Should Nintendo kill off the "silent protagonist" for next gen?

There is a point to a silent protagonist and it is hardly a Nintendo thing. So no, I don't want them to kill it off. If you don't like that you should probably look for other games to play.

Yes! Its lazy.

No. I enjoy Zelda and would continue to play as Link. No need to kill him off. 😏

When I claimed that Nintendo should add voices to the characters in Zelda, people almost lynched me in forums and strangely enough in real life too, then Breath of the Wild came and those same people praised Nintendo for doing precisely what i said.

No, not really. I don’t mind silent protagonists myself.

No thanks 👎

I'm on the same boat, these people are obviously a minority and probably more so now after BoTW.

The lack of movie game shit is partly the appeal of Nintendo games, I does believers.

Voiced characters are nice, but not essential. Also, suddenly voicing a previously silent character needs to be done with care; see Metroid: Other M for how it can go wrong. Another example is Link himself, or in other words, "excuuuuse me!" Might be a safer option to leave certain characters unvoiced.

But, you know, not bothered either way. Let creative people create as they see fit, and let people judge their work according to the creators' intentions.

Either or. Both can be terrible when done wrong.

Nintendo can write decent characters, but that's not the point of their games.

If it's not fun why bother, or some such nonsense.

@madrocketeer: Also see Fallout 4. Voiced it's protags after 3/New Vegas, and people hated it (I didn't mind making Courtenay Taylor mouth off the f-bombs again though, lol).

Voice acting is scary. Motion capture is also scary. Its not for Nintendo, a company that is currently in 1998.

Playing Gravity Rush 2 atm. Its story is told through comic book styled still images with the occasional sound effect. I think it’s charming.

Not every game needs to be the same. Nintendo has their style. It works, it’s cool. Hearing Link speak would just be weird. Do your thing Nintendo!

Silent protagonists have their place in videogames, and they are not an outdated design choice. In certain genres they can even be staples like in RPG's, but that doesn't mean that they are necessary and that they should be shoved willy nilly.

Other M makes me say no.

I accept such things as a style without any discomfort. In the case of FE, the style is common in visual novels (including the Persona series), so the silent protagonist is easily accepted. Astral Chain is an arcade-style action game whose story is just for setting and mission description. I didn't care whether the hero should talk or not.

Eh, don't know about that.

People being dicks about it sure, seen plenty of those convos and they get surprisingly heated.

Just saying, that's not really how it went down with BotW. Link is still a silent protag. The voice acting for other characters is minimal. And what little voice acting is there was largely criticized, though mostly due to how poor it was. Not horrible, just not all that good either.

The big debates about VA in Zelda were always about how all characters, Link included, should be voiced. Nintendo barely dipped their toes in and got a mixed reception at best.

Yeah, pretty much.

I think it's a game by game basis sort of thing. Full voice, no voice, gibberish made up language, whatever works best for the intended experience.

Used to prefer a lot of games to not have VA, but mostly due to how poor the VA usually was. Especially being someone who likes a lot of Japanese games.

It's gotten way better over the years though.

lol right

To be fair, I think a voiced Samus could work. Wouldn't want a motor mouth character, just not how I think about her, but it could be done well.

But maaaaaannn, been on a 3d Mario marathon and forgot that Bowser was voiced in Sunshine. Horrible idea, so glad Nintendo rolled back on that one.

Nolan North as Link. Nahhh,I'll pass.

Both could work, in all honesty. If you do a half-ass job, like Ethan from RE7, you'd get a bland taste in your mouth instead. I wouldn't want a blabbermouth Link, Mario, Samus, or most of these protags. But I wouldn't want someone who has a voice and barely speaks anyway.

Be careful what you wish for.

Then make them a character of few words. Usually only speaks when needed, mostly responds. Found the silence really immersion breaking in Astral Chain.

I think that's more a problem with execution than using it, itself.

Mean trying to think of games where it's been genuinely jarring, and their are a few, even stuff I like such as Halflife 2. Alyx actually benefited from a voiced character.

But Nintendo doesn't really fall into that category. It's story-telling is minimum, a basic frame-work, and even when it's more heavily used in something like BOTW, usually less jarring than something fully voice acted like Assassins Creed Odyssey or really, most Ubisoft games.

So yea, for Nintendo, kind of a non-issue. And partly why people like them I would surmise.

Would go as far to say the voice work (English) are a detriment to BOTW. Of course, part of that is the voice work is kind bad.

But again, it never reaches obnoxious.

Nothing wrong with Silent Protagonist personally but what I disliked about Fire Emblem Three Houses hero/heroine and probably all FE hero/tactician is that is that he/she is really damn bland and lifeless (which is technically correct in game FE3H lore). There are ways to make a silent protagonist interesting like the Persona heroes always have great responses to the world so you could project what you want the hero to be but in FE3H all you do is the very ridiculously repetitive group lunch, fishing, sauna, tea time, choir till you unlock the next bonding level every week.

I liked my first playthrough of FE3H but the highly repetitive nature of it really made it one of the worst FE I have ever played. Crazy how the game scored so high.

Does any gamer wants a chatty Mario or Link as found in their horrible Phillips CD-I games? In fact, I personally think that when Sonic the Hedgehog started talking more than two decades ago, he went downhill. He originally did not speak in his earlier games.

Think that's kind of a disingenuous argument.

Not that it needs it, but the very obvious example is something like Pixar. While the rendering quality might not be the same their is really no reason the voice work, along with other aspects like story-telling, cinematography and what not can't be.

Unless it's Borderlands.

This 13 second pun = better than anything Gearbox has shat out with their "yo i'm wacky haha" screaming dimwits.

Not exactly on topic, but got me thinking about Venom Snake in MGSV.

That shit was so awkward, not a silent protag, but so close to it.

That jeep ride where Skullface dumps this long ass manifesto only for Snake to sit there staring blankly, probably the most unintentionally hilarious moment in a Kojima game. The random epic music to fill in the silence takes it over the top lol.

@ConanTheStoner: There's actually been 2 simultaneous debates going on concerning Zelda VA. One (the minority) included Link talking and the other had everyone but Link talking.

In both cases you had series "purists" who vehemently opposed any form of VA. I advocated for VA a la Fable where only the main protag was silent and this is basically what we got now.

I always favor silent protagonist, but to Nintendo, (and any gaming company) it's cheaper and some creators believe player insertion is more important than a complete protagonist. Take Dead Space for example, Issac Clark in the first game didn't need to talk but in the second game, it makes sense for him to get a voice and I was okay with that.

It seems like it might be the influence of popular western RPGs which tend to have a highly customizable, silent protagonist. JRPGs have traditionally had more defined, narrative-driven characters. A lot of WPRG traits have been adopted by some JRPG franchises, and WRPGs have likewise absorbed innovations from Japan. Me personally, I prefer the silent, make-your-own protagonist and write your own story style, rather than being told a story with an inflexible, pre-written protagonist. Games like Half-Life is obviously taking more notes as times went on.

Nintendo is just going to keep on doing what Nintendo has been doing. There's no reason for them to stir shit up in their own consumer base when they are doing so well for themselves as it is.

If they gave Link or Mario full voice acting, will everyone like it? Or will it kill the impression for the character that many people had? Think "well excuuuuuuuuuuuse me princess!"

Ugh, after watching that I prefer Links voice WAY more than Zelda's. That voice does NOT fit her.

No. And considering how fucking lame most protagonists are, I wish more devs did silent protagonists more often.

Hell no. Sony protagonists do enough talking for all other protagonists combined. Just heh and hyaa for Link is fine.

You forgot AHHHHHH

I think Nintendo should keep doing what's kept them successful for this long, so of that means no VA, then so be it.

People got real bent when Samus started talking.

A voiced protagonist is better than a silent one, but a silent one is better than a terrible one.

What do you think about voicing Link?

Doesn't matter either way for me. Whether a character I'm playing as has dialogue or not has never been a decision point for me in determining a video game to play.

Depends on the game.

Breath of the Wild could have done with a bit of dialog for Link. Just the way the other characters would talk with him, to have him be silent was absurd.

Do not care about it.

Doesn't it help sometimes because the voice is a bit cringeworthy? Saves people the annoyance and dev effort.

How about having proper voice actors and not the ones they fund at a grocery?

Having a silent protagonist is more immersive

Only if the non silent version has shitty voice acting and dialogue. Mass Effect was perfectly immersive and Shepard wasn't silent. Same with a game like RDR2. Its only bad when the guy that wrote the dialogues is 15y old and the voice actor accepted the job for $100.

Nah, I like them. Makes things more personalised I think.

@hardwenzen: That's fair.

Totally depends on the game, Mass effect which was told as a pretty tight narrative cinematic experience absolutely needed a voiced protagonist, Fallout 4 by comparison definitely felt like it was hampered by a voiced protagonist and the resultant lack of choices and possible outcomes compared to previous entries 100% felt like a step backwards.

@SolidGame_basic: I'll be honest and say I find angsty/edgy/cringey Japanese teenagers to be terrible characters these days. I didn't mind when I played FFX as an 8 year old, but playing FFXV/FFVII:R there are many characters that me want to crawl out of my skin lol.

A lot of it has to do with all the "ooh" and "aah" and other gasping sounds they make. Maybe it's normal in Japanese but no one audibly makes a noise like "ehh?!" they're confused IRL.

But if they can make Link into a decent, well-voiced character like say Jin Sakai, Cloud (most of the time) or Raiden then sure why not. That would slightly enhance the experience IMO.