A Man of Few Words

The silent protagonist established himself as a gaming giant right at the outset. Early silent protagonists existed largely because game stories used to boil down to: Evil things over there, KILL! Nowadays games' stories have become as nuanced as any story based media (well, some of them have) and we have the hardware and the funding to create long, well written scripts. So why do games like Half-Life decide that their main character will never speak?

For some games it's simply a matter of precedent and difficulty. Link and Mario don't speak because they never have, and characters in CoD games don't speak because it's difficult to represent someone talking when you see everything from their eyes (see The Darkness for a prime example).

For other games though, the silent protagonist becomes a symbol. In the classic platformer Jak and Daxter, Jak never once speaks. I used to think that was just a joke because Daxter always talked over what Jak was about to say, but recently I realized that it was more meaningful than that. The player takes control of Jak, and just like him, has no say in what they have to do next. Sure the player can decide what order to get the precursor crap in, but in the end all of the decisions are made by Keira who gets her motivation from the sage Samos.

Jak acts as the body of the group, Daxter the voice, Keira the mind, and Samos the will or the spirit. While it may sound stupid I think the developers may have actually been thinking about that when they made the game. The player has no say in their own goals, they have to meet the requirements set for them by the game, and the side-characters are the ones who exhibit those requirements. That's exactly how Jak is. He cannot argue because he cannot speak, so he performs his duty without question, as does the player.

The Half-Life series uses the silent character to represent a battle of wills. In Jak and Daxter, Jak is controlled by a single will, but in Half-Life, Gordon Freeman finds himself at the center of a power struggle that he cannot control. The G-Man sets him out on his journey in Half-Life 2, and continues to try to gain power over him in the episodes. The vortigaunts try to battle against G-Man, but Gordon is left out of the mix. Without the ability to speak out against this management of his life, he goes from being a character to being a pawn, and the player has no choice but to go along with it.

As we move into the next generation of gaming we can think more about how our games impact the players, and what message they can convey. The silent protagonist, and other old gaming tropes, can become meaningful decisions on the developers part. Gordon Freeman and Jak represent a new breed of character, one that the player becomes and imprints themselves on. When I play Half-Life I make my own Gordon Freeman, I fill his shoes and feel his confusion. The silent protagonist can draw the character in, and make them feel what a person would feel.