Are player characters in Mass Effect and Dragon Age series "silent protagonists"?

[votemarvel]

The Warden from Dragon Age: Origins is my favourite protagonist of the Dragon Age or Mass Effect franchises. Part of that is their almost silent nature.

With Shepard, Hawke, Ryder etc you pick what they say and it is quite clear from the voice acting as to why they are saying it and how they feel at the time. With the warden however because you don't hear the voice, you can put your how spin on how they are saying something and why they are saying it.

For instance if I were playing as a female Cousland wanting to marry Alistair, the same lines take on different meanings and feel depending on how I am playing. Am I telling Alistair I love him because I truly do or am I saying it just so I can take the throne.

The silent protagonist in role playing games gives me a lot more scope for role playing.

 

[sXeth]

fanfic? I didn't know there was a cannon Mass Effect before Bioware's.

There isn't a cannon Mass Effect now, given a cannon is something you shoot.

'Wishfulfillment' I guess would be a more apt description for it. It sorta scratches that same itch that fanfiction does.

It's a fanfic in the same sense a lot of fanfics are, in that it's a thinly-veiled pastioche of multiple sources. It was heavily compared to Star Wars--something Bioware had previously and subsequently worked on--back when it got its start. By 3, it became a lot harder to peg its origins, but the part where it became something else is like pretending Fifty Shades of Grey doesn't read like fanfiction because they changed it.

ME and DA read like "we can't use the licenses we previously had, let's create fanfic instead." I mean, at least in their origin. I can't tell you what DA is now because I haven't played one since the first. How convenient they...previously had those licenses.

Bioware essentially straddles that line between figurative fanfiction (which still shows up on fanfic sites) and the literal type. Fanfic is used colloquially in this sense quite frequently, both as a pejorative and as a compliment (if such a work is considered a good thing) in other media, though gaming tends to use other terms.

I think gaming as a rule goes beyond mere wish fulfillment and usually writes protagonists as Mary Sues (or Canon Sues if you prefer) given the tendency of the world to warp around even the most average player character. There are definitely exceptions, but we so often play as The Chosen One even if those words are never uttered.

They also tend to have the sort of gimmick-characters that populate fanfics. Just piles and piles of Bioware's companions that are some bizarre variant or outcast of whatever their race commonly is, or some bizarre one off special factor to them. The sort of stuff where if it was 1 or 2 out a cast of a dozen, it'd be mostly fine. But Bioware tends to go more on 9-10 out of the dozen being all these weird subversions, even in their own created universes.