Good silent protagonists

Since silent protagonists are a major point of contention within the video game landscape, what are some games with good silent protagonists? As in those that have their silent protagonists interact with other characters with their own agency and emote through body language and facial expressions. I'm of the opinion that silent protagonists aren't an inherently bad idea, it's just that they're misused.

I'm pretty far from being a soulsfag, but I think the best use of silent protagonists is in the chosen undead. A silent protagonist is a non-character, and it fits the game perfectly. You are nobody,, just some zombie that perserveres as long as you keep playing. It isn't just muh self-insertion, your will to play is your character's will to live and entire motivation, nothing more and nothing less.

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Pretty much every Valve game.

Samus isn't really that good of a protagonist in MP. She doesn't have too much expression, or ability to express in the first place. The games themselves are solid, but the closest Samus has ever gotten to being an actual character was in Super or Fusion barring the obvious

Metroid…Zero mission?

I think we all know the best silent protagonist. And her name is Helen Keller.

No I meant Metroid Pinball god that game sucked

Is that really a problem when she's a bounty hunter in power armour?

Don't really agree. The silent protagonists in Valve's games literally don't emote at all. It was fine in the case of the Portal series since the story focused more on GLaDOS and Wheatley, but then you get to the Half-Life and Freeman is just passively observing everything around him.


Fair enough. I mainly had the cutscenes in Prime 2 and 3 in mind. Specifically the ones where she acquires her power-ups, and the ending of Prime 3 where she mourns the loss of the bounty hunters she had to kill.


I'm sure it can't hurt for even a bounty hunter in armor to be emotive.

well played

That's why they work when combined with the fact that the player sees the entire game through their eyes. It means there is almost no disconnect between the player and character. Some people say that Half Life 2 didn't work and I imagine it wouldn't with any other studio however the writing is so good that the only thing that got truly fucked in my opinion are speedruns.

I'M GONNA KILL BARON PRAXIS!

Fair enough, but I was mainly speaking about silent protagonists that do emote and do have some personality traits of their own.

Here's one I thought worked well enough.

Was Sonic ever really silent? He seemed to only not talk in the genesis games because it would get in the way of shit.

Classic Sonic never talked in Sonic Generations. I don't know why SEGA made this decision but whatever. I think it worked out.

Oh in Generations. Yea I suppose though the writing in that game was shit overall.

I didn't like it much either.

Can you still have good characters in a game with a shit story? My instincts say yes but I can't seem to have any examples

Of course. Lin Beifong is a good example, if you ignore Book 4.

She's shit though.


She's a bitch on a loop, fuck her

Doomguy is pretty legit

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That's Anne Frank you porch monkey

I'm pretty sure Rookie was inspired by pic related.

Why did you have to remind me what they did to poor Rookie