Worst use of a silent protagonist

[DustyLion]

My vote has to be Battlefield 4. Not only does the single-player campaign feel like a series of excuses to blow shit up, it has the gall to say you are in charge when you need a NPC to escort you literally everywhere.

Not to mention the way the dialogue is set up is just painfully awkward as it tries to work around you not being able to talk when in reality I want to scream at the characters for being inconsistent idiots.


Now that's my vote, anyone else got suggestions?

 

[MysticSlayer]

Crysis 2 got really annoying. Towards the beginning of the game, Prophet changes his Nanosuit with Alcatraz, and all of the people working with Prophet keep referring to Alcatraz as Prophet, and he doesn't tell them who he really is. It's even worse later when a scientist figures out that it isn't Prophet in the suit and goes to kill Alcatraz, and does Alcatraz saying anything? Nope, he just puts his hand up in the air and requires the suit to play a recording of what happened. Granted, given the mid-plot twist, you could probably say that he didn't have the ability to talk, but it still felt like a ridiculous contrivance to explain away the horrible writing. I would love to say it was just a satire of the silent protagonist, but the game took itself too seriously for me to really believe that.

 

[Mikejames]

The Half Life series. It's less of an issue in the first game, but I think it's awkward when there's a cast of characters regularly interacting with Gordan and having to play out an emotional scene despite his inability to respond to anything.

 

[Evonisia]

Half-Life 2 was really bad for this. All the supporting cast are well characterised and all seem to have a relationship with Freeman. What does Freeman do? Stays quiet and follows the linear path.

 

[DustyLion]

Half-Life 2 was really bad for this. All the supporting class are well characterised and all seem to have a relationship with Freeman. What does Freeman do? Stays quiet and follows the linear path.

I think that may be the problem, when everyone is trying to engage with the charcter but all they can do is a few hand motions. I mean are they asking us to fill in the dots? I could probably do that with a character like Master Chief, where he at least talks during the cut scenes.... but Freeman? The generic soldier from BF4? Any other poorly defined protagonist? It just seems very iffy, if you going to go through the effort of warping the dialogue and story around the character not talking why not go the extra mile and actually write lines for them?

 

[duwenbasden]

The PC Pokemon trainer from any classic Pokemon RPG games. It gets 3DS-thrown-across-room-worthy really quickly when you are forced down a path with your shrieking "sidekick" that won't STFU. Worsen by the fact some of the reasons why you can't go down this route are really, really rageworthy.

"You can't go down this route yet." - hipsters blocking my path
"Why?" - me
"You are not cool enough."
***Insert WTF face here***

 

[SuperSaiyanMajinBuu]

I know I'm going to catch crap for this, but I say Mario and Link. I love Nintendo to death, but this bothers me. Link and Mario have been around for 27-28 years and rarely get to actually speak besides grunts and yippies. The only games where either of these two talk are The Legend of Zelda CD-I games (god forbid) and Mario is Missing. Though these games maybe why neither of them have dialogue.

 

[Artea]

Portal 2. I wanted to tell the incredibly annoying Wheatley to shut the hell up, but the game wouldn't let me.

In the first game the protagonist's silence made perfect sense: she was alone, and trying to reason with Glados was obviously futile.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I didn't fancy the silent protagonist from Dragon Quest VIII. I don't mind silent protagonists in general. Gordon Freeman, the poke-protagonists, whatever. The games aren't about THEM, they're about the STUFF that happens to them. There's no characterization, no inner anything, no evolution. That's fine. But if you make a story that is explicitly about a character, and that character's silent... then it just seems silly not have your hero be able to express himself. Hence DQ8 - which is about the hero's tragic back story and romantic feelings.

 

[Elfgore]

Battlefield 4. You play as the squad leader, yet your character doesn't even say a single word or gives orders. Irish and Pac just tend to give all the orders and make all the decisions. Really makes your role as squad leader feel like nothing.

But then again, it is a Battlefield game. I shouldn't expect much of a story.

 

[SmallHatLogan]

Dragon Age: Origins. A silent protagonist who seems to talk but only when the camera's off since he/she is clearly able to communicate with people. I get why they did it (2 genders + 3 races = potentially 6 voice tracks) but I'm still not a fan.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

I'm going with Call of Duty: Ghosts. Silent protagonists never bother me, as I will tend to fill in the dialogue in my head, or just go along with it. But Ghosts...Ghosts broke it. The game felt like it was all about Logan's brother. His brother was making all the decisions, was the one out for revenge, was the one giving the orders. It felt like Logan was just there as a placeholder the entire time. And whenever his brother used 'we' in the mission briefing, it drove me nuts. I just kept picturing Logan going, "No, not us. Just you." but since Logan never spoke, I felt like he was forced to suffer in silence.

I guess the runner up would be Resistance 3. Since he spoke in the cutscenes, there were a lot of missed chances in-game for him to speak. It was really jarring.

 

[blackdwarf]

Dishonored. I was annoyed at the fact i couldn't say anything, because it was clear that that some characters were talking a lot of BS, but I couldn't call them out on that.

 

[rorychief]

I loved my first experience of playing through HL2 in large part because of the silent protagonist. It was just so surreal and dream like to be moving along and have everyone along the way know my name and act as though we had some kind of history, I consider it a massive part of the games tone and hardly frustrating. The world and characters were so interesting I felt motivated to explore and pay attention to every detail as this was one of the most unique and tightly realised universes I'd ever seen in a game before. There's no need to ask what's a headcrab? How did they get here? what can it do? because the narrative does such a good job of feeding you that information in little segments woven seamlessly into scenes that aren't about the headcrabs, but merely include them. The atmosphere retained an air of mystery while stayong consistent and without lengthy exposition drops that would inevitably come had Gordon been a fish out of water 'I'm so bewildered I refuse to go any further till this is explained to me' type protagonist. I didn't ever feel that understanding Gordons opinion of anything would help me find it more interesting, I just want to read graffiti and overhear combine broadcasts.
Anyone else know what I'm talking about? When a game world is so interesting it's better to explore it as a kind of rollercoaster amusement ride without your own agency or attachment to your character being at the forefront. It's like a lucid dream, there's thrills and spills and fascinating sights and sounds at every level so why would you stop to discuss the risk/reward of climbing icecream mountain to battle the centipede king? You don't, it's obviously there for you to climb and fight so you just do it.

 

[Artea]

I think people are confusing 'silent protagonist' with a protagonist whose dialogue isn't voiced.

 

[FootloosePhoenix]

I don't think I've ever played a game in which I've hated the silent protagonist. In fact I tend to form an attachment to them for no explicable reason (Jack from BioShock for instance). I guess I will say Jak in The Precursor Legacy was a bit weak, mostly due to the hindsight of the sequels turning him into a fully voiced (and extremely angry in Jak 2) character all of a sudden. Of course you could argue that his imprisonment and torture between the first and second games is a good excuse, but I didn't find the presentation of that implied plot point to be well executed enough for me to buy right into it. I love me some Jak 3, but the series in general just had such a strange departure from what it originally was intended to be.

 

[llsaidknockyouout]

It's not so much the use of the protagonist that's the issue. But moreso the defense. Silent protagonists existed pre-2002 due to an overall lack of voice acting. Even worse are protagonists that do talk but only say "I need to find a gun."