Among the many details that have been known about Starfield in recent hours, one that seems to have particularly surprised the community is the inclusion of a mute protagonist.
I will not be the one to defend Starfield tooth and nail seeing the one that is coming at us, but I recognize that this time people are getting angry about something that has not only been proving its usefulness for a long time, it is also an idea that comes in handy for the game.
The silent protagonist is a thing of the past, but also of the future
silent protagonists there has always been, there are Mario, Link, Lara Croft or even Gordon Freeman to prove it, but what began to be so because the narrative was not given importance beyond the basics, or there were no resources to face the challenge , soon became something more.
With the arrival of more powerful machines, less limited budgets, and a greater narrative ambition that brought games and their cinematics closer to something more typical of the world of cinema, the protagonists of video games began to gain a recognizable voice, sometimes even actors. professionals.
However the silent protagonist He kept popping up from time to time, often in the form of an RPG character or first-person avatar. Are they stuck in the past? What could lead a designer to state that their protagonist won’t have the voice of Troy Baker (heh heh) like other games do?
Well, actually sometimes not saying anything is almost more valuable than doing it. There is not just one reason to decide that your character has no voice or text on screen. Actually there are a good handful of them and they are all equally important.
Why is a silent protagonist a good idea?
One of the most common strategies when choosing a silent protagonist is in cut expenses. Giving voice to a main character requires many lines of text and audio to pay a professional, including translations or dubbing into different languages. An amount that can grow even more if we are facing a game that allows us to offer different voices or genres.
Second is the silent protagonist as narrative decision. The idea starts from taking what was previously mentioned and creating a false sense of control: if I am that character, I decide what happens. Starting from that situation, any twist that the avatar’s destiny can take becomes much more intense and surprising.
There would be a third point closely related to the previous one in which, by offering a silent protagonist, you push everything around him to a new level. The interpretations of the plot are their own, the setting becomes the narrator and the player becomes an active entity in the development of the story. They do not give it to you chewed by the mouth of your avatar, but you are the one who must tie threads and make sense of it.
Finally, the reason that leads video game creators and designers to opt for a silent protagonist is in the sense of belonging. By not having your own voice, your voice is theirs, which added to the customization of the character, as in the case of Starfield, get you to project your person on that avatar and feel it more yours. Thus, being able to choose your path and decide your destiny becomes one more game mechanic just as important as the rest.