Castle Paradox

[msw188]

It's high time for a new discussion on this forum. Consider the following:
What do The Legend of Zelda, Dragon Quest, Chrono Trigger and Super Mario Bros 3 all have in common?

That's right, they're all really fun video games! But isn't it also funny how in all of these, the main character is completely silent?

Okay, enough joking around. Should the main character of a game talk, or should he/she/it be silent (so as to let the player 'decide' his/her/its personality)? I feel like this has been brought up a little bit before, but I can't remember when, what thread, or what was discussed, so let's do it here. Personal feelings on the matter? Pros and cons of each method? Difficulty or ease from a design perspective? Wouldn't it be funny if the main character of some game was actually a mute due to some curse, and the goal of the game was to track down and kill the villain to reverse the curse?

[TwinHamster]

You missed Golden Sun.

The purpose of a mute main character is to let the player speak for him/her.
Non-linear games should employ the silenced main character, letting the player be the main character. Linear games, on the other hand, should have all of the character's dialogue written out shown.

The only con with a muted main character would be the lack of character development. When I played Golden Sun 1, I didn't really know anything about Issac's character except he's a good guy whose town is going to explode.
In the sequal to the game, Issac's starts talking, and I was like "Whoa!".

[Mr B]

I don't really know what to think about silent main characters. MarioRPG pulled it off well, but there was no sense in which I-the-player decided Mario's personality for him -- it was very evident through his miming. Chrono, however, served only as a brick wall for other characters to throw things at.

It would be interesting to have a game where most of the characters are silent, with perhaps one speaker. Hmm.

[TMC]

Shining Force 2 is rather weird because the main character is mute 90% of the time, but (if I remember correctly, maybe I'm making it up) very rarely he actually says a line or two during some plot sequence.

I generally find silent heroes annoying - the other characters speak but they don't respond, I don't feel involved in the story (a minor character who is eavesdropping) and the plot scenes feel a little fake. I think that it gives a feeling of having no control over your fate.
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[Camdog]

I hate silent main characters. Use your characters to tell the story, don't attempt some ham-fisted technique to make me feel like I actually AM the character. All Crono's silence did was make me care less about him when he got wasted.

[Iblis]

Silent heroes most certainly do not allow the player to decide the hero's personality or let the player speak for the hero. To do that, you'd simply let the player make decisions about what the hero does and says. A hero that doesn't talk is usually just turned into an unimportant non-character who stands around while others actually participate in the story.

That said, silent heroes can be good. In Mario and Zelda characterization isn't relevant, there's no need to know Mario's or Link's personality except through what they do. In Earthbound and Chrono Cross it's used to create interesting moments: Lumine Hall in EB, where you hear Ness's thoughts for the first and only time, and Serge and Lynx's switch in CC, where the previously silent hero is suddenly talking. I have no idea why Crono is silent though. It just keeps him from having any personality of any kind and keeps him from really being involved with anything. Think about it: Chrono is in no way integral to the storyline. Lucca builds the Telepod, Marle's pendant makes it send her back in time. Lucca designs the Gatekey, and so on. It's terrible. He's the hero, he should be the most integral.
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[msw188]

Well, I haven't played many of these games we're referring to here, but I have played Zelda, and for the sake of argument I'm going to throw this out.

Why is characterization for the main character of an RPG any more important than the characterization of someone like Link? In all of the Zelda games, Link is spoken to by various characters. In some cases the player is allowed to make a limited response. But Link is not just a vehicle for the player to go about killing things and be spoken to; he is clearly cared about by some main characters, hated by others, etc. And as the game progresses, the player often gets feelings (albeit muted ones, at least I hope) about some of these characters. Would this aspect be damaged if Link talked back to these characters, and revealed his 'own', designer-chosen feelings about the characters? Or would it be better for the player to see Link's character develop (regardless of how he/she, the player, felt about the other characters)?

All I'm trying to say here is that these questions are not immediate for Link, and perhaps they should not be so immediate for the main character of an RPG either. Speaking characters have a much better chance at being used by the designer to tell the player a story, to allow a player to become immersed in a plot. But silent (RPG) main characters may have something to offer in terms of allowing the player to feel immersed in a world, as an actual observer within a plot, possibly having some effects on it.

Does any RPG pull this world-immersion off (while still telling some kind of central story)? It's an opinion. I'd say probably not, MAYBE Dragon Quest V, but that is very questionable. Again, I haven't played very many video games in general, so I can't say much more about it.

My original thoughts on this were something approximating the following: I usually like silent main characters, partially because of the above, but I have a feeling it's mostly because I usually do not like the characterization I get out of lots of commercial games. Too many of these characters feel a little TOO dramatic for me, and too often they are teenagers, or at least act like it. I guess that is the target market, in many cases.

[Artimus Bena]

This all really boils down to artistic decisions. Either way is valid, but create different effects. If the main character talks, the story telling is boosted. If the main character does not, then the gameplay is boosted.
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[Iblis]

[msw188]

First of all, I want to clarify that by silent, I mean 'silent EXCEPT for instances where the player answers questions posed by other characters'. This is the case in Link and Dragon Quest, and those are the games I've made reference to, but anyway...

[Moogle1]

[msw188]

[Iblis]

[msw188]

Alright, looks like me and Iblis generally agree. Where are the rest of you? I seem to recall some kind of 'RPG basics' thread where someone said something like:
[paraphrasing here]Characters are important, plot isn't[end paraphrase]

and there wasn't much disagreement.

The Mad Cacti, I'm wondering what you mean:

[Camdog]