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The Lone Badger posted:"As an incredibly boring person, I find it difficult to identify with anyone who has actual traits or character features"? It's very childish to play as something not human. That's why I'm boycotting that new Robocop game for removing perfectly good human material from a game protagonist.
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Sep 9, 2022 07:19
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Pulsarcat posted:This is a major issue I have with video games in general, you have a huge world full of colourful, interesting races, and the game forces you to play as a boring human. Related, I'm so tired of the trope of "humans have an ineffable quality to them and are omnidirectional and multi-faceted, unlike aliens/elves/alien elves that maintain a rigid and unerring monoculture".
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Sep 9, 2022 10:15
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John Murdoch posted:Related, I'm so tired of the trope of "humans have an ineffable quality to them and are omnidirectional and multi-faceted, unlike aliens/elves/alien elves that maintain a rigid and unerring monoculture".
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Sep 9, 2022 11:16
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John Murdoch posted:Related, I'm so tired of the trope of "humans have an ineffable quality to them and are omnidirectional and multi-faceted, unlike aliens/elves/alien elves that maintain a rigid and unerring monoculture". I don't have a problem with the trope because that's just kind of what humans are good at, so I think a different solution to this issue I agree with would be to show the flaws in humans versus other well fleshed-out multi-faceted societies. Human curiosity is often shown as our flaw in fiction for example when from our real world perspective it's provided great advancements (edit: and lots of idiots falling into caves). Mass Effect nearly got there with the humans' history but then it falls into the structure rigidity with the alien species. CJacobs has a new favorite as of 11:48 on Sep 9, 2022 |
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Sep 9, 2022 11:44
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Cleretic posted:So, you ever play one of those games where you realize that they gave you the least interesting person in the entire cast to play as? Half-Life until Alyx. Halo. Pretty much every Final Fantasy game in existence (exception: X-2). Really, just about any game starring some lovely white dude (almost always with short brown hair) qualify. Cythereal has a new favorite as of 13:22 on Sep 9, 2022 |
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Sep 9, 2022 12:20
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I liked how the divisions in Deadfire arent strictly racial and more nuanced. You had the strict caste system with monarchy for shark people. You had the realpolitik power that was also shark people. You had the trading company made up of black italians, and then there were pirates. Humans, elves, halflings all appear but dont dominate the narrative. The Combine in Half Life not being ditto aliens defintely made them memorable.
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Sep 9, 2022 13:33
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Saints Row 2022: Sandstorms at night + streetlights=
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Sep 9, 2022 14:27
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Cleretic posted:So, you ever play one of those games where you realize that they gave you the least interesting person in the entire cast to play as? Any silent protagonist. I guess I'm supposed to insert myself here, and I guess fill in his silence with imaginings of the conversations I and my party are having? It never comes across that way. It always just makes me feel like I'm in a world of living, speaking people and I'm a handicapped boy with no personality and no tongue tasked with slaying God. Nothing makes me enjoy undertaking an RPG less than knowing my character has gently caress-all to say. Persona 4 (and probably likewise 3 and 5, though I haven't played) was okay because there's so much involvement with the other party members, and it does frequently suggest you're interacting, but it's still loving annoying since everyone has so much personality and so much dialogue and all you do is occasionally say yes or no, nod your head, and eat fuckin ramen.
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Sep 9, 2022 15:59
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Sounds like you need more imagination
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Sep 9, 2022 16:02
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Any game that can be mod-heavy, and rely on steam workshop: loving christ do I hate steam workshop's auto-updating mods. CK3 recently got an update and a dlc, that's alright, it's easy to roll back the game version and lock that. ... But you basically have to put steam in offline mode as well, because otherwise it'll just automatically update mods as they come out, ramming in breaking changes and making your game crash. Or maybe they removed a mod, or split it off, etc etc. All that just auto-propagates straight into your game. It's insane how the workshop is like a decade+ old, and still doesn't have either: a: A simple 'do not update mods for this title, for now' function. b: Version tags, so that mods can exist on the workshop and target specific versions of the game, and not have incompatible ones auto-install. So now my game install is half broken where I don't think there's any simple way to roll back the mods that suddenly got updated. And I can't really hop to the new version without purging my modlist / waiting for a while to have some/most of the mods update.
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Sep 9, 2022 16:04
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Gaius Marius posted:Sounds like you need more imagination If I had that I'd be outside with a pot and a stick having pirate adventures
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Sep 9, 2022 16:13
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CJacobs posted:I don't have a problem with the trope because that's just kind of what humans are good at, so I think a different solution to this issue I agree with would be to show the flaws in humans versus other well fleshed-out multi-faceted societies. Human curiosity is often shown as our flaw in fiction for example when from our real world perspective it's provided great advancements (edit: and lots of idiots falling into caves). Mass Effect nearly got there with the humans' history but then it falls into the structure rigidity with the alien species. Oh yeah, to be clear the answer is not to make humans boring to compensate, it's to make non-humans more interesting. On some level it feels like the classic problem of designers only being good at designing what they know. Pulling an entire alien society out of your rear end is no easy feat, but at the same time the way humans are often described feels like it tips over into the mother of all cases of patting themselves on the back. This also tends to feed uncomfortably into game mechanics, but really at that point I'm just ranting and raving about how much I want to burn D&D (and its endless derivatives) to the ground and start over. credburn posted:Any silent protagonist. I guess I'm supposed to insert myself here, and I guess fill in his silence with imaginings of the conversations I and my party are having? It never comes across that way. It always just makes me feel like I'm in a world of living, speaking people and I'm a handicapped boy with no personality and no tongue tasked with slaying God. Nothing makes me enjoy undertaking an RPG less than knowing my character has gently caress-all to say. Persona 4 (and probably likewise 3 and 5, though I haven't played) was okay because there's so much involvement with the other party members, and it does frequently suggest you're interacting, but it's still loving annoying since everyone has so much personality and so much dialogue and all you do is occasionally say yes or no, nod your head, and eat fuckin ramen. It's always strange to me because it seems to be an attempt at maintaining immersion, but the end result is always the opposite. You get these empty protagonists who live in these incredibly crazy and fantastical worlds who have minimal reaction to or opinion on anything and it takes me right out of it. It's way more fun to bounce off of an existing personality or have some means to define one in-game (Mass Effect's approach, forex). It's slowly trailed off, at least in mainstream games, but a lot of them double-down on it for the sake of pandering and making the whole thing a naked fantasy for the expected demographic to insert themselves into. Gordon Freeman isn't just a mute everyman who gets wrapped up in an alien invasion, he's an MIT graduate theoretical physicist with a hot-but-nerdy girlfriend. To say nothing of how many games take this approach blithely unaware or uncaring that a woman might play them at some point. John Murdoch has a new favorite as of 18:23 on Sep 9, 2022 |
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Sep 9, 2022 18:06
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John Murdoch posted:Related, I'm so tired of the trope of "humans have an ineffable quality to them and are omnidirectional and multi-faceted, unlike aliens/elves/alien elves that maintain a rigid and unerring monoculture". While I agree that it’s an overdone approach, I kinda get the utility of it. Like you can have other species that are way stronger than humans, or way faster, or smarter, or longer lived, or better at magic or technology or whatever, and the only way you can really guarantee a niche for humans is by saying they’re just extremely adaptable. Maybe they’re not as good at any of those things specifically (aside from some legendary once-in-millennium hero types), but they’re pretty good at combining things and flexible enough in their thinking to compensate for their own weaknesses and exploit the weaknesses of others Come to think of it, part of the reason I like the Vlad Taltos book series is because the protagonist (and other humans) are *not* special at all. It’s a fantasy setting where the dominant group is a race called Dragaerans, who are all about 7 feet tall on average, live 2-3000 years, are pretty good at magic across the board, and are exceptionally physically gifted as well. They also refer to themselves as humans, and what we consider humans are referred to as Easterners. The protagonist is an Easterner, and works as an assassin, and the fact that he’s pretty much always going to be at a disadvantage in a direct confrontation both physically and socially makes for a fairly compelling dynamic
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Sep 9, 2022 18:18
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credburn posted:Any silent protagonist. I guess I'm supposed to insert myself here, and I guess fill in his silence with imaginings of the conversations I and my party are having? It never comes across that way. It always just makes me feel like I'm in a world of living, speaking people and I'm a handicapped boy with no personality and no tongue tasked with slaying God. Nothing makes me enjoy undertaking an RPG less than knowing my character has gently caress-all to say. Persona 4 (and probably likewise 3 and 5, though I haven't played) was okay because there's so much involvement with the other party members, and it does frequently suggest you're interacting, but it's still loving annoying since everyone has so much personality and so much dialogue and all you do is occasionally say yes or no, nod your head, and eat fuckin ramen. See, silent protagonists sidestep this for me probably because that's sorta the point. They specifically wrote a non-character, and I like that in the right contexts. I've mentioned before though that the draw's not necessarily about a silent protagonist feeling exceptionally good and more about them never hitting the lowlights of a voiced protagonist in being annoying or unsuited for how I'm playing. Times are rare when I feel like Link is really elevating a Legend of Zelda, but I have never once felt like he got in the way of me liking one. It's another thing entirely when they wrote, cast and fully voiced the protagonist and still make them the least compelling character in the cast.
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Sep 9, 2022 18:32
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Dragon Quest XI is probably best modern example where having a silent, gormless protagonist harmed the story.
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Sep 9, 2022 18:35
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Cleretic posted:See, silent protagonists sidestep this for me probably because that's sorta the point. They specifically wrote a non-character, and I like that in the right contexts. I've mentioned before though that the draw's not necessarily about a silent protagonist feeling exceptionally good and more about them never hitting the lowlights of a voiced protagonist in being annoying or unsuited for how I'm playing. Times are rare when I feel like Link is really elevating a Legend of Zelda, but I have never once felt like he got in the way of me liking one. I feel some games do well to contrast the protagonist with the other characters, like Tales of Zestiria, which I never beat but liked the whole Shepherd thing because I loved the idea that to anyone outside his sphere of magic, the Shepherd is loving TERRIFYING. You can't see the magical people fighting alongside him, you can't see their weapons or spells, all you see if him pointing a small sword at you, and not even a real one, it's ceremonial, basically a loving toy, and you just suddenly explode.
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Sep 9, 2022 18:41
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Cleretic posted:So, you ever play one of those games where you realize that they gave you the least interesting person in the entire cast to play as? Dante is a lot better in the more recent games IMO (focusing more on his goofiness helps, I think), but then again he also is no longer the main character and you could definitely say the same about Nero, especially in 4. Here's a little thing dragging a game down since I've also been looking at some DMC stuff again: Nero is an alright character in 5 but DMC4 Nero is basically just DMC3 Dante except angrier and more obnoxious. Considering 4's reception I'm actually kind of impressed they decided to stick with and improve him for 5 instead of just dropping him or making him a more minor character, but I'm glad they did since I actually really like how 5 Nero plays.
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Sep 9, 2022 19:02
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Silent characters are just trying and failing to do what Chrono Trigger pulled off. Crono is mute but still has a lot of personality, so he works as a player-insert character without just being a fly on the wall. Plus, it hits a lot harder when he dies after you've been fleshing out his personality in your imagination throughout the game.
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Sep 9, 2022 19:07
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Cleretic posted:See, silent protagonists sidestep this for me probably because that's sorta the point. They specifically wrote a non-character, and I like that in the right contexts. I've mentioned before though that the draw's not necessarily about a silent protagonist feeling exceptionally good and more about them never hitting the lowlights of a voiced protagonist in being annoying or unsuited for how I'm playing. Times are rare when I feel like Link is really elevating a Legend of Zelda, but I have never once felt like he got in the way of me liking one. For me, part of what makes Link work is that he's wordless but not mute. In pretty much every single Zelda game they spent time on giving him a personality. Even the Game Boy games where he's just a tiny little sprite, his emotions are big. The more modern games have started to get a little weird because they have more dialogue, but at the same time they've been doing that thing where Link doesn't talk but you can choose dialogue options anyway. And in general the stories have largely benefited from keeping Link in a very reactive role and a bit off to the side. Meanwhile, Zelda and/or another companion character like Midna get to do the heavy lifting. Plus third person games in general get the benefit of being able to more readily use body language as characterization. That helps. Basically Link gets away with it because his silence usually isn't too conspicuous.
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Sep 9, 2022 19:26
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Rockman Reserve posted:Silent characters are just trying and failing to do what Chrono Trigger pulled off. Crono is mute but still has a lot of personality, so he works as a player-insert character without just being a fly on the wall. Plus, it hits a lot harder when he dies after you've been fleshing out his personality in your imagination throughout the game. I think Chrono Trigger was the first time I realized I hate having silent protagonists. After playing games like Final Fantasy IV and VI, where the protagonist(s) had tons of dialogue and personality, I felt Crono was a boring kid without any personality at all. Although I disliked the other characters so much that maybe it's for the better. On the other hand, I never felt that way about Randy (is that his name?) from Secret of Mana. He didn't talk, but also there wasn't a lot of interactions. There were very few conversations happening; mostly people just saying what is going on and telling you to help. In fact, in some ways I found his silence to be beneficial. The way they throw him out of the village in the beginning, and how he doesn't say anything, it fits with him being a defeated kid cast out and having to go at it alone. I guess that's the difference; even though you had party members in Secret of Mana, it really felt like a solo game. I often forget they were there at all. But maybe they're not that different. I haven't visited either game in fifteen years.
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Sep 9, 2022 19:28
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Inspector Gesicht posted:Dragon Quest XI is probably best modern example where having a silent, gormless protagonist harmed the story. Absolutely. Big emotional moment in the story, camera pans to that dipshit just staring blankly.
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Sep 9, 2022 19:46
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The Division 2 is the game where having a silent protagonist harms the story the most. Your character seems like a complete psychopath, half smiling and nodding through endless cutscenes wherein others pace around while you are talked at about how America will fall unless you take an LMG to the capitol building. They're paramilitaries over there! You can have my character express their displeasure about the situation! Or pleasure! Or anything! Ubisoft were SO SCARED to make your white-phosphorus-slinging character have any opinion on the clearly political thriller world they wrote that you come off as a complete fascist who follows the will of whoever tells you to empty the red health bars.
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Sep 9, 2022 19:53
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Astral Chain had a weird situation where you play as one of a set of twins chosen at the beginning, and the one you chose is a weird mute goober while the one you don’t has a personality. South Park: Stick of Truth and Fractured But Whole had a mildly amusing running bit where a character would directly ask the silent protagonist to explain something and he’d just stand there and stare for a few seconds before awkwardly moving on. Dr Christmas has a new favorite as of 00:10 on Sep 10, 2022 |
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Sep 9, 2022 20:00
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adol cristin from Ys is also a good silent protagonist in that he's only nominally silent - he has voiced battle clips, varied dialogue choices, and an established personality of "irrepressibly chipper adrenaline junkie" but his silence feels more like a legacy trait because he debuted like 25 years ago with way less character. mute mannequins like DQXI's hero or Artyom from the Metro series are just a drag
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Sep 9, 2022 20:11
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Fire Emblem Three Houses would have been vastly more interesting if the protagonist had a discernable personality instead of playing into them being an emotionless weirdo who everyone inexplicably loves anyway and changes for the better from sheer proximity.
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Sep 9, 2022 20:31
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I feel that way about Shepard in mass effect. The whole game is filled with everyone telling you how cool and how much of a bad rear end leader you are but if you really listen to your side of the conversations you're pretty boring. The player character in Andromeda actually had MORE of a personality even though the game wasn't great.
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Sep 9, 2022 20:46
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The main character having a voice is my least favorite thing about fallout 4.
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Sep 9, 2022 20:51
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Dr Christmas posted:Astral Chain had a weird situation where you play as one of a set of twins chosen at the beginning, and the one you chose is a weird mute goober while the one you don’t has a personality. Reminds me of the Modern Warfare trilogy, where Soap is a vaguely man-shaped gun-holding entity when under your control, then the second he's not he's suddenly this big bombastic character.
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Sep 9, 2022 21:21
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Again, the difference between mute and silent protagonists. I don't care if a character doesn't have a voice actor behind their dialogue but they can at least emote or something. Mario RPG works just fine, he doesn't say things but he still gets the message across just fine. https://i.imgur.com/CtNgPke.mp4 And yeah, it's an old enough example that it can have student loan debt it'll never pay off but still, that's all I need out of a game.
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Sep 9, 2022 21:28
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It's always weird when Mario talks anyway. It's-a-me, so long gay bowser, and hothothothothot is about all I want from him ever.
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Sep 9, 2022 21:54
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credburn posted:It's always weird when Mario talks anyway. It's-a-me, so long gay bowser, and hothothothothot is about all I want from him ever. the newer games giving him a weird combination of simlish and catchphrases to babble
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Sep 9, 2022 22:25
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Italian is a real language
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Sep 9, 2022 22:48
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Stolen form another thread butGatts posted:IMO, Vagrant Story had a well written story/plot and dialog. I remember that game and really liking it cause I dig turn based combat and such but it had a weird mechanic where if you chained a combo too long you wound up doing like 1hp of damage and the only way to replenish it was either to rest/skip turns and get your rear end kicked or use an item that were (I think) limited and scarce. It was a long time ago when I played it obviously and I think I was near the end but IIRC I brick walled myself out of a boss fight for the reasons explained above and never finished it.
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Sep 10, 2022 00:03
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Pulsarcat posted:Granted, one of the party members is the president of what is heavily implied to be the United States, and his weapon is gun, and that rules. That was one hell of an intro.
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Sep 10, 2022 02:16
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Oxxidation posted:adol cristin from Ys is also a good silent protagonist in that he's only nominally silent - he has voiced battle clips, varied dialogue choices, and an established personality of "irrepressibly chipper adrenaline junkie" He talks...sorta in Ys IX (big spoilers for it): you, the clone of Adol, have a conversation with the OG Adol in some liminal soul space. Very strange hearing him speaking full sentences.
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Sep 10, 2022 02:40
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Yeah I prefer if my silent protagonists just stay silent. It’s weird if they’re very talkative when you’re not controlling them. I prefer to imagine that they’re laconic but strangely expressive. Like we don’t get to hear their lines but if we did it would just be a sentence here and there and everything else is the rest of the cast picking up on body language and facial expressions Honestly, my biggest issue with silent protagonists is that the odds of having a bunch of people together who will all agree that the person who barely ever says anything should be their leader is basically zero
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Sep 10, 2022 05:56
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A silent protagonist but in a sitcom style. They say nothing, but every now and then they'll do finger guns and everyone else will laugh.
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Sep 10, 2022 06:10
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I still love the Portal 2 tutorial where they make fun of that really well
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Sep 10, 2022 06:22
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The perfect silent protagonist was the guy in GTA3 because he was just pure mercenary who just did whatever someone told him to do. Nobody needed to give a poo poo about his opinions.
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Sep 10, 2022 06:32
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Phigs posted:The perfect silent protagonist was the guy in GTA3 because he was just pure mercenary who just did whatever someone told him to do. Nobody needed to give a poo poo about his opinions. He's also still silent in GTA SA and the female lead leaves you for him and taunts you in the middle of a race about how good a lover he is, and then even calls you in the post-game in mid-coitus to tell you about how she doesn't need you because she has him. At first glance it's a joke on Carl by Catalina but on the second pass it's a joke on Claude STILL being used by people with higher motives even like a decade later. edit: GTA SA being a prequel to 3, that is. Claude had no idea how much trouble he was getting into. CJacobs has a new favorite as of 06:42 on Sep 10, 2022 |
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Sep 10, 2022 06:37
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