I prefer a silent protagonist, since it doesn’t force me to condone stupid things being said, as games with noisy protagonists invariably do.
It’s not a huge deal though. This game is about following the story of some imaginary Czech guy who takes your advice, not rping a character of your own invention in a medieval setting. While I prefer the latter, at least they’re being consistent about it.
No. At least not mine.
I think that in Kingdom Come: Deliverance choosing to have Henry be mute wouldn’t be the right choice. But in other games it can work. What I think is that if you have lots of voice acting it limits your ability to have an in-depth conversation. Whereas if you have no voice acting you can talk about whatever you want, and that works in some games, but not in others.
no. i can see my hands and feet, why is there a problem with hearing my voice?
you’re a white guy in the game, i guess blacks, asians, latinos, etc can’t play
the voiceless protagonist is a remnant of a technologically less sophisticated time.
just say no to nostalgia disguised as “immersion”
right, because humans beings never say stupid things.
That’s just the point; they do say stupid things. When I make a dialogue choice and my character says something stupid, I feel like I’m being framed as the direct cause of the stupid thing being said, which isn’t a good feeling. I can see that you don’t mind so much.
If it was third person, a voice would make sense. But in the first person, I don’t hear my own voice the way people around me do. I hear it from the echo of my own thoughts. Similarly, I find that if I can assert my own voice over the text, I can feel more immersed.
What’s wrong with that? Neither characters nor people are perfect, so having things come up where you have a choice, the wrong thing is said, and it leads to some consequence is…no big deal, really. In fact, it makes a game more interesting as a result of the chance to screw up a little. They could simply script a thing like that in, but then you’d have NO choice.
Well the cutscenes and conversations are in third person, soo…
Hmmm… Voiced characters have benefits and costs. Straight off the bat voice acting is expensive, and it can have potentially harmful effects on development. Because it’s so expensive, you’ll often have less dialogue choices as a result (compare the 3 mass effect responses to the many, many options you get in something like Planescape: Torment). Also by having voiced characters, it makes it a lot harder to go back and change the script once the lines are recorded.
So not saying there shouldn’t be voiced characters, just wanted to discuss some of the trade offs it can bring.
I think the main problem with including the player character’s voice is that you have to sit through hearing the line being spoken after you’ve already read it in making your response choice. This seems to me like something people would click through. I’m not totally against the idea and some may enjoy it but I think the majority would want an option to single click and jump over the spoken part since they already know what’s coming. Just my two cents.
Is that cast in stone yet?
But anyhow, a silent character is a thing of the past and should stay so. A story-driven game with cinematics and a main character who isn’t even able to express himself is kind of ridiculous, really. 
I hope it will be done in the same style as in Alpha Protocol. That game did it right.
all i can say, if you’re afraid or uncomfortable with playing a character that might say something stupid, you’re either insecure, or you say a lot of stupid things in real life, and you don’t want to be reminded of that in a game. 
In games where you can create your character from scratch (sex, skin colour, hair colour, background story, personality, name) then they should be left unvoiced. Everyone invents their unique characters for the game, would be annoying if he already had a set voice, or even if you have a selection of voices to choose from.
But this game already has the main character set, his sex, his name, his skin and hair, his background… only thing you have an influence here is his personality in some degree. The things you can choose for him, like should we burn down that village or is it too unethical for Henry? And even here, his personality might already be set - If he burns down the village, he might show great regret later in the game.
So there’s the difference. It’s more like Mass Effect and Alpha Protocol, although I’ve played neither. I’ve played Bioshock Infinite and I love the main character’s voice acting there, although it’s not RPG. Then there’s The Bard’s Tale, Call of Cthulhu, Remember Me, The Walking Dead telltale games, Max Payne games, GTA games, L.A. Noire, eeeeh (trying to remember games with voiced protagonists) All these games are pulls it off great! Even if they’re not RPG’s.
So yeah, this game is a lot like all those games, plus a lot of RPG aspects and a sandbox world!
One of the thing I have taught myself while working in software industry was: Look at every bug and design flaw and think whether you can turn it into a feature so you can save yourself some work. Needless to say, it’s bullshit, and game incorrectly communicating what your character is going to say is bullshit as well, no matter how much of a positive spin you’re trying to put at it.
I want to see a system similar to that of Alpha Protocol where you weren’t necessarily choosing exact sentences, yet the game communicated exactly how your reactions are going to come out.
Who’s talking about the game incorrectly communicating what you’re trying to make the character say? That has nothing to do with my point.
I’m talking about selecting an option that has a potentially negative result. No more, no less. Whether a voiced character or a silent protagonist, you can’t have a good game if there are dialog options and none of them could go wrong. There’s no mystery in that.
Imagine a Witcher game with a voiceless Geralt. Just think about it for one second and hopefully you’ll notice that it would be utter crap…
Since it’s pre-alpha i don’t think anything, but the soul of the game, is completely defined. I’ve also heard a lot of mixed opinions of the cutscenes, so they may actually change that.
It would ruin the game IMHO. This is a game that you already have a defined character and it sounds a bit like a psychological issue if the only way you can enjoy playing a game your PC character must be of same sex, race and and mute like your typical MMO character. This game is like epic book/movie where we make the choices for the character that did not pop up from somewhere(ala Skyrim) but had family, friends, connections and so on.
I think this people suffering from lack of self definition in real life might be intimidated to play as a character that has A backstory 
Though i would prefer dragon age:origins prequel type of character creation where you could define some of decisions he made leading up to main story that might have consequence in later game.
