Something interesting brought up regarding Dead Space was the dislike of a vocal protagonist in a horror game. Reason being that sometimes the protagonist would respond in horror and shock to something the player had no reaction to, or far worse, the opposite. A vocal protagonist in a horror game kills the mood if they're too vocal, but they also kill the mood if they have no response to something horrifying but respond in shock to mundane things. It's like having a laugh track - it can kill the pacing and makes it feel like the game has parts where it expects you to feel scared and parts where it doesn't, as judged by the protagonist's reaction.

Thinking about Doom Eternal / 2016, it's impressive how much personality they give the Slayer through his actions even though he has like three lines of dialogue across the entire game and two of them are in flashbacks. Stuff like menacingly turning to face the first Marauder even when he could easily have escaped, tauntingly showing the first Hellpriest the soul amulet, or opening a door by grabbing a keycard that's already around the neck of a human scientist and awkwardly dragging him over to the door.

Artyom is also one of the weirdest implementation of a silent protagonists in gaming

Stella from Spiritfarer is a good example of modern silent protagonist done well. She could've easily talked, but it feels like keeping her silent as she tends to the dying and allows them to find their peace helped the game's theme and tone (especially considering the ending and the truth learned about Stella at the end).

My favourite example of silent protagonist is Crosscode where the MC, Lea, cannot speak because her avatar' voice module is glitched, and she shows her annoyance to the fact through the game constantly. Best part? At some plot points, the characters themselves get fed up of her muteness, so the silent protagonist plot becomes relevant to the plot itself. It's just brilliant

I think the doomslayer works as an example of a silent protagonist since I think his voicelessness adds to his personality. His lack of speaking when he's interacting with someone makes him come off as uncanny like somethings missing. It also jives with his charachter since he always comes off as too focused on his next objective to do anything else even speaking.

What I think is funny about this is that almost from the moment it stopped making sense for memory saving purposes for Link not to talk, they established that he CAN talk. They just don't give him any dialogue because most of the things he'd be required to say are just reiterating plot the player is already familiar with. Hell, we have actual clips of Link "speaking" in Skyward Sword at least, just zoomed out and through a window to give "plausible" reasons the audience can't hear him. But despite going out of their way in BotW to establish Link as being either selectively mute or almost being under a vow of silence to explain the lack of VA, I think the answer is still that Link remains a cypher. Because that was always the intention of the character anyway.

Love Issac's bucket helmet

I think the death of the silent protagonist is also due to the sheer volume of AAA open world games. It would feel weird to constantly stare at our character with a distinct visual personality if they didn’t have an actual personality. It makes sense for established characters that devs base the story around like Kratos, Issac Clarke and Aloy. Less so for custom protags since it implies things like visual personality are less important to that story.

Now it's the era of the over talkative MC

I love Isaac, even as a silent protagonist in the first Dead Space. Most of that is based on character design, and the fact that he seems like a pretty capable engineer who's thrust into a situation entirely out of his league. In Dead Space 2, he's also great in his speaking roles. I'll take him either way.

I'm mildly surprised (and sad) that Yahtzee doesn't mention Freeman's Mind in this EP and the brief trend that it spawned of fan-made machinima series giving voice to the voiceless protagonists in FPS games. Some of the things he says in this video (and has said in past ones) make me think that he's watched FM.

I think there is a few subsections here like a "Silent protagonist but you're constantly followed around by your assigned jester who will talk to NPC's for you" or a "Silent protagonist except when there is a dialogue tree that clearly shows you talking" or finally a "I am staring at you, emotionless. I will move after you are done talking"

To be fair J.C going " a bomb !" is one of the greatest moments in any video game and you can't convince me otherwise.

"Well excuuuse me, princess." - says Non-Canon Link

The only thing I dislike about unsilent protagonists is connnnstant chatter. “Smells like snow.” “Dad can we go now.” “What Hell is that thing?” I appreciated that Forspoken had a Do The Thing Less toggle. I would ask future game devs take it a stop further with a Don’t Do The Thing Beyond What Is Strictly Necessary for Plot or Character Development setting. At the very least I would like a Stop Side Kicks From Spoiling the Puzzle setting.

I understand and approve of the use of silent protagonists when it is a situation like in fallout games previous to 4, where once you engage in conversation the replies are fully written out, so you will read it in your head, choose it and immediately get the response, unlike in 4 where you pick an option based on a single word and hope that the character will say something close to what you assume he would say

Silent protagonist works well in a sandbox game like Skyrim. Where you can play as a old Norse, a female cat or a teenage lizard and go explore and do random crap. Not in a sandboxy game that tells a specific story with a defined character.

Super Mario RPG on the SNES was a great example of the silent protagonist. I loved the way Mario "communicated" in that game

I recently played through Astral Chain and this is the exact conversation I started having. The game makes you pick between the twins at the very beginning and then the one you pick becomes a silent protag while the other essentially becomes every emotion that you could be feeling. Eventually it comes off like you don't care about anything while the other twin cares too much. It also created this effect where your siblings but only really cause the game said so. I still wonder what the game would have been like if they had made both characters a character.

Atomic Heart certainly made me wish silent protagonists were more common these days.

I think the biggest reason some games would choose not to have a voice protagonist, is the tone and emotions. having your character say something IS going to set a tone for them whether you like it or not and in games where the protagonist has a character but the developers still want you to project your own feelings and tone on to the main character. imagine I am playing a game where I am killing hordes of enemies and the protagonist says something like "HELL YEAH", that implies that the developers wanted you to feel excited. now if that line wasn't said at all, depending on my own mood and feelings, I could, say, either be hyped and energetic or fucked up and gasping for air in front of my lap top. if the original developers of DeadSpace intended on Issac being an emotional vessel for the player it would have been out of place for him to shout in fear every time he slices a monster in half while the player is a psychopath who enjoys the smell of blood in the morning and it was one of the things devs expected. so long story short (or if you don't want to read all that) a voiceless protagonist, even one with an established character, will give the player more freedom to project their own tone and feelings.

I like the theory of Freeman's silence/anti-social behavior despite his high intelligence comes from him having Aspergers and just being very shy

Transistor put a twist on the subject by making it a plot point that the protagonist became mute because of an event in the game intro. Of course she can still hum, so not completely silent, but still. It makes the ending where she finally speaks feel a little more special.

One of the strongest impressions that I got from the original Dead Space was the very last scene (SPOILER WARNING) When you finally manage to escape, Isaac sits in the pilot seat of his spaceship and takes his helmet off. It is very close to a shot-for-shot homage to the end of Halo: Combat Evolved where the Master Chief does the same thing in almost the exact same situation - except instead of not showing us his face and letting the camera fade out as he says an action hero-cliche, the camera pans around and shows us Isaac's face for the first time in the game - and he breaks down into dry sobs. It's a fantastic foil to the Master Chief/Doom Marine-like PC that he's resembled throughout the entire game: a power armor-clad, silent, faceless killing machine who takes the horrors that the game throws at him and (literally) stomps on them. But at the end, we see that he's not that, he's just a regular guy and this experience has psychologically destroyed him.

I love how Metroid Dread subverts the silent protagonist trope by having Samus speak only once in the entire game. At about the middle point there is a long cutscene where you find the only non-hostile being on the planet and he explains backstory and the villains plan and other exposition. He ends his monologue in such a way that you would expect an answer from Samus, but she hasn't said a word the entire game. And then the camera focuses on her, heroic music begins to swell up and right as you're thinking, "Wait, is she..." she talks. It's just two sentences, basic hero dialogue, spoken in a language you don't understand so you need to read the subtitles, but somehow it's enough to get your blood pumping. Sakamoto really took criticism from Other M to heart, sometimes even a bit too much, and it shows.

I think it still has a place in an artsy or stylistic game. Undertale technically has a silent protag; despite the fallen human having battle commands like flirt or brag we never actually read any direct dialogue from them, it's all narrated at us for artsy fartsy reasons. Although you could easily argue that the narration implying speech is enough to make them not a silent protag

I think Samus Aran is a good example of a (mostly)silent protagonist nowadays, and also of the transition to allow a silent protagonist to start speaking. And no, I am not talking about Metroid: Other M. I am talking about Metroid Dread. (Spoilers below) Metroid Dread conveys vast amounts of Samus's character though Samus's mannerisms alone. The cool collected way she faces threats, keeping her gun trained on things until she can discern if its a threat or not. Her facing recurring boss Krade, and initially sizing him up, then lowering her gun as if to say "Oh, it's only you". Her finally letting her guard down when she comes face to face with a friendly NPC, and for the first time actually looking relaxed for a moment. But she does speak in this game. One line of dialogue to that friendly NPC. And it isn't even spoken in English, it's spoken in the Chozo tongue, the language of Samus's adoptive people. Which is entirely in character for her. She's usually mute because she works alone, fights alone, and succeeds alone, and if not is surrounded by monster or military or an AI. But when faced with a member of her people, the first she's seen in a long time, she assures them she'll get the job done. And there's also some furious screaming during the final boss fight. I don't think silent protagonists are dead. Silent characters can communicate and have character through means other than dialogue, which can often be more interesting. But a quiet character can still speak. It just has to fit why they would choose to speak now.

How in the world did Yahtzee get through this video without mentioning Dark Souls?

I think there's still some places where the silent protagonist has a place, Ultrakill I think is a good example because that story shows from the outset that V1 is supposed to be an emotionless mute and a quite literal killing machine so having them talk would run counter to V1's objective of harvesting as much blood as physically possible. Also there's only like 2 characters that actually talk to V1 at time of writing so V1's kind of in a doom marine scenario anyway.

I think it will come round again. There is a trend, not just in games, but in music and technology where something becomes obselete/old/out-dated and then eventually, there will be nostalgia which leads to it becoming retro and they worm their way back in. And given that S Club 7 announced a new tour this week, I think this is a pretty good example. Also see Boomer Shooters. So yes, the silent protaganist will return most definately. If they ever do a Dragon Age Origins remake I think I'll get a bit pissy if they didn't use a silent Hero.

Anyone remember the Soma review where he had the opposite problem of feeling like he was piloting a guy because the dialogue was having an existential crisis while he was using the hands to poke various things?

I think at this point Link's silence is too iconic to change. And by now he's still developed as a character besides being an audience insert.

I think Chell from Portal is an example of a silent protagonist done well. There's no humans left in the facility and the only voice talking to her in the first game is a robot leading her through tests and eventually trying to kill her. Along with insulting. I wouldn't have anything to say either.

What I like about them giving Isaac a voice in the remake is that he comes up with solutions thanks to his engineering background. Instead of just blindly following whatever instructions are given to him.

Kinda surprised Link didn't get more than a nod in this, he's always felt like an outlier in this sense. He's purposely kept silent and designed to be androgynous so that more people are able to see themselves in him, yet has a ton of his own characterization in some of the games. Especially in BotW where we're well past the age of the silent protagonist, he's still a weird half-cipher.

I feel like what many fail to address about silent protagonists (including, to my own surprise, Yahtzee here), especially relating to the Dead Space remake, is that certain plots simply cannot function effectively if the main character does speak. In the case of Dead Space, keeping Isaac mute for the first instalment was justified by the fact that if he spoke a single word during any of his hallucinations of Nicole or talked about her to the other characters (as he does in the remake), the player would inevitably catch on to the fact that he isn't completely lucid and that Nicole is a hallucination. Perhaps a better example of a similar plot type with a silent protagonist, however, is Bioshock. First thing's first: even without Isaac speaking, Dead Space's twist does get much easier to predict as the plot goes on (mainly through the way Nicole talks to you and the fact that we're explicitly informed that other characters suffer from hallucinations as a result of exposure to the Marker), whereas Bioshock's twist is so outlandish, even by the standards of what you see and hear in Rapture, that it is fundamentally unpredictable. Even if on your first playthrough you caught that moment where you find the corpse of Andrew Ryan's escort and see the flashing image of your mother on the fake family photo, you probably couldn't really tell exactly what to make of it, because 1) the game doesn't go any further out of its way to communicate its meaning until the twist itself and 2) by this point it has already been well established that use of plasmids alters your genetic code thus making you see other people's memories. You had next to no way of deriving from this glimpse that, all along, your character was a programmed zombie, put through expedited growth and psychosomatically conditioned to respond to certain phrases. And of course, much like Isaac Clarke, if your character did speak in response to anyone, in this especially Atlas, it would quite literally have given the game away, as your characters words would probably often amount to something like "Yes, master. I shall obey." In both Dead Space and Bioshock, the developers were very well aware of the narrative threat a speaking protagonist would pose, but I consider Bioshock the superior example, not only because its twist is better hidden, but also because the character's silence is much more strongly recontextualised after the twist has happened. Once you realise Jack is what he is, you can understand his disinclination to speak, because he was essentially robbed of any human agency at birth or very shortly afterwards. This lack of agency also in turn can make the player think about their own sense of agency (similarly to Spec Ops: The Line) as someone who is controlling this other person with no volition of their own to act upon. I think Frank Fontaine really drives this point home with this line "You can knock Ryan all you want, but the old man was bingo on one point of fact: you won't even walk till somebody says 'go!'" This is almost directly calling out you, the player, either as another puppeteer pulling the strings of this poor slave to make him do what you want him to do just like Fontaine or Tenenbaum, or as yourself being a slave to the game or the characters, doing as your objective marker tells you to do. Speaking of Andrew Ryan, the twist also recontextualises him as an antagonist. Though we come to know him as this horrible man who says horrible things at great length and has little to no regard for anyone else, the twist manages to place us below even him in terms of human qualities, because as much of an asshole he was and as fond as he was of hearing himself talk, killing him loses a lot of its cathartic value, to the point of becoming bittersweet, because we are now forced to accept that the person who kills him is someone who couldn't even vocalise a thought of their own, much less act upon it, and only killed him because he was commanded to (by Ryan himself, to boot). Lastly, I also want to point out that the use of a silent protagonist also allows for more wiggle room when it comes to a protagonist's sense of morality. In Bioshock this is exemplified by the Little Sisters, as the options you have for dealing with them are so binary and so opposing to one another yet completely up to the player's whim at all times, that giving the character a voice (which inevitably means giving them a personality that is conveyed through the performance of the voice actor), means risking terribly inconsistent characterisation. The same is true for Dishonored and technically for Undertale as well (in both cases, the protagonists can and does diegetically speak but not in any way that really conveys personality to the player or contradicts any decisions made by the player) but not for Dead Space, as the latter contains no decision-making whatsoever other than how best to kill the necromorphs. Far Cry 2, however, is an interesting case study on this front. Unlike Bioshock or Dead Space, it has no big twist that necessitates a silent protagonist, and unlike Dishonored or Undertale, it has no moral choices that are of any lasting consequence (doing buddy missions is really more of a utility-driven question than a moral one, plus your buddy's reason for offering you their alternative objective always varies from self-serving to altruistic, depending on the mission and who your best buddy is). In fact, the central idea that could otherwise have been saved for a late-game twist, is actually spoken to your face by the main antagonist at the very start of the game. "You had your shot, but now it's over. And since men like you only work for money, you're no longer my problem." Say what you will about Far Cry 2, but this line does more of the characterisation for your own character than any line spoken by himself ever could, as evidenced by the fact that it stays perfectly applicable to any of the people you choose to play as, regardless of where they came from or what their prior experiences were. And by the end, the Jackal gives you a glimpse into the bigger picture as to how people like your chosen character (and people like him) are part of a much bigger problem: how the constant ransacking of an abundantly rich continent leaves its inhabitants perpetually poor. That too is something your chosen protagonist could never have conveyed vocally, because if he was capable of thinking about his own presence in the country that way, he would have left as soon as the game's introduction ended, or never have come at all. It's worth noting that if you pick any other protagonist than Marty Alencar, who was likely the intended default character since he replaces whomever you did decide to play as as an NPC, your journal will describe him as "Loves the action. Not exactly an intellectual." To close this whole thing off: I think a silent protagonist can be a powerful vehicle to the same idea from this quote that is often attributed to Malcolm X: "A man who stands for nothing, will fall for anything." Didn't expect this to get so lengthy. I apologise, but I hope you found it stimulating nonetheless.

This is why The Luminary in Dragon Quest XI infuriated me. He makes noises (i.e. grunts and grimaces and so forth) so he has a voice but he never talks and always has a zoned out look on his face. There are moments where it's implied he talks and the characters respond like he has, but we don't hear it. The nadir of this is when he and his grandfather have this memorial for his parents. His grandfather is emotional and crying out of joy and sadness as he talks to his departed daughter and son-in-law. It's a touching moment. And then it cuts to the Luminary standing there stoically with no emotion on his face and not saying or reacting at all. It takes me right out of the moment. Another moment is when it's implied by a villain that the Luminary is giving in to despair; but again, this isn't shown on his face because he doesn't emote. It is just overwhelmingly out of place for a character like that in this game, especially as the main character. He has this backstory and prophecy and yet he has no personality. I get he's supposed to be player-surrogate and "that's how DQ has always done it" (which is a lame excuse BTW), but it makes him stand out in a bad way. The other characters have motivations and emotions and I genuinely enjoy almost all of them. There's no reason for a game like that in this day and age to have a silent protagonist. It just feels lazy.

I believe at some point in Saints Row 4, the character says "I was too scared to talk back then" when acknowledging events relating to the first game (where they actually did talk, just very very rarely. I think there are a total of 4 lines).

I don't mind the Gordon Freeman angle, he's iconic for his silence at this point, removing it is like removing Superman's terrible Clark Kent disguise. Then there's the meta narrative of the Vortigaunts knowing "something secret steers us both" and "your bright face obscures your darker mask," so while unusual to fit in the narrative, it's an inalienable part of the series at this point. Plus, you can recruit NPCs and press the use key to "talk" in the games so I never bought that he was 100% literally mute in-game.

This is interesting; I think this is one of very few of Yahtzee's opinions that I completely disagree with. I loved Isaac's silence in the first Dead Space game because, while he was an individual with his own life, thoughts, and feelings, his silence put us in a fascinating state of suspension- he wasn't an empty vessel for the player to place themselves within, but he wasn't entirely his own person, either. Dead Space was obsessed by diagesis; every element of that game was designed to pull you in, to convince you you were there. Isaac talking is an enormous impediment to that illusion- it asserts him as a person entirely separate from the player, with their own thoughts and desires. It's a curb stomp into the fourth wall; it's jarring, and nauseating, and does enormous damage to the otherwise impeccably crafted atmosphere. Silent Isaac is perfect- it completely separates you from your sense of self. The more the game pulls you in, the more you begin to think like Isaac would think, responding viscerally and immediately to the environment; the more you think like Isaac, the more you forget that another "you" exists. At the same time, though, Isaac is just present enough to exist as well. The third person POV places him not out of sight, but in our periphery. We are guided to forget ourselves, and latch onto Isaac as our persona; we become the predefined character. It's a fourth-person game, the player within the character rather than vice versa. And it's not too unbelievable that Isaac would never speak; the few sane characters that he interacts with are either scared out of their minds or seem to see him as more of a repair tool than a person, never really giving him the chance to respond. I think Half-Life's silence works for a similar reason, though the first-person perspective means that we tend to lose sight of Gordon during the lengthier combat sections. The whole game, like Dead Space, is designed to be as immersive as possible. The world was insanely reactive for a game from 1998; the main character being silent prevents the fourth-wall curb-stomp I mentioned earlier, and enough effort is put into the environmental storytelling in the introduction that we really get a sense of what kind of person Gordon is. At least, enough to latch onto. I haven't played HL2, but from what I can tell interactivity and immersion remain central goals. I also think there's a possible diagetic explanation for Gordon's silence- the whole "nonverbal genius scientist" thing is heavily ASD-coded, which, if true, is a little archaic implementation-wise but I think really does add a new and compelling dimension to his character.

There's also something to be said of player created RPG protagonists in dialogue heavy games. While they *technically* speak in the sense of the player selecting a dialogue option, the player never hears the words read aloud. This works wonders for the genre since the dialogue options are only limited by the writer's imagination and time. When you fully voice the protagonist in that kind of game (like in Fallout 4) you are inherently adding limitations to the formula. Now it's not just the writer's imagination or the development schedule that needs to be considered. Studio time and the salary of an extra voice actor (or more if multiple voices are available depending on the complexity of the character creator) must also be taken into account. This is how you end up with limited choices that are all different ways of making the exact same choice.

To be fair the protag in Saint's Row 1 _does_ speak like, three or four lines. One at each of the main missions. I think Johnny Gat is the only one who's genuinely surprised

Chrono Trigger was the first time I noticed a silent protagonist game. Unless you count his one line in one of the dozen endings.

The hollow knight is another good example of a good silent protagonist, since the themes of emptiness and loneliness are emphasized by the fact that the main character who never says a word.

Samus Aran speaking in Dread was great. She gets one line of Chozo, then screams bloody murder at the end. Only made me love the character more.

Shining Force 3 had an interesting version of this. The main character always replied with "...", yet when you play the other main characters in the corresponding scenarios, your old main char actually has lines, the one you're playing now responds with "...". So it's up to you to fill in the blanks in the scenario you're playing.

considering that like 95% of my gaming time is spent with soulslikes and grim dark metroidvanias, I'm a big fan of a silent protagonist, as it very well fits within that framework - it helps establish the world as lonely and detached

I grew up playing JRPG's and they pretty quickly moved away from silent protagonists (like Final Fantasy 2 or Fire Emblem), but they I know modern RPG's like to keep people silent because it helps with making your character a self-insert. That, and it saves them money when hiring a variety of voice actors to read all of your character's lines. Then you have things like Final Fantasy XIV where everyone acknowledges your character prefers action over words (until later expansions).

I prefer them in RPG's where you make your own character, especially if it has dialogue trees. Really voice acting in general hurts those games because it gimps the dialogue to only what the writers feel like getting voice acted, and has to limit what the player can do in case the character only had the set few voice acted lines. I.e. character is set to be captured and interrogated by the enemy but is always set to die no matter how fast the player is because only their interrogation lines got voice acted. Where as in a non voice acted game you could actually save them and have your build and decisions matter.

I'm so glad you did this video. Your next video should be about how mapping melee attack buttons to R2 is also outdated.

In today's oversaturated media landscape, it is an unbelievable skill to be so interesting that people want to listen to everything you say and want more once you're done. I realized that Yahtzee is such a good writer-presenter that if I accidentally zone out for a while I'll immediately rewind and listen to what I missed, because I'm just that hungry for what he has to say. Truly a hero in games journalism, a gem of games media in general.

I personally think it works in games where you create your own character. See Fire Emblem Fates (or even Awakening but Robin wasn't so insufferable). If your avatar character gets their own personality but it clashes completely with your own, it destroys the link between the avatar and the player (in my opinion). I like the modern style of Zelda where they give Link the opportunity to say the same things in different ways. It makes no difference but at least we still have a choice over how he says things. Of course, this only works in a non-voiced example. Here's a question: Do all video games need voice acting?

Hmm, don't know how much I agree with Yathzee here. Sure, I think there can be reason to have a silent protag, be it in helping immersion or to focus on the other characters or even gameplay more. Sometimes you wish the protag could talk but a lot of other times don't, it's tied to the writing I'd say; if the other characters do something very stupid and if my character could solve some stuff by talking to them, then yeah, it detracts from the experience...otherwise, I wouldn't say so

Something I hate is when people see a silent protagonist, and assume they're canonically a mute. Like Link is so often joked as being a mute, when it's very obvious with the slightest bit of scrutiny that he isn't. Many times in the series Link is asked a question, you respond, and the NPC reacts... As if you talked. Some of these dialogue options actually have flavor, like allowing you to straight up insult characters. In a game like Owlboy where the character is canomically a mute, no problems, just don't force it onto the canon when it isn't said.

One of my favorite silent protagonist tropes is when the protagonist breaks the trope and starts talking at surprising moments, either for comedic effect or for dramatic purposes. The Kingdom Hearts mobile game has a player-generated silent protagonist whose only line early in the game is introducing themselves as "Hi, I'm [blank]" and then stay quiet for most of the adventure. Then comes the end of vanilla X's campaign, where the protagonist is informed that a friend has a passed away, and when they confront the supposed villain who supposedly killed the friend, the silent protagonist gives this AWESOME speech of defiance and resistance, committing to take them down for their actions. After that, aside from a quick visit to Aladdin's world, the protagonist continually keeps talking during important conversations, providing an insight to their thoughts and opinions to events, as well as helping propel the main plot forward. When the Union X campaign started, the protagonist was sorta self-rebooted back to silent as they go on more fun Disney adventures in the self-insert style, up until the very end when plot starts happening again and they decide to start talking once more. Which is fine as is, but still doesn't top that epic speech from much earlier in the game.

In theory, the "silent protagonist" will be completely done within a few years, because the AI systems will be "good enough" that the NPC's will actually call you by the name you give yourself. "Why hello there misterpoopoopants23, welcome to the team!" and "misterpoopoopants23, please put some pants on!", and you will be able to actually speak into your $5 radio shack microphone as though the AI NPC players will understand anything. In practice, these games will be designed around the player not speaking, and ignoring everything but the sentiment given by the human player. If you give an angry response back, the NPC's will tell you to quit being an assclown or whatever. But here's the other side of the coin. If a game does not require conversations to progress, why have the illusion of choice in one? A game like Mass Effect, where the original version called the player Shepard, regardless of the name entered could be enhanced to actually call the player by their name, and render every line that involves the player name with a TTS voice. The player could have their own AI voice either sampled from their real voice, someone elses voice, or picked from some presets, and suddenly the game no longer has any need for 0.25GB of audio per hour of dialog.

Games like Atomic Heart or Resident Evil 8 Village prove that sometimes a silent protagonist might be preferable.

An excellent analysis of something I hadn't even realized deserves one. I love this guy.

Ive always loved Gordon Freeman's silence in Half-Life 1 and 2 because it serves his role as the "right man in the wrong place." Everyone lauds him (the player) for saving Black Mesa from the alien onslaught, but he (we) basically keeps accidentally ending up the hero because the game (Fate) just keeps dragging him along. To me its like a meta-commentary on game design. He speaks through his actions, and he never knows where hes going, he puts faith in the system governing him. It works perfectly in tandem with player agency because he doesnt know whats going to happen next and of course neither do we, but the joke is everyone thinks he does, that we do

The silent protagonist is always a way for the player to put themselves into the place of the main character.

I am honestly surprised he doesn’t mention dark souls at all.

I do think it works in BOTW, where the dialogue is written so that you can get by with nodding, shaking your head, or in desperate situations pointing at something. Although I think in other Zelda games you're meant to assume that Link responds but we've skipped over it for timesaving in the same way we've skipped over the cheeky piss in a bush.

Samus' spoke in fusion and Zero mission Never forget!

4 minutes in, it occurs to me that this video is a really aimless tangent which is meandering all over the place Yet also, i don't want it to stop. I wish i could listen to you talk about this for 4 hours

i like that isaac the engineer, who they brought specifically for his knowledge of engineering, actually gets to be the one to say how to solve the engineering problems now

I love how they did write dialogue for Issac in the remake. Hes always the one to take initiative, the one that comes up with the plans because hes the engineer. Hes never the one being told his next objective its always "I gotta go do this to fix the ship." But he only talks during cut scenes where it makes sense, any time else during gameplay he shuts up, they could've easily wrote him with quipy one liners. Only time he does talk during game play is specific scenarios, like if you continuously stomp on a dead enemy or if you completely run out of ammo for a weapon, he'll let out a panicked "holy shit"

Fantastic work

It's impossible for me to be objective about Zelda games, but if Link is ever given audible dialogue, it will probably bounce off me like a rubber ball and leave a similar sting. Much like in the "Gordon Freeman in Half Life 1" example, I like that we never hear his in-universe dialogue, yet he still has it with other characters and thus still feels like an active agent. And I hard disagree that a character "lacks personality" just because they don't verbalize their exact emotions at the camera in dramatic monologues- inference and interpolation can fill in a lot. (BotW even did the thing of explicitly calling out his pseudo-silent nature, but rather than joking about it, they used it to build character by establishing it as a symptom of severe societal expectation-induced anxiety.) And if a given character has a similar dynamic and it aids in their appeal, then they may as well be silent. Outside of that specific dynamic, though, yeah, may as well have the character talk if you're just gonna mock the fact that they're not- but, as Yahtz points out, that's more a reflection of poor writing than the silence itself inherently working or not working.

When you have a game character with a pre-defined backstory and identity, like Isaac, it comes off as just weird and uncomfortable when they don't speak at all. Metro Exodus was also really awkward because of this at times

I'd just like to point out, playa did have spoken lines in the first Saints Row - 3 of them in fact, each one being said at a finale of each gang mission line

I like silent protagonists, i like it more when they have a conversation with someone and the other person just goes "so... are you just gonna stare at me silently then?"

I feel like the idea of "putting yourself" into the role just doesn't work as a concept, I feel more immersed when the character I'm playing as has a distinct personality and a reason for being there. If "I'm" supposed to be the character then why do "I" keep being forced into situations "I" would never allow myself to be in because I refuse to speak up?

I want a silent protagonist that is acknowledged as actually mute, maybe even using sign language to communicate.

There’s a book called The Vagrant by Peter Newman where the main character is a silent protagonist by choice, and the reason is honestly fair and adds an important plot point. More protagonists should be like that where their silence has some correlation to their past experiences.

Also, the protagonist in the original Saints Row did have a speaking line in the first game. It was corny af but it was a voice. It happened in the scene where the boat blew up.

The first Dishonored is a great example of how not to do a silent protagonist. It's downright silly how awkward Corvo's silence makes things. That said, it's clear that Arkane learned from this because their subsequent games all have voiced protags.

I really liked how they did Isaac in the Remake. His silence was always weird to me - I mean (Spoiler Alert) the guy tries to find his girlfriend, then finally finds her in the monster infested hellscape that is the USG Ishimura and then finds out she was just an illusion and the real Nicole is very very dead. All without any reaction or questions? The remake did a great job correcting this. Isaac is now a massive tech-nerd (as he should in his job) who comes up with a lot of ideas for solutions in the dialogue with his colleagues. And *thank god* they also keep him silent, when there's no need for him to talk! He doesn't backseat on the tasks you have to complete and he also doesn't constantly mumble his entire backstory into your ears as he's cutting down necromorphs.

One good use of a possible talking Gordon Freeman is the Freeman's Mind series on the Accursed Farms KZfaq channel. It's a bit funny of how he is portrayed in it a bit.

I like to believe that the link is not mute, he just keeps his mouth shut and gets the job done

I prefer a silent protagonist over an annoyingly voiced one. Going one further: I prefer a silent *game*! Make me imagine my own voices, they're always perfectly suited - in contrast to voice acting in many games.

I think Link is still the gold standard of silent protagonists and I really don't think that should ever change even with the rest of the game finally getting VO. People often misunderstand the actual character of Link. He is the platonic ideal of a hero. In BotW you can find Zelda's diary and she describes him as stoic and resolute. He doesn't waste time discussing his plan of action. He knows the action that must be taken and does it without hesitation or complaint. Game Design wise it also lets you take control of his action and while never contradicting the narrative. If i'm not actively saving the princess it's because Link had some other hero shit he needed to do. Aloy really gets on my tits with that one. She can't go five second without reminding the player that there's totally imminent danger and I'm wasting time putting it off. It makes it feel like I'm not so much controlling this hero but dragging her behind me on a leash while the worlds is destroyed. Silent protagonists can serve a rare purpose these days, but, again, the bigger problem is getting the talkative ones to shut the fuck up more often.

Drakenguard 1 had a reason for it's silent protagonist. In the tutorial, Klein can speak right up until he has to make a pact with the Red Dragon Angelia. In Drakenguard, pacts can be made between human & non-human entities, to bind the souls of the two together but in doing so the human will give up something. Klein gives up his ability to speak, making him silent.

Also, they rewrote some of the dialogue to make it seem like Clarke is the actual "man for the job" coming up with the clever engineering solutions, compared to the original's dialogue where the office lady just shouts at you what you need to do over comms this felt a more sensible approach

All true, but it would still feel weird if Link started talking. I guess, at least some of the established silent protagonists will stay that way. Hell, it felt weird to me the first time spoken dialog was introduced to any character in the Zelda universe.

There's one possibility for why Freeman is silent in Half-Life 2 that I rarely see brought up: perhaps he can no longer speak. He's only alive because of his deal with G-Man - maybe losing his voice was part of that deal, or a consequence of the methods G-Man used. That would explain why people react to his unspoken dialogue in Half-Life 1, but not 2.

That was the best take on video game silent protagonism that I've ever heard, back then it might not have landed, but these days it makes sense. Been watching since early 2010s and I love Yahtzee's unwavering questions about everything, curiosity killed the cat but why did the cat kill himself? Only the curious would understand he was going through a very tough time after his owner passed away and he was left no choice but to either find a way to eat the decomposing body, or just jump out the window of the skyscraper to see if he really did have another 8 lives to live.

Hollow Knight is an interesting case of having a protagonist whose silence is narrative-relevant, and finds ways to justify receiving dialogue from NPCs. Much of the time, the reason is that spending lots of time in the husk of a dead city is lonely, and the NPC just wants to speak their thoughts out loud to anyone who will listen. However, each character who does this has personal nuance in their interactions with the protagonist: an old town resident who stubbornly stays after everyone else leaves and feels obligated to make travelers feel welcome; a downtrodden warrior who is inspired by the protagonist's bravery and combat prowess and wants to return the favor; passionate craftsmen who want to see the culmination of their life's work carried on by the protagonist (figuratively in one case and literally in another). The game finds lots of clever ways to create character motivations for talking to a protagonist that is unresponsive and inexpressive. There are also NPCs who see the big narrative picture who talk to the protagonist because they want the narrative to progress, which is useful to the player and makes sense within the narrative; not much more to say about that without explaining the plot. There's also vendors who talk about what they're selling, and NPCs occasionally give the protagonist a quest, but that kind of stuff doesn't meaningfully change depending on whether the protagonist is silent or not. Not sure if games with written dialogue were considered in this video, but I wanted to talk about this anyways lol

I wonder how long it will take before a game where you're supposed to self-insert as a protagonist has the player generate an AI voice model at the start so the game can deliver their lines in their voice

I hope not. Silent protagonists are great for immersion when the point is to emphasize that the protagonist is the 'link' between the player and the game's world; that's literally the reason that Link from Legend of Zelda has the name Link. We the player naturally fill in the space with whatever we think the protagonist would say. For Link in particular, Link being a silent protagonist is a core part of the character, much like the green hat and Link being left-handed *(remembers that Breath of the Wild got rid of both of those for no good reason)* okay; bad examples, but the point remains.

The two cases where silent protags work are A) The usual Self insert where you're supposed to map yourself on your character. And B) to allow you more options for roleplay and personalization. If your story ends up supplying a ton of characterization for your silent protag, that USUALLY means they didn't need to be silent. There are some well-written cases that fall into category B (roleplay options) and still supply some framework for the character's personality. Some RPGs and MMOs come to mind. But in the case of most first person games, if you aren't focusing on self insert or roleplay options... just give the character a voice.

@3:18 Gordon Freeman has a voice. He sounds like Ross Scott from Accursed Farms.

I’d say it’s the opposite I think silent protagonists are gonna come back stronger cause most people are now getting tired of the joke telling and the fact that most of them are becoming more annoying

This guy sounds a lot like Mortimer

4:15 This line reminds me of a sequence from Call of Duty 3. This is a rather obscure reference. Isabel, a member of the French resistance (Maquis) hands you a bag of explosives and tells you to be careful with them. When your silent protagonist says nothing in return, she says "A man of few words. I like that." I wonder now if that line was a reference to Half Life.

From the original Dead Space, I could sort of overlook how everyone was just talking at him and giving him orders, even if it was distracting at times how all the story bits were largely conversations between other people that you were watching. What became jarring was when you run into Nicole. There she is, the one person Isaac's been implicitly worried sick about, alive and well that you also have to protect in spots, and Isaac says...nothing. There is no emotion other than from the player, and the player has no reason to really be that emotional at seeing Nicole. I'm pretty sure the narrative focus of the games is why Isaac got a voice in Dead Space 2, and for the Remake the retroactively added a voice to be more in line with the later entries. I haven't played it yet, but I feel like it'll make the narrative stronger. The silent protagonist nowadays needs the right setup to not be jarring. In a way, the less the story is about the player protagonist, the more the silent protagonist you're supposed to project onto can work. As mentioned in a military shooter a lot of the chatter you hear isn't being addressed to you, and when you are being spoken to directly, it's usually going over a plan or receiving orders, where simply nodding acknowledgement is understandable, and your "character" is more defined by your loadout and actions. Or in the case of Doom, where "Doom Guy" is something of an enigma to everyone and behaves more like a force of nature than a person, an entity with a single-minded focus. But in a game where the player character is a distinct (especially named) person in their own right and it integral to the plot in a game with a fairly established narrative you're supposed to care about, a silent protagonist sticks out.

Link isn't a silent protagonist, we, as the audience, just skip over his dialogue. That is all.

In the two last Doom games Doom Guy's silence just reinforces that he is tired of everyone's BS. Also, there's a touch of PTSD

We need more content like this.

LOLed at the ending. So it seems that Yahtzee is making a point about the "silent protagonist" thing.