Toxic Sniper said:
... but because the purpose of the silent protagonist is to give a character more player agency, and voice just disrupts that agency. ...
Frotality said:
... currently, there is nothing great about HL2's storytelling, but for its time is was a perfect fusion of linear narrative and player agency, and i do still enjoy it greatly, over a great many more modern FPS games. ...
The point I tried to make in the opening is that Half-Life 2 gives no agency, not to Gordon and not to the player. From the beginning to the end you're following the orders of various NPCs, and the only thing you have the power to choose is how you feel about it. Your "agency" is over the unspoken thoughts of a prisoner.
The reason I feel a speaking protagonist works better for a linear game is that I would be fine going through the exact same sequence of events if I felt that it was Gordon making the decisions to do what he did, not someone else telling him to do it. I'm all right with the player not having agency if the character does have agency.
By the way, there's one more point I should have put in the OP, under the "things to remember" heading:
3. A character with a voice can still allow player agency. Some characters talk during cutscenes but keep their mouths shut during gameplay, but like anything, this can be done well or badly. When it's done well, you don't notice that your character is "half-silent"--for instance, I only noticed after a few dozen playthroughs that Leon says nothing during gameplay in Resident Evil 4 besides "Wait," "Follow me," and "Hide." Even though Leon is not a silent protagonist, you have some room to fill in his thoughts. When he opens a door and finds himself face to face with a congregation of armed monks, is he shitting his pants or is he thinking "Rock on, motherfuckers!"? Does he trade quips with the bad guys because he isn't afraid of them, or because he
is afraid and trying to hide it?
That's not the only case, though. There's such thing as an audience surrogate character, a character designed to say the things the audience is thinking. Just because a character speaks doesn't mean they'll inevitably shatter your perception of them, as some seem to fear. Beyond that, even in non-interactive media, characters can be open to interpretation. Those characters not only give you room to perceive them differently from how others do, but give you something to talk about when the game's over.
shrekfan246 said:
In all seriousness though, I think I've seen more people question why Gordon is held on such a high pedestal than people putting him on such a pedestal in the last two years.
You and I both know that Gordon has been and continues to be widely praised. He also continues to be central face of the group of characters we call "silent protagonist," and he continues to be the go-to name we use to refer to that group.
DrunkOnEstus said:
Anyway, thank you OP for writing that up, it was pleasurable to read and like I said could have easily been a featured article with a little editing. You've got that skill that hooked me to the end of the post.
Thank you!
OlasDAlmighty said:
And already you?re off track. Half Life 2?s story is told in a wide variety of means, dialogue only being one of them, many context clues and important details are scattered around your environment, on computer monitors and TV screen, signs or posters on the wall, context clues hidden in the environment. Sure you learn a lot from hearing people talk, whether it?s directly to you in conversation or overhearing a message playing on the radio, but Half-Life 2 tells a lot of the story non-verbally too, which is good because Gordon spends a lot of time alone throughout the game.
I acknowledged this in my first post. But while the game does much wordless storytelling, the main storyline is undeniably character-driven. More skillful games have managed to do both, without sacrificing the one for the other.
He?s only a defined character in the sense that he has a name, and appearance, and a degree in nuclear physics. His actual past outside his career is left deliberately ambiguous, as is his personality.
The other characters also have defined perceptions of him and defined expectations of him.
No, Gordon is you within the limitations of what the creators could program. There?s no game where you actually get to talk to people, AI hasn?t reached the point yet where that?s feasible. Dialogue options are a bastardization of free agency that basically lets you choose from a few pre-selected phrases while at the same time completely destroying the game?s immersion. In a way not being able to talk put?s emphasis on your actions, which the game always gives you complete control over.
It's not terribly unreasonable to think that players might want to gather information at the beginning of the game. In a Zelda or Dragon Quest game, talking to all the people in the starting area would net you a good amount of usable information (though not the whole story). In Half-Life, Gordon never asks anything of anyone, even though very few players who would act that way if it were them.
It?s brilliant in that sense isn?t it? The game tells a linear story without ever commanding you where to go, there are no objective markers, or arrows over your head, or invisible walls. Technically you have total freedom of movement, yet the game is guiding you along a chosen path even if it feels voluntary. The strings that the game pulls are invisible, It gives you a sense of total freedom while not actually giving you any freedom at all.
The game commands you constantly through the various NPCs who bark orders at you. While they don't tell you precisely which direction to go at all times (that's left to the level design, which, as you say, is very good), they create a bizarre effect wherein Gordon has no power to make his own decisions, only follow the orders of others from the moment he steps off the train to the moment he delivers the final blow to the Citadel. Even though nobody's with you when you're moving toward Black Mesa East, you're always, unrelentingly moving toward Black Mesa East, and you're doing so because Isaac Kleiner told you to.
Gordon?s lack of agency is, within the context of the story, simply a matter of his limited paths of movement created by his environment. Though the real reason for it is the fact that it?s a videogame.
I?m not entirely sure what you mean by ?lacking agency?. If you?re complaining that Half-Life has a linear story progression, then you?re basically criticizing the majority of video games. Even most open world games have a linear story progression that you have to follow to reach the end. Link doesn?t have any agency, he has to go through all the dungeons, get the magic whatsits, and kill Ganondorf or whoever the last boss is. Sure some games let you make choices that influence you?re character?s story arc, often with those horrible dialogue options, but that can hardly be expected of every game. I?m not even entirely sure it?s better to have that much freedom since it basically turns the storytelling process over to the player, who might not always know what makes for the best story.
If by agency you simply mean the freedom to control your character?s actions then Half-Life gives you more agency than almost any game I can think of. There are no cutscenes where Gordon acts without you, the only time you can?t control his movement is when he?s trapped in something. And while the actions you take as him may not affect the overall path of the story, they definitely impact whether you win or lose.
Gordon's lack of agency is because he never once makes a decision for himself. What you have to understand about my argument is that I draw a distinction between player agency and character agency. Character agency means the character makes decisions during the story that affect his fate; player agency means the player makes decisions that affect the outcome of the game. These factors are not dependent on each other--one can exist without the other.
A game that provides little or no player agency can still provide character agency, simply by showing us that the character is choosing for himself the paths that the player is forced to take. I said as much in my original post. Link
chooses to board the pirate ship in Wind Waker--no one told him to do it, and the pirates tried to refuse--and it's for this scene and scenes like it that I say Link has agency even though the player doesn't. In Majora's Mask, at least 60% of the game is optional sidequests, meaning Link undertakes them only at his (and the player's) discretion.
Even though the player has no agency in Half-Life, Gordon still could have. Not even necessarily by speaking.
As a general rule you should never have more dialogue when you can provide the same information with less. This is true in all mediums but it's especially important in videogames. I love how the Half-Life games keep the exposition relatively short while filling in the details with stuff in your environment. This way it never feels like you're having information crammed down your throat.
If this were a general rule, then dialogue would never have to be more than the one line it takes to tell you exactly what's going on. Dialogue has so many uses that I wouldn't even say exposition is the primary one. I'll defer to my favorite fiction author, Daniel Quinn:
"In real life conversations people seldom say exactly what they want to say (or even know exactly what it IS they want to say). The fiction writer's trick is, first, to know exactly what the character wants to say (even if s/he want to be ambiguous or dishonest); second, to have the character say it (and in the style of language s/he uses); and third to make it sound like normal, spontaneous speech."
Half-Life devotes a fair amount of its dialogue to characterization, not exposition. If Gordon were to get in on this, it would not necessarily be
longer, but
different. Even if it were longer, it would not necessarily be
boring. Half-Life's "not-cutscenes" are already longer than the cutscenes of other action games.
alfinchkid said:
... you are asking for a type of gameplay element that still has yet to be implemented well, in a game made in 2004. For reference, this is the same year that Doom 3, the first Fable, and Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel came out, when the Wii was still called the Revolution, and this game was released ONE WEEK before the ORIGINAL launch of World of Warcraft. Heck, this was the year that the final games for the PSOne were released.
The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind came out in 2002. However, I'm not even asking for TES-level freedom. Just something like Zelda or Dragon Quest, where talking to people in the train station could net you useful information (implying that Gordon asked what was going on), would have gone a long way. It would still be the player's choice to talk to these people or not. You don't even have to make Gordon talk to do this.
^This. All the this. It's a rule that's been around since Literature: "Show, don't tell"; and is even more poignant in visual mediums. Why have a character say "I love you, I missed you." when you could show a teary-eyed hug? It's the exact same thing, but the sight of it makes it jump more to your heart and feels more powerful. I was more immersed and emotionally moved, and felt that it said MUCH more about the characters when the protagonist (why can't I remember his name?) of Dishonored hugged Emily after rescuing her at the end than by ANY dialogue option up to that point.
Speaking as someone who writes fiction, "Show, don't tell" isn't nearly as simple an adage as it looks, and it's not even agreed upon among fiction writers. Dialogue is often the tool by which the author shows rather than tells; it can be used to show you what people are like and what they want without directly telling you. Dialogue does not equal exposition--not even most of the time. Non-verbal gestures can be powerful, but there are some things that can only be accomplished by speaking. They are both tools suited for different jobs.
Voice acting in Half-Life not only would ruin the continuity of the games that didn't have him speak yet, but would ruin all of the established Character and story; that Gordon is, simply, along for the ride, and more of a witness than a real power.
Several people have pointed this out, and I'd like to address it. Some franchises have already gone from silent protagonists to speaking protagonists, and this did not result in the world catching fire or the fanbase lynching the developers. In fact, most often it was welcomed. The Saints Row series even gave six distinct personalities to choose from for your player-created character, and made each of the six personalities fit in the game. THAT was an achievement.
I'd also like not to be misunderstood here. I'm not saying speaking is inherently better than staying silent. I'd have said that once upon a time, but not anymore. What I'm saying is that silent protagonists are suited for some types of games while speaking protagonists are suited for others, and Half-Life 2 is not, I feel, the type of game suited to a silent protagonist.
