#silent protagonists

[creamofcelerysoup]

[davekarkalicious]

deltarune has completely changed silent protagonists for me forever now... (positive connotation)

like i just made gordon freeman kill that guy thats so fucked up im sorry gordon

[arcsin27]

“Silent protags have no personality” link botw is a punslinging pile of anxiety, joker p5 is a crossdressing prankster masochist, and kirby and frisk undertale are beings of pure love and friendship.

[madillhethen]

Might come off as an unpopular opinion (I think I say this a lot about my thoughts/opinions it’s probably self-depreciating.) but everyone is making a big deal of Byleth being the enemy in FE:3Hopes and honestly….I could care less.

I was never attached to Byleth, same with the traveler in Genshin, same with Guda in FGO. The idea is that they’re player insert, the ideas of options is just for player agency but it doesn’t actually affect anything. The characters themselves don’t have an impact as a character, they have little background and zero personality besides a default somewhat ‘caring and more somber personality’ and the typical ‘sassy, type of attitude one’. More than once Paimon and Sothis comes off more as mouthpieces than anything. And if I look at it in this perspective—replacing the player with any other character or removing them entirely wouldn’t change the story. Which to me is a bad take for a ‘character’ because they’re not characters. They’re the player.

But you know what? Link, Joker and Yu are some silent protagonist that have options in game, but they feel like characters to me. Their options were based on a specific type of aspects they could have. You can’t replace Joker and expect the game to be the same.

The one time Byleth even mattered as a character is when their dad died but then they reverted back to a window for the player. On top of playing FE3H a lot of people told me it was better than Awakening, and yes, it made way more improvements, humanized and expanded on characterization but for me it took a step back from the protagonist. I still think Robin was done better than Byleth. Byleth felt like Vaan to me from FFXII where the essential role as protagonist was pretty much useless to the grand scheme of the plot.

I’m pretty sure 3H made some bs or another about Byleth’s heartlessness or lack of emotions but I don’t know, it felt cheap to me. Maybe I need to replay it, maybe the Ashen Wolves will explain more.

[greatrunner]

I still say one of the most interesting things Dead Space could’ve done with Isaac Clarke to further solidify his position as the silent protagonist was to make him a mute or deaf character who used sign language.

I really can’t think of any video games where you’re character was canonically mute, hard of hearing, or deaf and used to sign language to communicate.

[bluehawkdustorm]

It's only dialogue if someone replies. NPCs talking at you is monologue.

[joyflameball]

Okay but I love silent protagonists. You just cannot go wrong with them. If they're a blank slate they're a fic writer's dream, being able to play with their personality and motivation as much as they want. If they have pasts, or if they do things outside of our control, we can glean a personality from their actions, which is incredible for people analysing them. There's always an element of projection onto them which can be great for getting emotions out because torment of fictional characters is free therapy. Not to mention they're all autistic

[wooderon]

Can you really say more with Silence: Part 1 - Different approaches with Link and Samus

Can you really say more with Silence: Part 1 - Different approaches with Link and Samus - The first part of my thinking about the use of blank slate player characters. Focusing on two of Nintendo's big hitters in this part 1.

This is a topic I touched upon once before, a long time ago. When I was writing for various other websites. However, when looking back at my past stuff, I realised that the original article had been lost to time, and expiring domains. Which is quite fortuitous as it turns out. As there have been a few games on my radar that have brought this topic up again in my mind and I can talk about it again…

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