The Case For and Against The Silent Protagonist In Gaming

Written by Scott Murray

Silent protagonists are often held up in video games as a means of immersion. By removing the characterization brought on with a voice (and the tones, words, sentences, cadence, pitches and accents that come with it,) the player will, almost naturally, imprint parts of themselves onto their character. The goal is that, rather than directing some other person, players will feel more like they are simply interacting with the world as themselves, using their controller or keyboard as an interface device with the world instead of an RC remote.

But here’s the thing: players aren’t silent people. Now, I’m sure there are some gamers out there who cannot, but I think it’s a safe bet that the vast majority of players can, and often do, speak. Not necessarily when they play video games, but certainly in their lives. This presents an interesting problem: how are players supposed to paint themselves onto a silent protagonist when that character will almost never speak like they would. As a result, any immersion the player has gained by painting themselves onto their character is entirely lost the moment they enter into a conversation. They might not act like the player would in a given scenario either, but this is largely irrelevant because the nature of a video game limits you to a few given actions; it is a given from the moment you press “start.” Here is my ultimate point: while a silent protagonist will never truly be immersive, a speaking protagonist sometimes will be. To illustrate this to you with practical examples, I’m going to use two games with speaking protagonists: The Last of Us and Bioshock Infinite, and the generally exalted bastion of silent protagonist-triumph that is Half-Life 2. (I’m going to include Episodes 1 and 2 in this, since they particularly help to drive my point home.) Out of all three games I’ve mentioned, The Last of Us easily immersed me the most, while Bioshock Infinite, despite starting strong, eventually left me feeling like I had guided this Other Person of Booker DeWitt through his story, and that I had essentially been almost watching more than playing. Half Life 2 left me feeling like a spectator just as much as Bioshock Infinite did, but maintained this sense throughout.

I’ll begin with Half-Life, since by this point in the column you’ve all probably recovered from your shock and are gathering your pitchforks to come hunt me down as the gaming blasphemer who would dare to say a single bad word about Half Life, and I feel I should explain myself. It’s quite simple really: in wandering my way through the wonderful storytelling canvas that is City 17 and its surroundings, I wanted to talk to people. It’s that simple. Maybe I would have ignored the combine and lots of the people in the early apartment blocks, and I had no chance to talk to Barney during his first appearance, but I surely would have had a few questions for Alyx and Dr. Kleiner before he tried to shove me into that teleporter. At the very least I would have wanted to thank them, or ask them what had happened during the years I was kept in the G-Man’s refrigerator. I want to comfort or reassure Alyx in Episode One when the train derails and she  is briefly trapped under a Stalker. I want to assure Dr. Vance about our efforts, and thank him for his leadership. I want to do something. Saying absolutely anything would have been better than just blithely accepting everything around me in this strange new world as if it were nothing more than one more honked horn on my morning commute. It gave me the sense that my character either knew more than I did, which was devastating to my immersion because it meant that the person I was supposed to be was leaving me clueless in the cold, or that he simply didn’t care about anything around him. This was similarly crippling to my immersion because the only reasons I could see for him not caring were either that he was partially brain-dead, psychopathically emotionless, or that he again knew more than I did, and thus knew that he didn’t need to be unconcerned. Except for him knowing more than I did, none of these gave him any reason to do anything in the game. If he doesn’t care, can’t feel emotions, or is outright brainless, why should he fight for the resistance? Why should he do anything?

On the other hand, if he knows more than I do, they why don’t I know, as the player? I’m supposed to be him, that’s why he’s silent. But while he takes in stride the aliens, lasers, monsters, and fancy technology, I have been dropped into a new and alien world and I am filled with questions. If I am Gordon Freeman, why am I not bothering to ask anybody anything? Or, for that matter, even greet these people who all seem to know me like an old friend? Now I will admit that the character knowing things the player doesn’t can be a useful plot device, but only if that becomes relevant somewhere in the story: if that knowledge comes to light or pertains to some plot point, like if it’s some important event from their past or some secret about themselves (cough cough Bioshock Infinite cough cough.) And, regardless, the character knowing more than the player works counter-intuitively to using the silent protagonist to immerse the player in the character’s shoes. If I’m Gordon Freeman, I need to know what he knows. I’m still immersed a little bit, since I’m moving through this new world, but my immersion is constrained to the bare minimum.

​Of course, a speaking protagonist has their own personality, quirks, memories, ideologies, and opinions. If any of these happen to be different from the players’ then immersion is almost inherently restricted to the bare minimum. This is where Bioshock Infinite comes in: at first, Booker Dewitt and I felt almost like one and the same: awed with wonder at this strange new floating city. But as the game went on, Booker began to think about things I never would have considered, say things I never would have said, and, ultimately, had some past that had happened to him, and only to him, long before I had arrived to see through his eyes. But that’s no loss; after all, the silent protagonist limits the immersion in the same way. In fact, sometimes it can be a gain: a speaking character, defined as they are, becomes something concrete; something solid, for the story to work with and integrate. Other characters can speak to them, they can interact with the world, the plot can involve them directly. Even if, as in the case of Booker Dewitt, that character is totally unlike the player and the immersion is at minimum, it’s never any less than the already minimal immersion provided by a silent protagonist.

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But that’s just it: at worst, a speaking protagonist is only as bad as a silent protagonist is every time. On the other hand, if the player and the character match up, the player ends up naturally and effortlessly inserting themselves into the narrative through their character. For me this happened with Joel from The Last of Us. Every sentence out of his mouth, every reaction to Ellie, every weary questioning of other characters, every exasperated or exhausted sigh, every muttered curse felt like Joel was voicing exactly what I was thinking as I played through the game. As for the parts he knew that I didn’t? Like his life as a survivor, both inside the military-controlled safe zones and out, was revealed in little explanations to Ellie, but didn’t play a particularly crucial part in the story before they were revealed and, as such, didn’t take away from anything by having me experience something that seemed to have no explanation. The important parts, like Joel’s daughter, were things which I had experienced with him in the game’s prologue. I was Joel, and I was guiding Ellie through this dangerous wasteland. Although each new situation, band of marauders or group of infected was new to me in the moment, it was new to Joel too. Our experiences, from his past years and my past games, came together to see us through each challenge we faced. I also lucked out in that, in the crucial decision at the end of the game, Joel acted exactly as I would have. I know some players were shocked at his decision, and forced to reconsider their opinion of him.

And here we reach the key point: only when the speaking protagonist lines up with the player is the player truly immersed. In these times, immersion is at its deepest; its most organic and true. It may seem like a risk, then, to make a speaking protagonist when only some of your players will actually identify with them, but again, at worst, the player is no less immersed than they would be with a silent protagonist, and having a silent protagonist guarantees that virtually all of your players will not identify with their character. In the end, I think it’s a risk worth taking. There is a way to help the silent protagonist: the speech wheel or dialogue tree. By letting the player select sentences for their silent character, as seen in Skyrim and, to a lesser extent, Dishonored, it removes the biggest problem with the silent protagonist: giving the player no voice. Now they can speak to and interact with other characters as if they were there, and if their choices impact the story or even just the flavor of the conversation, it lets them affect their game world.

Perhaps ironically, the dialogue selection often erodes immersion when paired with a speaking protagonist. This is because, whatever the player was thinking when they made a particular selection, the words that come out of their protagonist’s mouths rarely match up. Take Fallout 4, for example, where players often lament that, regardless of which option they choose, they are merely selecting the tone with which their character agrees to do whatever NPC they’re speaking to wants, the ineffectualness of this dialogue system is a problem in and of itself, separate and irrelevant from the protagonist. But when a player tries to reply with sarcasm, and gets marginally snarky helpfulness instead, it removes them from the game and makes their choices feel hollow.

One of the worst offenders of this, unfortunately, is L.A. Noire, a game based largely around player dialogue choice. During interrogations, the player, controlling player character and speaking protagonist detective Cole Phelps, must choose how to interrogate their suspect/witness. Once you ask them a question and they reply, you are faced with the option of being harsh, being gentle, or accusing them of lying. Sometimes these decisions don’t always lead to what you might expect or want. Often, when accusing people of lying, Cole would catch them in an entirely different lie than I had, and his speech would surprise me and leave me feeling like I was playing a game show, trying to guess the correct answers before the contestants called them out.

In total, the immersion players feel when playing a game is dependent on a multitude of factors, but the protagonist is one of the most important tools in the toolbox. Ultimately, it’s a matter of best utilizing the many options available, and best integrating the different tools on hand to enhance player immersion. Both the silent protagonist and the speaking protagonist can be deep oceans of player involvement, but only if they are properly utilized.

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