In general, I'll agree with this. I'll forgive the silent protagonist syndrome in early games, and the Mario RPG games are fully forgivable on this accord even today. But even from the SNES era I prefer FFVI and Tales of Fantasia to Chrono Trigger if only for this reason. In terms of mechanics and design, I actually think Chrono Trigger is the better game, but I find myself enjoying some others more. 

On a side note: I've always wanted to see a spin on the Silent Protagonist, where the main character is actually, physically mute in an RPG. Could make for an interesting story, and it would result in the hopeful avoidance of long monologues. 

@David I'm not sure, but I think there actually is an RPG where the main character is a (proper, can't physically speak) mute. Where the RPG experts at?

I love the fact that Nathan Drake tells a running commentary. There are so many moments in both of the Uncharted games where he said exactly what I was thinking. But he's an everyman kind of character, and that kind of chatter might not fly so well with characters based on some other archetypes.

It's obviously a tricky thing to get perfectly. You didn't mention games like Mass Effect that let you choose what your character can say, but even then most players pick up on the fact that it is always a nice option, neutral option, and evil option, so it still breaks the immersion a little bit in the end.

I would love for developers to start experimenting with ways around this, but I can't think of a perfect solution.

@ David and Richard: The Action RPG Drakengard has a genuinely mute main character (well, after the first couple of levels), though it only seems to play minor parts on the overall story.  Then again, it's been forever since I played it, so I can't remember...

As for the article itself, I agree completely.  I find it lazy for developers to make main characters silent, even in the eariler days.  They just don't want to spend extra time writing scripts for them... and the excuse of to fill the shoes of the character yourself is a half-baked one.  I think the only time when it's even a little acceptable is when you make the entire character from scratch (like Dragon Quest IX or Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, but I'm unsure if the latter even counts).

There's nothing really wrong with having a silent protagonist. After all it makes no difference when gameplay is concerned. Even if Link expressed his true love for Zelda in the most romantic of speeches, it wont make tracking down all the missing heart pieces any easier. Sure it would probably make for a much better Zelda story, but that's not what Zelda is about.

I don't think having a silent protaganist is lazy on the developers part or anything. It just lets me know the developers were more concered about the gameplay than the story. This isn't a bad thing, even for RPG's. A terrible game with great story is still a terrible game.

@Antonio: I mostly agree with you, but then what do you say to a game like Half-Life 2 where its focus is, arguably, the story?  Gordon never says a damn word, and that annoyed me throughout the whole game (especially when the other characters comically acknowledge his quietness; it's like Valve is making fun of itself for not developing its protagonist).

I find the way you include Half-Life 2 in this piece problematic.

"Perhaps having a silent protagonist used to shave off a few dollars or save crucial disc space, but nowadays, developers use it as cheap excuse to artificially inject interactivity by "letting the player be the hero." It doesn't work. It achieves the exact opposite of its intended goal and results in more distance between the player and the story."

When you make this statement, Joel, I wonder if you either didn't actually play the same Half-Life 2 that I did.  When you say "most people end up jumping around the room to see if they can make it to Eli Vance's head from the chair in the corner" I wonder who your research sample was, and/or whether they were really paying attention to the game.

The reason why Gordon Freeman is silent is very simple: the game is subtle. The narrative of Half Life 2 is told in propaganda broadcasts, in throwaway lines from supporting characters, and in other aspects of the textured sound design. It is told in mood, and set design, and scoring, and expressivity of characters that modern first person shooters still don't touch. The body language and facial expressions of the characters in Half-Life 2 are still amazing five years later...why haven't other studios been able to reach up to the same bar in all this time?

Sure, if a player is not in the mood for a game that asks him to pay attention to the details and check his expectations of a shooter at the door, perhaps they don't have the patience for Half-Life 2 and that's no crime...but that player also is likely not going to appreciate what makes the game so brilliant independent of whether that's anyone's cup of tea. There's gaming for entertainment, and there's also gaming for critical analysis. Half-Life 2 serves both masters, which is what the best games *ought* to do.

Gordon Freeman doesn't speak because it would distract from the narrative. It could be argued that having Freeman speak would actually have been the lazy choice, *not* vice versa. You don't have to make the environment nearly as engaging if the player is focused instead on constant barrages of dialogue.

I feel that by including Half Life 2 in this article, you're displaying a deep misunderstanding of precisely what made the game brilliant, and that's the sort of thing I think anyone writing about videogames needs to acknowledge, so that we can hold future FPS titles accountable to what's possible in the genre space. Otherwise, we wind up devolving into meathead shooters which artistically or narratively aren't going to advance anything. These Tom Clancy-esque Call of Duty plotlines may be fun, but they're also extremely silly, and with Black Ops are getting more than a little tired, IMHO.

And I personally found Nathan Drake stereotypical, a cardboard hero cutout, and therefore could have done without his supposed-to-be-clever quips. They didn't bother me, per se, but let's not hold Nathan Drake up as some paragon of what a video game protagonist ought to be. I think we should aim a little higher than that when it comes to doling out our praise.

I don't think the silent protagonist is inherently inferior to a voiced actor (no more than the silent film is less worthy than a "talkie"), it's just a different style of game. Looking at Dennis's response and your own arguments, I can see that either approach comes with strengths and drawbacks. Personally, I prefer the silent hero, if only because most developers haven't the chops to write anyone interesting enough to draw me into the game.

Also, I'm pretty sure Chrono Trigger makes fun of the silent protagonist by having the other characters always interrupt Chrono right as he's about to say something....

I completely agree, especially with regards to Chrono Trigger. The silent protagonist is the primary reason that I have it ranked just outside the top five on my list of the best RPGs of all time.