Link, Samus and... Charlie Chaplin?

I've touched before in my columns on the idea of the silent protagonist. Back in the day, voiceless heroes were the only kind we had -- there just wasn't the tech for it. Once it became possible to make games more like cinema, the advent of voice acting also meant the characters also had to have a personality for the voice to go with. In the boom of story-heavy games, where our own role in a narrative, both overt and subtle, was clear and delivered up-front, we saw less and less of the silent protagonist.

Now, though, there's been a bit of a "market correction" -- little by little, we saw that vague and voiceless hero begin to reappear, a character whose words, responses and sometimes even his name is chosen by us, the player. I'm thinking of Chrono Cross, and of course of Zelda and Metroid, both of which have recently added brand-new installments of delectable muteness. The most current stars in their genres -- BioShock and Persona 3 -- also feature characters of very few words. In fact, the extremely silent, nameless P3 protagonist was one of the reasons I really dug (and am still digging) that game.

There's something to be said for either approach. On one hand, a fully-realized character with a voice and a story might be more immersive to some; if you're going to be stepping into someone else's shoes, why not go all-out? Become another person, see a world through someone else's eyes, live with their voice. On the other hand, the silent protagonist leaves far more room for you behind their eyes. While the game will doubtless give you some direction on who you are, it's a bit easier to become that character if the his unprompted dialogue is minimized. Specifically, though, we're talking voice -- there's most definitely something to be said, hard to define, for that peace and quiet; especially when you can hear other characters speak to you, but you vocalize no words.

Soldier of the SVGL Corps Michael Abbott has a really interesting take on the silent protagonist at his blog, The Brainy Gamer, in which he compares the advent of voice in games to the similar revolution that obsolesced Charlie Chaplin's classic Tramp in the film world, and he attempts to peg the silent protagonist's je ne sais quoi:

What do we ask of these silent heroes? I would argue, as others have done, that they serve as our surrogates in the worlds they inhabit...be it Hyrule, the GFS Valhalla, or depression era Manhattan. We project onto them an image of ourselves that would be impossible to transpose onto a character with pre -scripted dialogue. The fact that Link, Samus, and the Tramp are less "fleshed out" than their speaking counterparts allows for a certain malleability in the details of their personae. No amount of branching dialogue choices can match the limitless internal dialogue possibilities I can create in my own head. In this regard, their silence is their strength.

I definitely agree! Me, I like silent protagonists. When I was a lot younger, late 80's to early 90's, some of you more regular readers might be surprised to know I primarily played computer rather than console games. I used to hole up with the computer for hours, and I remember the hairs rising on the back of my neck when I played a game with ambient sound, but no voice. The point-and-click adventures I was raised on, where the hallway I was standing in would slowly dissolve and reform into a room if I clicked a door, where people could speak to me but I couldn't speak back. That was a frickin' blast.

Abbott also asks:

Do we really want to hear Link or Samus speak? What would be gained, and what would be lost? To what degree does their silence define their iconic identities, and to what degree does it limit them?

Good question. I think I've clarified my thoughts on that -- hell no, I don't wanna hear them speak. After more than a decade, do you really think it'd work if we were forced to imagine a personality for those two, the kind that can only be imagined through the subtleties of vocal inflection? How would it be, when you'd envisioned Samus as a stoic, to hear they'd given her some kinda sexy voice? Okay, that'd be hot, but you get my point. Voice goes miles toward creating personality, and when it comes to our most beloved and longstanding heroes, I think we've all already made decisions as to who they are to us and wouldn't appreciate having that changed. What do you guys think?

[Header art for this post is snipped from a larger piece by ~RainChilD18]