Why video game protagonists have become so chatty
The gaming landscape wasn’t always this loud. Recent protagonists have offered a stark contrast to the strong, silent type that historically dominated video game character design. Back then, voiceless playable characters like Link or Gordon Freeman would sit back and let their companions dictate how to save the day. Friendly NPCs would communicate vital information about the games’ quests and mechanics in brief, simplistic bursts. Enemies would shout out (or “bark”) their locations, tactics, and weaknesses. And these protagonists would never say a word.
Ostensibly, the player character’s silence was intended to add immersion. A lack of voice led to a lack of a distinct identity, the thinking went, which meant the character could become a person-sized hole for the player to insert themself into the game’s narrative. In 1989, in an interview with Shigeru Miyamoto, Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii explained how a talking protagonist could make players feel “uncomfortable”: “He’s playing as though the character is an extension of himself, so why is his avatar suddenly speaking of its own accord?”
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“I don’t agree that [silence] is for immersion,” Jo Berry, one of the writers of the recent Dead Space remake, told me. “In fact, I find a character that’s walking around and not speaking, not reacting to anything, is less immersive.” According to Berry, most games in prior generations were instead voiceless because voices would consume a majority of the game’s memory and a majority of the company’s budget.
Whatever the reason, as gaming technology has advanced, and gaming itself has been increasingly recognized as an economic force, it seems like more and more protagonists have started to find their voice. They converse
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