What if say the Hero actually talked?

Hypotheses for, and analyses of, the various Suikoden characters.
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TrueBlood
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What if say the Hero actually talked?

Post by TrueBlood »

This is not counting Suikoden 3, where all 4 of the heroes (including Thomas) speak and have real personalities, but in the rest of the games, the hero is a mute. I mean in Suikoden 5, Lyon is talking to the prince about various things and the prince shakes his head and opens his mouth, but never (officially) says anything, the same for the Tir, Lazlo and the hero from 2 (Roiu or something). So I have this to say: How can a person who never, or rarely (in the off chance the game lets you pick something to say) speaks attract 108 different people to join his cause and lead an army to crush said foes.

Don’t get me wrong though I love the Suikoden serious, and I know that the “silent hero” bit is more or less, so that the player feels like s/he is the hero, but still..
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Post by Wicked_Rune_Bearer »

Well, I can't say this for a fact but i believe the reason they did this was so that the gamer, regardless of their personallity or what type of person they are, can relate to the character and agree with other gamers they he did deserve to be the tenkai star, i mean think about it. if you give the hero a personallity then your going have a lot of people who like him, a lot who dislike him, a lot that don't care either way, but if you don't give him a personality or any lines then the gamer can imagiatively create a personallity for the character and everyone will like the leader, because if you don't like the leader then your probably not going to like the rest. I mean tactics had kyril, kyril spoke, some people thought kyril was a little bitch, um can i say that, anyways, except 3, you have to give personalitys to those characters, because there is 3 of them, plus the characters were greatly detailed, and people still disliked 1 or more, so what i'm saying is i believe konami did this for reasons that shape the game.
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Feldoon
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Post by Feldoon »

I think you're missing the point of playing the silent hero. The hero's reactions and emotions are your reactions and emotions. It's how Konami try to give you the story.

Albeit you cannot display your attitude to characters in the game, it's still your emotion and attitude that are meant to fill the character, not Konami.
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Post by Oppenheimer »

The problem with that "the character is you" is that there's not nearly enough flexibility of the plot to make such a thing possible. Games like Fable and Star Wars KOTOR at least make a character that gets a choice about how he wants to be. A silent protagonist doesn't work the way it's done in Suikoden because you don't get that kind of choice. He's prefabricated by Konami, except that they didn't give him a voice. They still gave him a personality and didn't let you choose one for him.

By the way this was chatting about a little bit in relation to Suikoden IV here, in case you're curious:
http://www.suikosource.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=4020
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Post by Asmodeus Dark »

I wanted to do his voice, but they said no.... I e-mailed them to re-release
the game with some of the cut out bits, and Glen as a SoD, but they shot it down...
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Post by Feldoon »

Oppenheimer wrote:The problem with that "the character is you" is that there's not nearly enough flexibility of the plot to make such a thing possible. Games like Fable and Star Wars KOTOR at least make a character that gets a choice about how he wants to be. A silent protagonist doesn't work the way it's done in Suikoden because you don't get that kind of choice. He's prefabricated by Konami, except that they didn't give him a voice. They still gave him a personality and didn't let you choose one for him.
Aye, that's always been a problem I've noticed.

Konami tried to fuse aspects of a console RPG with a computer RPG. But still, even though you can't create the character yourself, I don't understand why people can't realise that the Tenkai's (sans III) reactions are your reactions.

And besides, I'd rather have a silent prot' than a whiny emo one any day.
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Post by Oppenheimer »

Feldoon wrote: And besides, I'd rather have a silent prot' than a whiny emo one any day.
Well, I think it goes without saying that if they didn't do a silent protagonist they'd have to make the protagonist interesting. I prefer how they did it in III with three protagonists plus Thomas. All three had different personalities, so really, they could represent you, becuase they hit a wide range of personality types. It's more likely in that case that you'll empathize with one of them. That one being the one you choose to be the flame champ. It was brilliant.
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Post by Feldoon »

Oppenheimer wrote:
Feldoon wrote: And besides, I'd rather have a silent prot' than a whiny emo one any day.
Well, I think it goes without saying that if they didn't do a silent protagonist they'd have to make the protagonist interesting. I prefer how they did it in III with three protagonists plus Thomas. All three had different personalities, so really, they could represent you, becuase they hit a wide range of personality types. It's more likely in that case that you'll empathize with one of them. That one being the one you choose to be the flame champ. It was brilliant.
Aye. I whole heartedly agree with you there. I also like the way they covered the "Where's the older-aged hero?" and "Where's the female hero?" bases. And the story Suikoden III told couldn't have been told with a silent protagonist as it was about the squabbling of minor nations bitching back and forth over the tiniest little things and how the children of the nations can have such a biased view (Hugo's story).

However Suikoden III failed to deliver the whole 'feel' from the other Suikodens. In that the hero is trying to find his place in the world or his beliefs are uprooted somehow.

And yes Suikoden III did set up each character well, however the general feeling of the character is dropped about a quarter through chapter four and they just became another run-of-the-mill silent prot', causing the Fire Hero II to fall into the problems you described earlier with the "be the her" types.

Also, In my first playthrough of III, I expected the game to pick up into dramatic warfare like the others but it flopped worse than IV (albeit the initial chapters easily make up for it), which, overall, just takes from that Suikoden feel.
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Post by Darian »

I think that there's something to be said for the concept of the silent protagonist and the thought of allowing the player to project his/her personality onto him/her.

However, I think those days are past. With games becoming more and more narrative in nature -- stories becoming more complex, characters growing and developing believable personalities, and the characters themselves becomming more complex -- I think the silent hero needs to bow out gracefully.

Sure, in a simple classic throwback like DQVIII, the silent hero works very well, but I don't think that is any longer true for Suikoden. I think the only way a Suikoden could really make the silent protagonist work in this day and age would be to have a complex dialogue tree system, which I think would just be unneccesary in the case of a linear story.

At the same time, though, it's hard to shake the feeling that the Prince was "me." The feeling that I made the choices I did -- whether they had any significant impact on the game or not -- because the Prince was as much my character as he is Konami's. Of course, on the other hand, that feeling is kind of moot when Konami establishes an official canon.
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Post by Feldoon »

Thing is with "official canon" is it doesn't truly exist.

I mean, picture your life as a RPG with a "silent protagonist" for you to project yourself onto. You don't know the future (first time round with playing Suikoden unless you spoiler-fy yourself) and think you're roughly in control, however the actions of others will help you shape your future.

Personally, I don't see it as outdated at all.

I still hope one day AI will get advanced enough to pick up words you say (probably have a 'voice-calibration' at the beginning of a game) and the game computes your reaction on a scale from positive to negative. Then the characters around you can respond to you.

If that ever happens, tell me a silent prot' is archaic. ;P
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Post by Rezard »

I still hope one day AI will get advanced enough to pick up words you say (probably have a 'voice-calibration' at the beginning of a game) and the game computes your reaction on a scale from positive to negative. Then the characters around you can respond to you.

If that ever happens, tell me a silent prot' is archaic. ;P
If that ever happens, then it won’t be a silent protagonist, since you will be talking for him.

I don’t like silent hero much, I don’t relate much to this type of hero, sometimes during the games I would do and say totally different things. I don´t think being omissive about his personality helps making you do this yourself. If you think Tir is a funny guy, he won´t start telling jokes, it doesn´t matter what you do. If you want Riou to be interested in dating Eilie, it also won´t change a thing, you will never see a romantic scene between then.

The "talking" protagonist, truly, can be much worse than a silent one, but it can be much better too. It’s all about taking a risk and you don’t actually need to relate to the hero, you just need not to hate him. Also, they can just use an everyman and it will be fine.
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Post by Feldoon »

Rezard wrote:
I still hope one day AI will get advanced enough to pick up words you say (probably have a 'voice-calibration' at the beginning of a game) and the game computes your reaction on a scale from positive to negative. Then the characters around you can respond to you.

If that ever happens, tell me a silent prot' is archaic. ;P
If that ever happens, then it won’t be a silent protagonist, since you will be talking for him.
Canonically, it would be.

Since he'd never officially say much. And it would be a greater way to place yourself in the situation.
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Post by nach0king »

I always thought it was pretty interesting that the silent leader was able to command the respect of such mighty armies towards the end of games, despite the fact he was clearly not a motivational speaker (again, until the end.) I agree with this being part of the "you are the hero" empowering scenario but it still seemed pretty odd.

Regardless of this, I've never been as emotionally invested in an RPG as I have been in the Suikoden series. Some of the other characters have such depth to them that you don't start thinking about the hero as much as you do about helping other characters (in the form of a hero.) I'm thinking about Gremio and Nanami here in particular.

Maybe that's why the hero was a true hero - because his empathy and effort transcended himself. He wasn't just some angsty guy out on a heroic quest for his own benefit, but someone who would change the world for others.

That said, apparently Tir degenerates into cynicism and pragmatism:

http://www.suikox.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12116
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Post by Raging Barows Brat »

No, I kind of agree there. It is your decisions and such that determine so many of the game’s outcomes and character reactions, and the dialogue choices are, all in all, pretty good, but it is the other characters who get you involved the story and make you want to take some initiative, just for their sake. Really, who couldn’t care about Gremio, Suikoden’s official Samwise Gamgee? :wink: Thus, your emotion and feelings for the characters become the Hero's emotions and feelings. At least, that is how it seems like it works to me.

And that is interesting about Tir, but seeing as how the source cites Wikipedia...hmm, not sure how much credence to lend it.

Still, I guess there is a trace of a hint that Tir has become considerably more “angsty” in Suikoden II. Someone in the message board in that link actually referred to the scene I am thinking of. Tir has a “Frodo moment” where he just about collapses and silently whines about the burden of the Soul Eater, and Gremio has to practically kick him in the ass to make him get up and do something. It almost seems to me in that game that Tir could be edging toward an all-out neurosis about embarking on anything potentially dangerous, for fear that the Rune might endanger someone else around him. Could explain why he prefers a quiet life of fishing.
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Post by Oppenheimer »

nach0king wrote:That said, apparently Tir degenerates into cynicism and pragmatism:

http://www.suikox.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12116
Well I don't find that at all surprising. Tir was never exactly chipper. A lot of bad stuff happened in his life and when he does finally win the war and get his friend back what does he do? Run away. The soul eater tends to depress people since it tries to kill the loved ones of its bearers. I'd be depressed if I had it. Good thing is that Greimo's probably immune to it now that he's been killed by it once already.

Anyway, Suikoden III did it better with having everyone talk. But, I've said that many times before.
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