I Am Sick And Tired of Canonical Silent Protagonists

[Good Night Owl]

You see this most often in JRPGS (Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Ys series, God Eater serier, Zelda, etc.) where the protagonist is supposed to be a self insert. That's fine right? Plenty of great games go down the self insert route, and allow the player to define who the character is...

These games don't do that!!

Instead you're given the choice MAYBE to change their name and maybe their hair style. But why bother when everyone will only ever call them by their default name? That means if their default name is BigFiggleWicker, that's what you will be calling them.

Do you make choices in these games? Sure, but none that define the character. Dialogue options range from
1."Hello, nice day today"
2. "Hi, good to see yah"

Ahh yes, that "yah" felt more like me. Really touched my heart.

So we have these characters that are half-built to be self inserts, but then the game doesn't orient itself for the player to... insert themselves, so what is the point, then??

Now, I get that these types of characters are a byproduct of a different era in games, right? When the first Zelda came out, obviously technological limitations made it necessary for Link to be a silent protagonist, and even later on, budget was a big factor, but games have grown since then. I feel like a lot of companies lose sight behind the entire point behind making a self insert character.

[GlaceonChireiden]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Good Night:

Ahh yes, that "yah" felt more like me. Really touched my heart.

This but unironically

[trousers]

...

[ZZZZZ]

what u call canonical is what other people call lazy

[Out Of Bubblegum]

This is a reason that people say computer RPG games are only slightly RPG. All of them. The older ones tried harder to be RPG but the newer ones do not. Players want quicker and simpler games now.

[Good Night Owl]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Out Of Bubblegum:

This is a reason that people say computer RPG games are only slightly RPG. All of them. The older ones tried harder to be RPG but the newer ones do not. Players want quicker and simpler games now.

Perhaps. But I don't think anyone particularly wants characters designed like this.

[Tonepoet]

Well first, I must admit you have a point. I feel like Ein from Harvestella is going to be a pretty flat character.

However, firstly, I feel as if self insert characters are bad even when they do talk. They often even worse when they do talk even, because the dialogue is written in such a way that plays the odds and renders a character wooden and devoid of personality. Now I am not going to go so far as to say Phoenix Wright is a bad character. He has his moments. However, I will say he is certainly far from the most fascinating character in the Ace Attorney games to say the least.

Also, a good silent protagonist will tend to be expressive with their body language, like Chrono from Chrono Trigger, or Mario in the various R.P.G. spinoffs. Ness is a perfect example of a show, don't tell character, especially with his interactions with the runaway 5. Ness has such a selfless character that he'll give away untold riches just to spare his favorite band from the drudgery of indentured servitude. Mr. Monotoli's eyes are about to pop out of his head when he sees that diamond. Red's determination is also made quite evident through his accomplishments, although we also know he is not a ruthless by any means necessary character due to his opposition of Team Rocket (esp. on Nugget Bridge, when he refuses to join Team Rocket) and the comparison Professor Oak gives between Red and Blue at the end of the game.

And look, I realize that you are not against every silent protagonist, but it is hard to isolate the 'canonically silent' ones from the others, and moreover, I think the canonically silent ones might actually be among the better ones. Red remains stoic even when you encounter him in the epic conclusion to the generation 2 pokemon games, and Mario's evident inability to speak is why he has to pantomime and impersonate everything so expressively in Super Mario R.P.G. It might just be that the canonically silent ones are actually the best, because it allows them to take a direction with the silence.

If your character is given two rather trite and inconsequential options of what to say, then they are not actually canonically silent, because they are saying something.

I do not want to play a video game as me. I am me every day of my life, and I know exactly how I am like, so I do not need to pontificate on that further than I must. I want my video game characters to have a personality, and a personality that interests me at that. I think it's the characters that lean too heavily on the point of self-insertion that tend to be the worst.

Secondly, I'm not so sure Japan is solely to blame for this, or even mainly to blame for it.

Doomguy doesn't talk any more than Link does. Gordon Freeman doesn't talk. Chell doesn't talk. The Dragonborn in skyrim doesn't talk. I think the characters in the Fallout games are typically silent protagonists, and when they strayed away from this in Fallout 4, it turns out that the modders made a silent protagonist modification for the game.

You know who does talk though? Squaresoft protagonists like Cecil (Final Fantasy IV), Terra (Final Fantasy VI), Tidus and Yuna (Final Fantasy X), Ramnza Beoulve (Final Fantasy Tactics) Sora (Kingdom Hearts), Lighting (Final Fantasy XIII). The Disgaea protagonists (Laharl, Adell, Mao, Valvatorez, Killia and Zed) are also quite talkative too.

Aside from that you want an example of some good banter from the protagonists in Japanese video games, then Touhou Project has some quite nice dialogue for every boss fight. Zun gave his characters a personality which is a large part of the reason so many people fell in love with them. Granted, these are shoot 'em ups rather than R.P.Gs., but before Touhou, I don't think there was much in the way of mid-game dialogue in shoot 'em ups at all which kind of makes it more impressive if anything.

Many of the characters who do not lack dialogue are from games or series that predate the general voice acting era too. Most of the western characters I can think of who do talk are voice acted. Earthworm Jim, Duke Nukem and Sam & Max come to mind, but even Earthworm Jim doesn't speak much owing to the limitations of Sega Genesis hardware.

Now, I get that these types of characters are a byproduct of a different era in games, right? When the first Zelda came out, obviously technological limitations made it necessary for Link to be a silent protagonist, and even later on, budget was a big factor, but games have grown since then.

Another thing that needs to be noted about Link and other legacy characters is that it's a very bold and risky move to make a character who is known as a silent protagonist and to suddenly give them a personality out of left field. You know people like the games the way they are, and you know that people are mostly looking for more of the same when they are looking at a sequel.

Making link talkative all of the sudden can be quite groanworthy. I mean, just look at the Phillips C.D.I games for example. Also, as entertaining as Link was to watch on televison, I don't think I'd like to hear the line "Well, excuse me, Princess!" in an actual Zelda game either.

[Supersquid]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Out Of Bubblegum:

This is a reason that people say computer RPG games are only slightly RPG. All of them. The older ones tried harder to be RPG but the newer ones do not. Players want quicker and simpler games now.

RPG? What, the anti tank weapon?😂

[PurpleBeast]

Gordon freeman.

[Scurrybt]

Morrowind had the best self insert character. You literally can doom the world in that game if you wanted to. No other Elder Scrolls game or rpg game can have that bragging right.