Favorite Silent Protagonist

[Wolf Kanno]

The medium of gaming has had it's fair share of silent protagonists over the years, so which ones are some of your favorites?

[Vermachtnis]

Link is easily my favorite. Especially his Wind Waker incarnation. He says it all with his facial expressions.

Though the Hero of Light from XIV is getting up there too. And there's Adol and Crono too.

[Depression Moon]

Mario.

[Del Murder]

Yeah got to be Mario. 'Its-a-me' doesn't really count as talking.

[Depression Moon]

Well outside of that, I think he's pretty silent in the Mario RPGs like this one.



The only game where he was a shapeshifter too I believe.

[Fynn]

[Colonel Angus]

Crono, The Guv' from DQVIII

[Formalhaut]

Yu Narukami was a great silent protagonist, simply because he also had a semblance of a personality, who seemed fun and up for anything.

Sometimes, silent protagonists can come across as rather cold, or overly stoic. I liked that Yu could be slightly upbeat while remaining silent. That and the interactions with the voiced characters never came across as forced.

I suppose he isn't a 'true' silent protagonist. I mean, you could choose what lines he would say. I don't think Gordon Freeman in Half Life ever​ spoke.

[Vyk]

I'll always be burning a torch for the Shining Force boys. Bowie from SF2 probably stands out the most as people actually react to his "..." responses as if he'd just told a long epic story. And then there's the times people flat-out speak for him since he can't talk and they pretty much just put words in his mouth, which is amusing

But yeah, as far as how well it was actually done, Persona 4 probably did do it best. It's a nice halfway point between full blown Elder Scrolls style, and personality devoid old-school Link characters. It just kinda touches on the ability to join in the conversation, and is greatly helped by the ability to do extracurricular things either by yourself or with other people

[blackmage_nuke]

Crono, Chell, The Human in Undertale

[Pumpkin]

Link, Adol, Crono

[Mr. Carnelian]

I'm torn between Gordon Freeman from the Half-Life series and Chel from the Portal series. My position is that if they say things or if you can choose what they say, even if their words aren't voiced, then they're not really silent protagonists.

[Fynn]

But then, a completely mute character is really a much rarer thing. Most silent protagonist have dialogue that you either decide on or just can't see, but they still count as silent protagonists, being actually a huge majority of this type.

[Vyk]

Yeah its a pretty gray zone. Even Adol and Link get to have a choice once in a great while. Much like the Shining Force guys getting a Yes/No response once or twice per game

Not gonna deny it's probably unfair to pit the Persona guy against anyone who wasn't given any agency by their creators and writers, but I still find it interesting to explore the comparison since Link being totally devoid of personality in a lot of iterations doesn't keep people from liking him as a person. Crafted well enough to project onto I suppose. Which amuses me because it could be argued that "I am Link and I am the best protagonist when I play any and all Legend of Zelda games."

[Fynn]

To be fair, he does get a personality starting around Wind Waker. You can clearly read a lot of what kind of character he is just from the expressions he makes.