hear more of it and progress the story.
I guess I will say that I somewhat recently tried the farming sim Wylde Flowers, and that's fully voice-acted, which was nice at first but quickly got tedious. It's a farming sim! And sure it's a bit of a dating sim too, but I still don't need to listen to all this dialogue. I'm not sure the performance adds much as opposed to just letting players speedread their way through it.
posted by yasaman at 12:38 PM on March 14, 2023
In contrast, part of what makes Hades work so well is having so much well-acted dialogue that moves the narrative forward. You keep grinding it out through all those runs in the underworld specifically to hear more of it and progress the story.
I guess I will say that I somewhat recently tried the farming sim Wylde Flowers, and that's fully voice-acted, which was nice at first but quickly got tedious. It's a farming sim! And sure it's a bit of a dating sim too, but I still don't need to listen to all this dialogue. I'm not sure the performance adds much as opposed to just letting players speedread their way through it.
posted by yasaman at 12:38 PM on March 14, 2023
Genshin Impact has a truly baffling variant of this where the player character has a sidekick with them at all times, and the sidekick handles basically all conversations for you and gets around half the dialogue in the entire game. Meanwhile the player character has a voice line maybe once or twice a year.
posted by one for the books at 12:50 PM on March 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by one for the books at 12:50 PM on March 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
Funny thing about Horizon: Forbidden West is they ALREADY turned down the frequency of Aloy's chatter. I got the game at launch. Every time I would pick a berry that would go into a reserve stash (as I had already filled up the pouch you can use on the go) she would say something like "I can't fit this in my pouch, but I can store it in my reserve stash." I think she had a couple variations on this, but she would say this every single time I harvested a healing plant... which is basically constantly throughout the game. She still says it, but the frequency is much, much lower.
Aloy blurting out clues is preposterous. I enter some puzzle dungeon with Aloy, and it's essentially a hyper-detailed mechanical cathedral with moving parts, cables, glowing juice in canisters, etc etc etc. I try to spend a minute taking in the sights (cool graphics, astounding art direction) and she's giving me puzzle clues about things I haven't even seen yet.
I have a PS5. I bought it partially for better graphics (among other reasons). Let me enjoy these spectacles for at least 60 seconds before you start telling me to shoot the moving gears which I haven't even noticed yet! I wish they had a toggle to turn on/off clues. Most of the time the clues aren't necessary, so Aloy telling them to me is just distracting. Give me a "Help" button where Aloy gives a single clue, and will continue giving more clues as you request them. That cannot be hard to program.
God of War: Ragnarok (despite the name, I think many Mefites would like this game*) has a funny character that accompanies you (no spoilers!). He has a Scottish accent, yet he's very understandable to my Middle American ears. Amazing voice work, too. He tells these stories and fables while you travel. Some of it's very interesting. Sometimes he's just very, very funny. But I had a really hard time following what he was saying even if I was just moving myself between areas with no threats. So I found myself either stopping to pay attention, or (more often) missing most of the stories he tells. It's a shame, but I just can't focus on a story being told while maneuvering a character in a game.
*Some of the best voice work I've ever heard in a game is in this title. And a lot of the voice work is done in an unexpected way, not the same kind of cartoony trope-voices you would expect. Astounding graphics, animations and fun combat controls. Great exploration. The game has it all!
posted by SoberHighland at 12:54 PM on March 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
Aloy blurting out clues is preposterous. I enter some puzzle dungeon with Aloy, and it's essentially a hyper-detailed mechanical cathedral with moving parts, cables, glowing juice in canisters, etc etc etc. I try to spend a minute taking in the sights (cool graphics, astounding art direction) and she's giving me puzzle clues about things I haven't even seen yet.
I have a PS5. I bought it partially for better graphics (among other reasons). Let me enjoy these spectacles for at least 60 seconds before you start telling me to shoot the moving gears which I haven't even noticed yet! I wish they had a toggle to turn on/off clues. Most of the time the clues aren't necessary, so Aloy telling them to me is just distracting. Give me a "Help" button where Aloy gives a single clue, and will continue giving more clues as you request them. That cannot be hard to program.
God of War: Ragnarok (despite the name, I think many Mefites would like this game*) has a funny character that accompanies you (no spoilers!). He has a Scottish accent, yet he's very understandable to my Middle American ears. Amazing voice work, too. He tells these stories and fables while you travel. Some of it's very interesting. Sometimes he's just very, very funny. But I had a really hard time following what he was saying even if I was just moving myself between areas with no threats. So I found myself either stopping to pay attention, or (more often) missing most of the stories he tells. It's a shame, but I just can't focus on a story being told while maneuvering a character in a game.
*Some of the best voice work I've ever heard in a game is in this title. And a lot of the voice work is done in an unexpected way, not the same kind of cartoony trope-voices you would expect. Astounding graphics, animations and fun combat controls. Great exploration. The game has it all!
posted by SoberHighland at 12:54 PM on March 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
If it's established characters with their own personalities that's fine, make it voiced. But often, with games that have a LOT of different play strategies, giving a voice to the player character, IMHO, will make the player feel s/he has less "agency" over the player-character, and make the player feel as if s/he is merely another puppet for the creator's vision.
posted by kschang at 12:56 PM on March 14, 2023
posted by kschang at 12:56 PM on March 14, 2023
Ever since Mass Effect I've wanted an option in the menu somewhere to just say, "look I'm going to ask all the questions alright? Just play it as a cut scene."
Despite it being a great game, they really never crossed that "you can lose future dialog options, or story options, by failing to be the right kind if inquisitive or empathetic or cagey in the present" line, probably due to playability issues.
posted by mhoye at 1:01 PM on March 14, 2023
Despite it being a great game, they really never crossed that "you can lose future dialog options, or story options, by failing to be the right kind if inquisitive or empathetic or cagey in the present" line, probably due to playability issues.
posted by mhoye at 1:01 PM on March 14, 2023
kschang, it's perfectly fine to use "they" instead of the awkward and exclusionary construct "s/he."
posted by seanmpuckett at 1:03 PM on March 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by seanmpuckett at 1:03 PM on March 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
The first Dragon Age had text-only protagonist, while the companions and other major characters were voiced. I thought it was very, very weird and pulled me out of the game. I had to keep switching between listening to the companion then reading "my" (protagonist Grey Warden) lines. I suppose since Dragon Age: Origins had many different character options, that was as much of a budget decision over anything else.
The subsequent games had a voiced main character and I felt more immersed in the world.
Perhaps it's not about voiced/not voiced. It's the quality and frequency. I don't need to hear "I am overburdened" 500x, I'm happy to just read that or see an icon flash on-screen. But little bits of chatter that shows me more of the character's personality or current mood are great!
My partner has been playing Yakuza: Like A Dragon. Some of the lines are dubbed in English, some are not. When there's no dub, the character and party just make noises: Huh? Hmmm. [awkward laugh]. Uh huh!
posted by tinydancer at 1:13 PM on March 14, 2023
The subsequent games had a voiced main character and I felt more immersed in the world.
Perhaps it's not about voiced/not voiced. It's the quality and frequency. I don't need to hear "I am overburdened" 500x, I'm happy to just read that or see an icon flash on-screen. But little bits of chatter that shows me more of the character's personality or current mood are great!
My partner has been playing Yakuza: Like A Dragon. Some of the lines are dubbed in English, some are not. When there's no dub, the character and party just make noises: Huh? Hmmm. [awkward laugh]. Uh huh!
posted by tinydancer at 1:13 PM on March 14, 2023
Speaking only for myself, I suspect that nothing would pull me out of the game narrative faster than my own voice coming out of the player character's mouth.
The fact that the way our voice sounds to us isn't the way it sounds to others (for us, it's always slightly deeper, because of the resonance within our bodies) wouldn't help. Plus, many people hate the sound of their own voice (on recordings) for precisely this reason.
I suppose most players would get used to it relatively quickly, but I also imagine it wouldn't work in a lot of situations. For example, a 12-year-old kid playing a big, badass merc in a shooter probably doesn't want to hear their own kid voice coming out of the character's mouth.
posted by asnider at 1:19 PM on March 14, 2023 [4 favorites]
The fact that the way our voice sounds to us isn't the way it sounds to others (for us, it's always slightly deeper, because of the resonance within our bodies) wouldn't help. Plus, many people hate the sound of their own voice (on recordings) for precisely this reason.
I suppose most players would get used to it relatively quickly, but I also imagine it wouldn't work in a lot of situations. For example, a 12-year-old kid playing a big, badass merc in a shooter probably doesn't want to hear their own kid voice coming out of the character's mouth.
posted by asnider at 1:19 PM on March 14, 2023 [4 favorites]
my gripe about HFW is that Aloy never shuts the hell up
I was coming in to mention this very thing, since I'm playing through Horizon: Forbidden West right now. I like the game and I love the world, but I would like more than maybe ten seconds trying to figure out a puzzle before Aloy starts talking in my ear about using her focus to scan the area.
Also, I've got a lot of thoughts about the backstory of the world in the Horizon games, but it's a big tangent, so I won't start going on about it.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 1:57 PM on March 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
I was coming in to mention this very thing, since I'm playing through Horizon: Forbidden West right now. I like the game and I love the world, but I would like more than maybe ten seconds trying to figure out a puzzle before Aloy starts talking in my ear about using her focus to scan the area.
Also, I've got a lot of thoughts about the backstory of the world in the Horizon games, but it's a big tangent, so I won't start going on about it.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 1:57 PM on March 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
I recently learned that Superbrothers finally made a new game, and bought Jett practically sight unseen. It's a lovely looking game, and twee as one would expect from those developers, but your companion on the first chapter does not. Shut. Up. What's worse, it's in a fictional language, so I'm reading captions while trying to do game things and trying to understand the unusual controls.
Dude is away in stasis for the second chapter and it's a much better experience without him yammering on.
I appreciate storytelling, but there's a balance to be had!
posted by Leviathant at 2:18 PM on March 14, 2023
Dude is away in stasis for the second chapter and it's a much better experience without him yammering on.
I appreciate storytelling, but there's a balance to be had!
posted by Leviathant at 2:18 PM on March 14, 2023
I don't find unvoiced protagonists too jarring. I played through most of Disco Elysium with my partner and while your personality traits are voiced, your dialogue is silent (at least in the old version). It wasn't too bad, I had already read the choices in my head anyways.
Also Elden Ring's complete lack of dialogue other than grunts and getting punched is great. I love being a big hunk of tarnished hitting things with my big hammer. In my head, my character is just letting all the NPCs prattle on about magic and schemes and some 'Erdtree' or whatever. That's why my intelligence is 9.
posted by crossswords at 2:24 PM on March 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
Also Elden Ring's complete lack of dialogue other than grunts and getting punched is great. I love being a big hunk of tarnished hitting things with my big hammer. In my head, my character is just letting all the NPCs prattle on about magic and schemes and some 'Erdtree' or whatever. That's why my intelligence is 9.
posted by crossswords at 2:24 PM on March 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
...
posted by betweenthebars at 2:32 PM on March 14, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by betweenthebars at 2:32 PM on March 14, 2023 [8 favorites]
After reading this thread, I newly appreciate that Kirby is not chatty.
posted by Quasirandom at 2:42 PM on March 14, 2023
posted by Quasirandom at 2:42 PM on March 14, 2023
(which fine by me I always am.. can't bring myself to be an asshole even virtually)
I was like this for most of my 30-odd years of gaming. It's only in the last few years that I've tried being evil.
I did a couple of play throughs of Total War: Warhammer (Total Warhammer, come on!) as Orcs and then vampires. It's seriously fun and very cathartic. None of characters have feelings, it's totally fine to be mean to them!
I need to find something more action oriented to be a vicious, selfish, jerk someday soon.
posted by VTX at 2:52 PM on March 14, 2023
I was like this for most of my 30-odd years of gaming. It's only in the last few years that I've tried being evil.
I did a couple of play throughs of Total War: Warhammer (Total Warhammer, come on!) as Orcs and then vampires. It's seriously fun and very cathartic. None of characters have feelings, it's totally fine to be mean to them!
I need to find something more action oriented to be a vicious, selfish, jerk someday soon.
posted by VTX at 2:52 PM on March 14, 2023
ASK ME ABOUT ‘LOOM’
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 2:58 PM on March 14, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 2:58 PM on March 14, 2023 [11 favorites]
Yeah, Horizon Forbidden West could really use a few sliders for controlling just how much Aloy talks to herself. Sometimes it's nice, I like that she'll say "I should use some fire arrows on this" or "Plasma would be wasted here" when I'm checking out a monster (though I wish she'd say "Oh this is weak to acid and fire", as a lot of monsters are weak to two elemental effects and she only ever says one, preferentially whichever one I don't have anything capable of delivering in my current loadout), I can't be bothered to remember the elemental stats of every single robot dinosaur in the game, but oh god just lemme take in the scenery for a moment without solving the nearest environmental puzzle for me.
One other thing I've noticed it does: whenever I finish a mission, it always picks another one for me from the logbook. Always. And I think it was always a side mission. Usually one about halfway across the map. It kinda started to feel like the game never wanted me to just fuck around aimlessly, despite that kinda being a core pleasure of any decent open-world game. Just wander around harvesting resources and beating up on wandering monsters. I'm kind of curious what happens if I do all the side missions and have nothing but "kill six of this creature to upgrade your weapon" quests left. I wouldn't be surprised to see it keep on popping up a "go to the in-game place to start NG+" quest then.
The game just has this horror of ever having any moment where I am not being lead around one way or another. And that feels like a separate problem from whether or not Aloy is a mute protagonist or not.
posted by egypturnash at 3:53 PM on March 14, 2023
One other thing I've noticed it does: whenever I finish a mission, it always picks another one for me from the logbook. Always. And I think it was always a side mission. Usually one about halfway across the map. It kinda started to feel like the game never wanted me to just fuck around aimlessly, despite that kinda being a core pleasure of any decent open-world game. Just wander around harvesting resources and beating up on wandering monsters. I'm kind of curious what happens if I do all the side missions and have nothing but "kill six of this creature to upgrade your weapon" quests left. I wouldn't be surprised to see it keep on popping up a "go to the in-game place to start NG+" quest then.
The game just has this horror of ever having any moment where I am not being lead around one way or another. And that feels like a separate problem from whether or not Aloy is a mute protagonist or not.
posted by egypturnash at 3:53 PM on March 14, 2023
I played through most of Disco Elysium with my partner
read this & my brain was like "right, Kim Kitsuragi" for a full minute before realizing you meant your RL partner
repetitive chatter in a video game is super annoying whether it's from the PC or a companion or whatever (looking at you, Borderlands 3 talking guns)
that said a context-sensitive voiced character allows for moments like in one of the Uncharteds, some train car falls halfway off a cliff or something, necessitating a climbing section, you're like "fuck this shit," a second later Nathan Drake says "Fuck this shit," and you feel immeasurably closer to this ripped man who makes questionable life choices
(disclaimer here cause I don't want to sound more as though I know what I'm doing than I do: I don't)
re: dialogue trees, I try to avoid writing them hub-style whenever possible (i.e. you can ask eight questions in any order & we all know you're gonna go through all of them)
instead you can do a linear-feeling thing where the same information is presented as nodes the player can hit in whatever order by picking one of like 3 options, all phrased to make sense as a response to the NPC (e.g. "I'm excited for you, but I'm still not sure where I'm supposed to get 800 dilithium crystals")
(this is a luxury I have writing an unvoiced text-only protagonist where they can say whatever dumb shit I want)
this allows for the less important nodes to be organically ephemeral, the player follows up on 'em in the moment or they cut to the chase hoping to make the conversation shorter, it's totally fine to save some content for next playthrough or never
I also try to make every set of dialogue options an opportunity to roleplay a different choice, 'cause good/evil/neutral or straight/snarky/pathologically snarky for every single choice is dull as hell
so like "this one the player gets to be reassuring or businesslike, this one we touch on their emotional relationship to money, this one we cover cake vs. pie, this one has an opportunity to be SHOCKINGLY rude but it's hilarious, this one is about are you a normal, a weirdo, or a HUGE weirdo," etc.
like it's probably reductive & offensive to the entire notion of Art to think of my job as "entertain, inform, provide the player with a Buzzfeed quiz, not necessarily in that order," but how are you going to stop me exactly
posted by taquito sunrise at 4:09 PM on March 14, 2023 [4 favorites]
read this & my brain was like "right, Kim Kitsuragi" for a full minute before realizing you meant your RL partner
repetitive chatter in a video game is super annoying whether it's from the PC or a companion or whatever (looking at you, Borderlands 3 talking guns)
that said a context-sensitive voiced character allows for moments like in one of the Uncharteds, some train car falls halfway off a cliff or something, necessitating a climbing section, you're like "fuck this shit," a second later Nathan Drake says "Fuck this shit," and you feel immeasurably closer to this ripped man who makes questionable life choices
(disclaimer here cause I don't want to sound more as though I know what I'm doing than I do: I don't)
re: dialogue trees, I try to avoid writing them hub-style whenever possible (i.e. you can ask eight questions in any order & we all know you're gonna go through all of them)
instead you can do a linear-feeling thing where the same information is presented as nodes the player can hit in whatever order by picking one of like 3 options, all phrased to make sense as a response to the NPC (e.g. "I'm excited for you, but I'm still not sure where I'm supposed to get 800 dilithium crystals")
(this is a luxury I have writing an unvoiced text-only protagonist where they can say whatever dumb shit I want)
this allows for the less important nodes to be organically ephemeral, the player follows up on 'em in the moment or they cut to the chase hoping to make the conversation shorter, it's totally fine to save some content for next playthrough or never
I also try to make every set of dialogue options an opportunity to roleplay a different choice, 'cause good/evil/neutral or straight/snarky/pathologically snarky for every single choice is dull as hell
so like "this one the player gets to be reassuring or businesslike, this one we touch on their emotional relationship to money, this one we cover cake vs. pie, this one has an opportunity to be SHOCKINGLY rude but it's hilarious, this one is about are you a normal, a weirdo, or a HUGE weirdo," etc.
like it's probably reductive & offensive to the entire notion of Art to think of my job as "entertain, inform, provide the player with a Buzzfeed quiz, not necessarily in that order," but how are you going to stop me exactly
posted by taquito sunrise at 4:09 PM on March 14, 2023 [4 favorites]
It seems to me that the gaming industry as a whole is stuck in a 20th century mindset, where Hollywood was the dominant force in media.
Movies (and TV) are not interactive, so the only thing they're good for is telling a story. They really cannot do anything else. Their pervasiveness has lead to the assumption that storytelling is a strength of the medium, when really it is a fundamental limitation.
Video games are interactive, but were born into that environment. Early on they had very little story, and games were regarded as a lesser medium for that reason, often dismissed as being "not art" and "for kids". As technology has advanced they have increasingly adopted cinematic elements, and story is widely regarded as a Very Important Thing.
Meanwhile, the best selling video game of all time is Minecraft. It's a game that abandons story in favour of player agency. You can pick up and place blocks in a world that is made of blocks. That it both embraces player agency and is the best selling video game of all time is no mere coincidence! And yet there seems to be pervasive denial about it. It's often regarded as being "for kids", a dismissal that was once levied at video games in general.
I'm not suggesting that story in video games is necessarily a bad thing. Amongst the things that the medium affords, story is one of them. But there seems to be a widespread assumption that story is essential, and I think that is holding video games back. If you as a player are always being put into the shoes of someone else's protagonist, that necessarily limits the gaming experiences you can have.
Imagine a video game with a AAA budget and absolutely none of it spent on story. I have no idea what it would be like, because no attempt has ever been made to make one.
posted by swr at 6:22 PM on March 14, 2023 [5 favorites]
Movies (and TV) are not interactive, so the only thing they're good for is telling a story. They really cannot do anything else. Their pervasiveness has lead to the assumption that storytelling is a strength of the medium, when really it is a fundamental limitation.
Video games are interactive, but were born into that environment. Early on they had very little story, and games were regarded as a lesser medium for that reason, often dismissed as being "not art" and "for kids". As technology has advanced they have increasingly adopted cinematic elements, and story is widely regarded as a Very Important Thing.
Meanwhile, the best selling video game of all time is Minecraft. It's a game that abandons story in favour of player agency. You can pick up and place blocks in a world that is made of blocks. That it both embraces player agency and is the best selling video game of all time is no mere coincidence! And yet there seems to be pervasive denial about it. It's often regarded as being "for kids", a dismissal that was once levied at video games in general.
I'm not suggesting that story in video games is necessarily a bad thing. Amongst the things that the medium affords, story is one of them. But there seems to be a widespread assumption that story is essential, and I think that is holding video games back. If you as a player are always being put into the shoes of someone else's protagonist, that necessarily limits the gaming experiences you can have.
Imagine a video game with a AAA budget and absolutely none of it spent on story. I have no idea what it would be like, because no attempt has ever been made to make one.
posted by swr at 6:22 PM on March 14, 2023 [5 favorites]
Gran Turismo 7 is a AAA title with no story or spoken dialogue. There is a lot of chatty “dad talk” about the history of Motorsport and famous cars, but it’s entirely skippable.
posted by Doleful Creature at 7:48 PM on March 14, 2023
posted by Doleful Creature at 7:48 PM on March 14, 2023
Yes, that seems to fit the description of a AAA title with no story. Come to think of it, there are whole genres of sport based games that have AAA budgets and no story. Puzzle games too, though they generally don't get AAA budgets. In terms of player agency though, those formats tend to be very limiting.
The #2 best selling video game of all time is Grand Theft Auto V. Looking at Twitch, the overwhelming majory of GTA streams are playing on the nopixel roleplaying server. The chatty protagonists are the players themselves, playing characters they have made for themselves, not the ones that Rockstar wrote into the game.
posted by swr at 9:10 PM on March 14, 2023
The #2 best selling video game of all time is Grand Theft Auto V. Looking at Twitch, the overwhelming majory of GTA streams are playing on the nopixel roleplaying server. The chatty protagonists are the players themselves, playing characters they have made for themselves, not the ones that Rockstar wrote into the game.
posted by swr at 9:10 PM on March 14, 2023
I have been Team Silent Protagonist for decades, and I’ve always felt like the outlier. My heart fills to see so much support for the idea.
In the early 2000s I was part of a small team trying to make a PS2 physics-based action-platformer (the recent Psychonauts documentary paints the right picture, but our game died on the vine). I kept arguing and arguing for a silent protagonist and was stunned that every other member of the team wanted to jam a voice into his mouth. It’s such a shame. I just always figured, “I’m making this character do everything else, so why should it speak thoughts that I’m not having?” It worked for Gordon Freeman and the player in Far Cry 2 and on and on…
posted by TangoCharlie at 10:48 PM on March 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
In the early 2000s I was part of a small team trying to make a PS2 physics-based action-platformer (the recent Psychonauts documentary paints the right picture, but our game died on the vine). I kept arguing and arguing for a silent protagonist and was stunned that every other member of the team wanted to jam a voice into his mouth. It’s such a shame. I just always figured, “I’m making this character do everything else, so why should it speak thoughts that I’m not having?” It worked for Gordon Freeman and the player in Far Cry 2 and on and on…
posted by TangoCharlie at 10:48 PM on March 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
Perhaps Alyx was the way to continue the Half Life franchise without having to make Gordon speak. It was interesting to play first person with all of the extra embodyment that comes with VR and hear yourself speaking as Alyx. She, or really you, aren’t chatty and when she does add commentary it is often exactly what I was thinking at that moment. The NPC dialog is also fairly short and well integrated into the VR world, so it doesn’t break the immersion.
posted by autopilot at 5:04 AM on March 15, 2023
posted by autopilot at 5:04 AM on March 15, 2023
Stop pretending games are movies or books and you'll end up with better games. The best games lean into their game-ness.
This 100%. I tend to be very picky about games, and feel like alot of the new "big" games are essentially just a story that I push buttons to move along, with some parts where I actually get to play a game. I want to play a game, not watch an interactive story.
At this point, if I start a game and theres more story than play in the first 20-30 min, I'm out. If I want a story, I will read or watch or listen to a story. If I'm playing a game, I want to play something not just push some buttons.
posted by LizBoBiz at 6:53 AM on March 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
This 100%. I tend to be very picky about games, and feel like alot of the new "big" games are essentially just a story that I push buttons to move along, with some parts where I actually get to play a game. I want to play a game, not watch an interactive story.
At this point, if I start a game and theres more story than play in the first 20-30 min, I'm out. If I want a story, I will read or watch or listen to a story. If I'm playing a game, I want to play something not just push some buttons.
posted by LizBoBiz at 6:53 AM on March 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
Random thought: now that we've got the technology to duplicate an actor's voice from voice clips, we can't be too far out from the first video-game protagonist with a voice that's based on the player's real voice, can we
I don’t want this, at all, I don’t want to hear my voice in a game no thank you.
From a dev/quality standpoint what would be a real boon is text->voice that didn’t sound bad and matched a voice so you could go and record the actually important bits.
What happens is that a design will be put in place about when/where a voice over/bark is needed and a ton of lines will be written in the script to be recorded later. So when you work on it you’ll usually won’t hear those lines till very far in development since recording happens late to make sure all lines are written (on big games there will be more than one session scheduled for late corrections). This makes it harder to balance those and adjust the frequency since all that stuff comes in at the time everybody is extra busy making everything not collapse. Having those integrated sooner might help the devs realize how it sounds & balance it if they feel it needs balancing.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 6:56 AM on March 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
I don’t want this, at all, I don’t want to hear my voice in a game no thank you.
From a dev/quality standpoint what would be a real boon is text->voice that didn’t sound bad and matched a voice so you could go and record the actually important bits.
What happens is that a design will be put in place about when/where a voice over/bark is needed and a ton of lines will be written in the script to be recorded later. So when you work on it you’ll usually won’t hear those lines till very far in development since recording happens late to make sure all lines are written (on big games there will be more than one session scheduled for late corrections). This makes it harder to balance those and adjust the frequency since all that stuff comes in at the time everybody is extra busy making everything not collapse. Having those integrated sooner might help the devs realize how it sounds & balance it if they feel it needs balancing.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 6:56 AM on March 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
It's a tough call. A lot of my favourite gaming memories are from story/games like Mass Effect, The Last of Us, Half Life II which are just collections of short linear narrative episodes with a lot of shooting sequences that you have to do correctly in order to see the next narrative bit.
And yet I noped out of God of War because that's all it was giving me. Well, that and I just did not give a shit about any of the characters at all.
After Horizon, Skyrim, Dragon's Dogma, the Souls games, and Elden Ring, and to a smaller degree Dragon Age, I want/expect/need more freedom in my game than skilfully pressing X in order to advance a narrative.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:02 AM on March 15, 2023
And yet I noped out of God of War because that's all it was giving me. Well, that and I just did not give a shit about any of the characters at all.
After Horizon, Skyrim, Dragon's Dogma, the Souls games, and Elden Ring, and to a smaller degree Dragon Age, I want/expect/need more freedom in my game than skilfully pressing X in order to advance a narrative.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:02 AM on March 15, 2023
FFXIV does a pretty good job of it, I agree, with the character using gestures and miming speech when it makes sense while being entirely silent in conversation. I just wish the character models, rigging and animation were from the present decade. It's really showing its age.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:11 AM on March 15, 2023
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:11 AM on March 15, 2023
> Genshin Impact has a truly baffling variant of this where the player character has a sidekick with them at all times, and the sidekick handles basically all conversations for you and gets around half the dialogue in the entire game.
Destiny does this exact thing with the player's Ghost. The actual player character has voiced lines but they are vanishingly rare. I actually think it's a pretty good variant of the silent protagonist formula.
posted by zenhob at 8:37 AM on March 15, 2023
Destiny does this exact thing with the player's Ghost. The actual player character has voiced lines but they are vanishingly rare. I actually think it's a pretty good variant of the silent protagonist formula.
posted by zenhob at 8:37 AM on March 15, 2023
Heh, just you wait till you can talk to every NPC using natural language....
It's coming.
posted by daHIFI at 8:39 AM on March 15, 2023
It's coming.
posted by daHIFI at 8:39 AM on March 15, 2023
I'll take a chatty hero or a quiet one, though I much prefer the quiet ones, since I rarely talk myself. I just hate voice acting for voice acting's sake. It's there because gamers now expect it, but it's almost never worth listening to.
A silent protag is a good choice if you want to reinforce a feeling of solitude, or alienation. Link is, to me, one of the loneliest characters in the world, and his inability to speak reflects the inexpressible nature of the burden he's doomed to carry as a hero in (presumably) every lifetime. The silence of the protagonist in SMT: Nocturne's original release has a sort of religious quality to me, and it made that game an unforgettable experience, and the protag's role one I could really inhabit. (Also, your choices mean something in SMT, which is something I've just got to insist on if there are going to be dialogue choices or differing story paths. I do so hate cutscenes stopping to offer me a chance to lob pointless quips. Something I really dislike about FFXIV, as it happens, though I love it in general, and the mute hero worked well in Shadowbringers for the reasons mentioned above.)
I think I have the same problem with story for story's sake, too. I absolutely love stories in games, but most game stories are not actually good, and they seem to get worse the better their writers believe they are.
posted by the liquid oxygen at 10:31 AM on March 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
A silent protag is a good choice if you want to reinforce a feeling of solitude, or alienation. Link is, to me, one of the loneliest characters in the world, and his inability to speak reflects the inexpressible nature of the burden he's doomed to carry as a hero in (presumably) every lifetime. The silence of the protagonist in SMT: Nocturne's original release has a sort of religious quality to me, and it made that game an unforgettable experience, and the protag's role one I could really inhabit. (Also, your choices mean something in SMT, which is something I've just got to insist on if there are going to be dialogue choices or differing story paths. I do so hate cutscenes stopping to offer me a chance to lob pointless quips. Something I really dislike about FFXIV, as it happens, though I love it in general, and the mute hero worked well in Shadowbringers for the reasons mentioned above.)
I think I have the same problem with story for story's sake, too. I absolutely love stories in games, but most game stories are not actually good, and they seem to get worse the better their writers believe they are.
posted by the liquid oxygen at 10:31 AM on March 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
Random thought: now that we've got the technology to duplicate an actor's voice from voice clips, we can't be too far out from the first video-game protagonist with a voice that's based on the player's real voice, can we?
I don’t think I would ever want that. I don’t usually play myself in video games. For example my first Elden Ring playthrough was as a female fanatic of the Golden Order and I am none of these things. Having her faith tested and eventually broken by the world was really fun and a lot more interesting than the story a dude who’s basically me would have experienced. That’s the fun of roleplaying games to me, playing a role.
Generally voice acting a lot of text costs a lot of time and money and it makes it really hard to change anything once the lines have been recorded. I feel that going for 100% voiced disincentivises putting a ton of interesting choices in your game. Personally I much prefer interesting choices over imersiveness.
posted by the_dreamwriter at 11:46 AM on March 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
I don’t think I would ever want that. I don’t usually play myself in video games. For example my first Elden Ring playthrough was as a female fanatic of the Golden Order and I am none of these things. Having her faith tested and eventually broken by the world was really fun and a lot more interesting than the story a dude who’s basically me would have experienced. That’s the fun of roleplaying games to me, playing a role.
Generally voice acting a lot of text costs a lot of time and money and it makes it really hard to change anything once the lines have been recorded. I feel that going for 100% voiced disincentivises putting a ton of interesting choices in your game. Personally I much prefer interesting choices over imersiveness.
posted by the_dreamwriter at 11:46 AM on March 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
So, I have this idea for a great movie. It's about two gnomes who find a bracelet of power, and they have to take it to the Burning Steppes and cast it into the Cauldron. They form the Brotherhood of the Bracelet. Along the way they're trailed by a murloc named Gottom, who's obsessed with the bracelet, and nine bracelet bogeymen. It could be a three-parter, called 'Ruler of the Bracelet'. The first part would be called 'The Brotherhood of the Bracelet', followed by 'A Couple of Towers', with the climactic ending called 'Hey, the King's Back!
posted by Glinn at 11:52 AM on March 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Glinn at 11:52 AM on March 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
I don’t usually play myself in video games
Obviously it would start with your own voice and then give you the option to change it so it fits your character. Or in some games just make it sound cooler.
What we really need is advanced enough speech recognition and AI chat bots that players can just talk to the damn NPC and have conversations. Either talking to it as your character or if you prefer just as the player.
"Look dude, just skip the small talk and give me the mission."
Maybe you even hear your own character's voice come back at you when you speak.
posted by VTX at 5:18 PM on March 15, 2023
Obviously it would start with your own voice and then give you the option to change it so it fits your character. Or in some games just make it sound cooler.
What we really need is advanced enough speech recognition and AI chat bots that players can just talk to the damn NPC and have conversations. Either talking to it as your character or if you prefer just as the player.
"Look dude, just skip the small talk and give me the mission."
Maybe you even hear your own character's voice come back at you when you speak.
posted by VTX at 5:18 PM on March 15, 2023
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posted by Ashwagandha at 11:45 AM on March 14, 2023 [1 favorite]