{"id":19990,"date":"2013-06-04T17:10:15","date_gmt":"2013-06-04T22:10:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=19990"},"modified":"2013-06-04T17:10:15","modified_gmt":"2013-06-04T22:10:15","slug":"experienced-points-in-defense-of-silent-protagonists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=19990","title":{"rendered":"Experienced Points: In Defense of Silent Protagonists"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So this week <a href=\"http:\/\/www.escapistmagazine.com\/articles\/view\/columns\/experienced-points\/10359-In-Defense-of-Silent-Protagonists?utm_source=latest&#038;utm_medium=index_carousel&#038;utm_campaign=all\">I defend the notion of a silent protagonist<\/a> in a videogame. You know, because <a href=\"http:\/\/www.xbox.com\/en-US\/xboxone\/meet-xbox-one\">there&#8217;s nothing else going on<\/a> that&#8217;s worth talking about. This is something that&#8217;s been annoying me for a while.<\/p>\n<p>Since the article went up, irridium tweeted this to me:<\/p>\n<p><center><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p>@<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/shamusyoung\">shamusyoung<\/a> Interesting article this week. Though I have a question, how would you define a good silent protagonist from a bad one?<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Tyler (@Irridium__) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Irridium__\/status\/341974720335454209\">June 4, 2013<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\n<\/center><\/p>\n<p>What makes Gordon (Half-Life) a good one and Corvo (Dishonored) a bad one? I think the big thing is that Gordon is new to the world he&#8217;s in and free to make up his own mind about things. Is Alyx your sidekick? Your peer? Your love interest? It&#8217;s up to you. You explore, see new things, and then decide how they make you feel. I&#8217;m exploring City 17 right along with him, and so I can assume that however I&#8217;m feeling is how Gordon is feeling.<\/p>\n<p>Corvo is not new to his world. He&#8217;s been an active participant, and the problems in the game are deeply, deeply personal. I&#8217;m not exploring Dunwall with him, because he&#8217;s been here for ages and most likely already has thoughts on the place. He saw the city before it went to hell, so I have no idea how he might feel about what he&#8217;s seeing. He&#8217;s been branded a traitor, had his girlfriend murdered, his alleged daughter kidnapped, and then tortured for weeks by the guy who made it all happen. I can&#8217;t really relate to that. (It doesn&#8217;t help that the betrayal happens pretty much the instant the opening credits are done.) There&#8217;s a huge disconnect because I&#8217;m playing catch-up and he&#8217;s not helping. <\/p>\n<p>Also, Corvo isn&#8217;t really mute. He does say things in little unvoiced dialogs. So instead of assuming he says things that aren&#8217;t depicted in the game, we&#8217;re left to conclude that &#8220;I&#8217;d like to buy something from you Piero&#8221; is the <strong>only<\/strong> thing the dude has to say. The dialogs are goofy because They don&#8217;t allow Corvo to express anything and they don&#8217;t allow us to express anything or ask any questions. It&#8217;s one thing if Corvo doesn&#8217;t talk about his life-changing betrayal because he doesn&#8217;t ever speak.  It&#8217;s another if it just never seems to come up in conversation. Especially when those conversations revolve around killing the dude who did the betraying. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So this week I defend the notion of a silent protagonist in a videogame. You know, because there&#8217;s nothing else going on that&#8217;s worth talking about. This is something that&#8217;s been annoying me for a while. Since the article went up, irridium tweeted this to me: @shamusyoung Interesting article this week. Though I have a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102],"tags":[155],"class_list":["post-19990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weekly-column","tag-experienced-points"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19990\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}