34 réponses à ce sujet

[Legion of 1337]

People always say nostalgia or rose colored glasses as if no one still plays these games. Plenty of people still play the game and can compare silent to voiced without having to think or look back to it.

Three of my favorite games ever I've played recently and have a silent protagonist, Skyrim, Dragon's Dogma and Origins. Still works fine for me.

it is for Bioware. Origins was probably in development before and separate from Mass Effect, so it was the last vestige of silent protagonists. Bioware already showed it was going voiced. Silent is a holdover from old rpgs. Voiced creates more believable protagonists, and also requires no suspension of disbelief. But no, you wont get to say crazy **** like the Warden did, because when someone actually SAYS it, it sounds ridiculous.

[Dinerenblanc]

Because sticking with the same character restricts what one could do with the new game. The end.

[King Cousland]

Well, Mass Effect's was a single epic divided into three acts. Shepherd served as an anchor, providing continuity and a static perspective on the story's events. 

 

Dragon Age, on the other hand, is a saga composed of multiple different epics, with a few overarching themes which grow in importance in ebbs and flows. Though separate protagonists are not absolutely necessary, they are prudent since their most vital role is to provide different perspectives on different stories and allow greater variation in the course of those stories. They also prevent a single character from accruing so much power and fame that their very existence becomes almost frivolous - it would be simply unbelievable, for example, to have a single person who determined the fate of Orzammar and Ferelden, slew an Archdemon, defeated a Qunari invasion, encouraged/suppressed a mage rebellion, chose the leader of the most powerful nation in southern Thedas, reshaped the mages or templars and influenced the selection of the Divine. These feats are given more weight, and actually seem more impressive, when split up and attributed to three different people rather than all being accomplished by one. 

[Hiemoth]

I am slightly surprised how fast silent/voiced protagonist discussion made its way here, especially since it doesn't really have anything to do with the subject at hand.

 

As for the actual subject, the advantages are very clear as it allows to tell many different kinds of stories from many different perspectives. To give an example, let us say that the Warden would have been the main character in every game. Well, the Wardens duty is to fight the Blight and thus every game has to have something to do with the Blight. It would place great limitations to each future game would also require the threat of the Blight also to increase. I mean even the Flemeth situation had nothing to do with who the Warden was nor did it require the Warden to continue. For example, if the games were to go north to Tevinter next, what would be the role of the Warden there? What would be the story of Hawke there? Why use an outsider to tell the story there?

[tehturian]

For me silent protagonists seem to work if I'm role-playing a reserved cerebral type guy or glorified psychopath. 

 

However I've never been able to get into the roleplaying of characters that are meant to be 'loud', extroverted or even a little slow. I think the silent protagonist 'death stare' plays a role in this.  

[sillymonkboy]

It's a way of telling a story that is grand is scope, both of place and time, from an overarching perspective.

Different stories require different ways of telling. I loved Kathryn Kurtz' Deryni series. Set over hundreds of years and vast landscapes. It was amazing. The story wouldn't be the same if it was just about Prince Kelson. I loved, loved, loved The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It would be a very different story if Arthur Dent wasn't the main protagonist. Game of Thrones' story would be virtually impossible to tell if every scene was about Jon Snow. In Mistborn, one might not have realized that the story was actually about Vin if Kelsier hadn't sacrificed himself.

As to voiced/unvoiced - each has its pros and cons. In the case of Dragon Age, it does limit some options. However, I feel that it more than compensates by increasing immersion as well as lending significant gravitas to dialogue that would otherwise be lacking.

[BabyPuncher]

Additionally, having a continual protagonist as oppose to a non-continual protagonist can just as easily feel like a decline in quality as some would argue were the case with Shepard in Mass Effect 3 because it felt like the game was, among other things, shoehoning in a paragon personality in their opinion. 

 

Pretty much every game that has offered choices works far better as a story with the protagonist taking the good path than the evil path. There are reasons for that.

 

In any event, if this actually was a problem, Inquisition would be a far worse offender than Mass Effect.

[wright1978]

Me showed how hard it is for them to pull off a single player characterised protagonist spanning multiple games, especially with their desire to market each game as the best entry point for new players. So while in an ideal world I would love them to try again I can understand why dragon age views it as easier to have a separate protagonist for each installment with their cast of companions, with only small amounts of overlap.

[Shechinah]

(to BabyPuncher) Not exactly as Shepard who used to have one sort of personality suddenly did not because those options were no longer avaliable and autodialogue pushed the character further into expressing certain sentiments. As Inquisition does not have those options even from the beginning the Inquisitor does not suddenly change.

 

Did that make sense or should I edit after some sleep?

[BabyPuncher]

No, that made sense.