Suikoden 5 silent protagonist

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kratoscar2008
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Suikoden 5 silent protagonist

Post by kratoscar2008 »

The thing that draw Suikoden my attention was that the Hero is a silent protagonist since i love Silent protagonist because i completely buy the concept of they personality is shaped by the player and so i got the game.

If you were able to change the Hero to a personality one, will you do it? Or will you let it as it is?
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Re: Suikoden 5 silent protagonist

Post by KFCrispy »

this is kind of a 'future of the series' / wishlist discussion so i've moved it.
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kratoscar2008
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Re: Suikoden 5 silent protagonist

Post by kratoscar2008 »

KFCrispy wrote:this is kind of a 'future of the series' / wishlist discussion so i've moved it.
New here sorry ;)
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sticky-runes
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Re: Suikoden 5 silent protagonist

Post by sticky-runes »

I'm actually bored of silent protagonists. Even though a lot of my FAVOURITE RPGs have a silent hero, I do prefer when the hero has a voice. For example, Hugo in S3 and Kyril in Tactics - they actually give their own opinions on the situation and explain their own thoughts to the other characters. It gives them more of a sense of authority to me, like this person deserves to be recognised as the hero, he's not just some mute schmuck who got lucky and made a bunch of powerful friends. I even liked the main character in Tierkreis, he gave a lot of witty lines.

But when it's a silent hero, I don't feel that he has a personality. We just gets generic optional lines, like "We'll help you" or "we'll turn back". There's no individuality to him. And he's supposed to be this inspirational heroic figure, but in fact, it's always the other characters who give all of the meaningful speeches, and the hero just takes all the credit.
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Pyriel
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Re: Suikoden 5 silent protagonist

Post by Pyriel »

There's something to that, actually. Its seems fairly rare to me that you actually play a real leader in a story-driven game that has a silent protagonist. Maybe I'm just too limited, but in my experience, if you're the head of an army in the game, the character of the protagonist is well-defined, and the player just kind of goes along for the ride during most events. The whole point of the silent protagonist is to let the player insert him or herself, and not have the game determine their attitude for them. On the rare instance the player is given the chance to say something that has any real meaning, the game usually presents several dialogue options that don't really afford much or any freedom, but lets them choose a response that might be how they feel about the situation. In most games I've played that follow this formula, you might be the leader of your little band of heroes, but you're usually dragged along by events, and the orders of higher powers outside your group. In Suikoden the player character is the leader of a whole army, but never really decides anything or says anything important because he has to be a cipher to provide the link to the player. It kind of makes him look like a puppet. Hell, they even allude to the fact that he's just a puppet in a couple of games. One of the smarter characters outright says that the PC "inspires people" or something like that, so he should lead, while the cleverer folks work in the shadows. Then the PC just stands there quietly and lets everybody else do all the inspiring.

I thought the worst case of this was in 4. The game was kind of shoddy to begin with, but the main character looked sullen and brain-damaged most of the time, on top of being silent. I'd have been wary of following him to the nearest Wendy's.

It's kind of a tradition for Suikoden to work that way, though. Suikoden 3 got to deviate, because the real PC was apparently the original Flame Champion, who you can't even freaking play without cheat codes, and the story required the 3 contenders to have well-defined personalities and motivations throughout the game. Not sure about Tactics. That was a deviation all around, and I suspect it got a pass because it was a side-story that mostly built on characters that had already been established. If 6 ever gets made, who knows what direction they'll take. Nobody's left who really knows this stuff, and they've farmed the last couple of games out to other studios (I think). All the creative cohesion is gone.
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Aerolithe Lion
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Re: Suikoden 5 silent protagonist

Post by Aerolithe Lion »

I've always disliked silent protagonists when they try and make them evolving characters. It just doesn't work well.

Crono in Chrono Trigger worked because he was really just along for the ride, his entire entourage was making the decisions. SII was kind of inbetween, but SIV it really felt like the main character was clueless, because people would ask him important questions and he'd just stand their blankly. If you're going to have major character development and a guy who drives the story, he needs to have dialogue.

But if he's just experiencing things along with the player, Link is the perfect example, then silent is the way to go.
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Nikisaur
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Re: Suikoden 5 silent protagonist

Post by Nikisaur »

While I love Suikoden 1 and 2, and wouldn't change their silent protagonists for anything, I found 4 and 5 lacking in having a convincing hero. While this might be because of the weird contrast of a silent protagonist vs the voice acted cast, or the fact that you can actually see their blank expression (Lazlo), I'm not sure.

It isn't just a voice that works to make the character, as I felt in Suikoden 5, the Prince didn't get to make any decisions at all. Lyon would boss him around, tell him where he can and can't go (even though he's royalty). And once he's leader of an army, Lucretia NEVER divulges her 'hunches' or plans, so he never gets any input there either. It's like he's not just a blank pawn for the player, but for his army too.

I can deal with a silent protagonist, as long as they strike a balance by giving them actual decisions and a good personal plot.
The only thing Suikoden lacks...is dinosaurs.
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sticky-runes
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Re: Suikoden 5 silent protagonist

Post by sticky-runes »

Well, I can't really blame the hero from S4 for looking deoressed all the time. He's grown up not knowing who his real family are, living in the shadow of some spoilt noble boy, and just as he's proving himself as a great knight, he becomes afflicted with a cursed rune that kills all of its owners, and gets blamed for murdering his commander and banished. But when we meet him in Tactics - he actually does have his own dialogue!! and his portrait even looks happy!!!

the prince in S5 does have facial expressions, but I always thought his expressions were a bit too over the top and forced, and because he's not actually saying what he's thinking, then he just comes across to me asome kind of autistic boy who needs his carer to speak up for him.
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sticky-runes
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Re: Suikoden 5 silent protagonist

Post by sticky-runes »

The whole point of the silent protagonist is to let the player insert him or herself, and not have the game determine their attitude for them.

To me, that doesn't actually work. In fact, it seems more like the game designers were being lazy, and just thought "great, we don't have to write so much dialogue at this point!"

If I'm going to feel "involved" with a story, I want to feel emotionally connected to a character. and I can't feel emotionally connected to a character who is not displaying any emotion. And dialogue is very important for that. I like getting to know the supporting characters in Suikoden games, like Miakis and Kyle, because they each have their own individual way of speaking about things. They have their own quirks, their own obsessions and things they get frustrated about, and we get this from the things they say to eachother. Having a main character just standing there listening to people until it's his time to make a decision does make me feel anything for him, except that he is the most uninteresting and boring character in the game. It makes me feel excited and intrigued for what the supporting characters might say in response to my decision, but it doesn't have any impact on how I feel about the character I'm controlling.
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Pyriel
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Re: Suikoden 5 silent protagonist

Post by Pyriel »

sticky-runes wrote:Well, I can't really blame the hero from S4 for looking deoressed all the time. He's grown up not knowing who his real family are, living in the shadow of some spoilt noble boy, and just as he's proving himself as a great knight, he becomes afflicted with a cursed rune that kills all of its owners, and gets blamed for murdering his commander and banished. But when we meet him in Tactics - he actually does have his own dialogue!! and his portrait even looks happy!!!
So evidently he's not all that depressed about his foster family situation*. The sullenness I saw made him seem detached to me. Like he just didn't give a rip, which is kind of not a quality you want in a leader. It seemed to go way beyond the usual hard-luck moments of melancholy you get with a story like that. And like I said, they made him look brain-damaged, and when they'd show his face in close-up, looking like a refrigerator door in response to some major new intelligence, I just felt like I was playing an imbecile. That's just my impression, obviously. The fact that Konami is often a bit lazy about making their graphics animated and life-like really has no bearing on the personalities of characters. It's just that the hero usually doesn't have one, so unless they animate him a bit, all you have to connect to is a little wooden boy that doesn't even get a cricket.

Kind of a separate topic, but like four years prior to Suikoden V, Squaresoft was busy trying to figure out ways to use PS2 hardware to animate every fiber of hair on a virtual person's head, and with Konami you were lucky if a lady with hair down to her butt had more than one independent mesh. I think they got a little better with 5, but I still remember being slightly put off by one of the games, when a woman turned her head, and this massive sheaf of hair just followed along like a solid mass stitched together from 1/8" lauan and muslin. They tended to be just as lazy with faces. Half the time a major emotional change would be conveyed by moving eyebrows and little, if anything, else.

I'm with Aerolithe Lion. I think silence works well in Zelda games and with characters similar to Link in general. Sometimes, the goal is to make you feel connected to the story and the world, and not so much your character. I do agree it's an odd choice given the narratives in Suikoden games. They either have to spend a lot of effort making it seem like you're a grand leader and statesman in the blackouts, or just ignore your character's apparent ineffectiveness and hope you do as well.

*Edit: I didn't play through all of Rhapsodia/Tactics. I only ever encountered the SIV hero and Snowe as children, and that's what I was thinking of. I gather from reading about it that it's a direct sequel, and you eventually can recruit Lazlo as an adult, so maybe you were talking about that.
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sticky-runes
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Re: Suikoden 5 silent protagonist

Post by sticky-runes »

The sullenness I saw made him seem detached to me. Like he just didn't give a rip, which is kind of not a quality you want in a leader. It seemed to go way beyond the usual hard-luck moments of melancholy you get with a story like that. And like I said, they made him look brain-damaged, and when they'd show his face in close-up, looking like a refrigerator door in response to some major new intelligence, I just felt like I was playing an imbecile. That's just my impression, obviously. The fact that Konami is often a bit lazy about making their graphics animated and life-like really has no bearing on the personalities of characters. It's just that the hero usually doesn't have one, so unless they animate him a bit, all you have to connect to is a little wooden boy that doesn't even get a cricket.
I think the only time in S4 the hero does give anything close to an expression is when Snowe hands him the torch during the kindling ritual, and he tries to wave it away because he doesn't want to be the centre of attention! but yeah, he does have the same face all the way through, I'm just saying it doesn't bother me that much, because he does have one of the most unforgiving true runes in the whole world and everyone who's ever come into contact with it has had an incredibly short life span. If he had a more benign rune like Bright Shield or Dawn, then I would be a bit more bothered about him looking depressed and uninterested all the time. However, it was a nice change to have a main character who wields 2 swords instead of a blunt weapon (I didn't get round to playing 3 until long after I'd played all the other suikodens)
I didn't play through all of Rhapsodia/Tactics. I only ever encountered the SIV hero and Snowe as children, and that's what I was thinking of. I gather from reading about it that it's a direct sequel, and you eventually can recruit Lazlo as an adult, so maybe you were talking about that.
Yes, in Tactics you do get to meet and recruit the hero as an adult (provided you got 108 stars in suikoden 4 and dtransfered your data at the beginning of tactics) and he does seem to have lightened up. He even talks to people and has a bit more of an upbeat attitude.

I always got the impression that the hero did not get along well with snowe's dad. He does congratulate you when you graduate, but after the commander's death, lord Vingerhut is the one who accuses you of being jealous and killing the commander (and of course, the hero can't speak for himself, because he's got no voice!!!) and he also attempts to drive you out of Razril after you liberate the town from Kooluk. Also, snowe is the hero's childhood friend, but he also condems you throughout the the game. It's the other 4 young knights who believe in your innocence. so I don't think it was ever really "Happy Families" for the hero growing up in the Vingerhut household!
Ness the Mess
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Re: Suikoden 5 silent protagonist

Post by Ness the Mess »

The problem with vocal protagonists is things like Tierkreis happen, where my main character is a bumbling idiot. I don't mind of those around me have bad writing, but when my character does it turns me way off.
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Belle
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Re: Suikoden 5 silent protagonist

Post by Belle »

Ness the Mess wrote:The problem with vocal protagonists is things like Tierkreis happen, where my main character is a bumbling idiot. I don't mind of those around me have bad writing, but when my character does it turns me way off.
A bumbling idiot? Whatreyoutalkingabout? Ithinkhe'sjustexcitedtobeonhisfirstrealadventure. Andyoucan'tblameaguyforobviouslynotpeeingbeforeleavinghomeokaylet'sgo. :P
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Re: Suikoden 5 silent protagonist

Post by Antimatzist »

Belle wrote:
Ness the Mess wrote:The problem with vocal protagonists is things like Tierkreis happen, where my main character is a bumbling idiot. I don't mind of those around me have bad writing, but when my character does it turns me way off.
A bumbling idiot? Whatreyoutalkingabout? Ithinkhe'sjustexcitedtobeonhisfirstrealadventure. Andyoucan'tblameaguyforobviouslynotpeeingbeforeleavinghomeokaylet'sgo. :P
It's not only that he speaks to fast, but he really is an idiot. Most of the time he doesn't understand what others are saying, I think he's a typical Ruffy/Goku/Naruto-character, but not nearly as likeable.
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Sasarai10
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Re: Suikoden 5 silent protagonist

Post by Sasarai10 »

Personaly i don't like silent protagonists,i prefer speakable ones,like those in S3.

On the other hand Prince Frey is way too funny compared to Lazlo...
Lazlo doesn't show any facial emotion,he looks way too robotic,but on the other hand Prince Frey smiles,gets angry,etc....but most of all the funniest thing is,when they talk to him for some task for example,if he agrees he just shakes his head...sometimes you might think that Prince is mute.
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