May your every sexual arousal be followed by the runs!

May every piece of food you eat for the rest of your life be slightly overcooked!

Ahem.

So I’ve been playing quite a bit of Mass Effect lately.  (Yes, another shooter!  In addition to Bioshock!  It’s like I’ve been replaced with a Real Gamer or something!)  I’ve really been enjoying it, more than I thought I would.  I figured I’d be slogging through the actual fighting sections in order to get to the next part of the story, but I’ve actually been enjoying the fights.  There’s something very fun about taking down a Geth tank with nothing but a pistol and some telekinesis.  The AI is quite good, too–it’s nice to be able to trust that my team will actually attack the enemy, take cover, stay with me, use their talents, and just generally act competent without me needing to micromanage all of them.  The pathing is nice as well, which is something that is usually the bane of my existence in games with companion AI characters.  They stay out of my way and rarely trap me in a corner, and when they do I can order them to move.  The only problem is that my giant tank teammate has a tendency to bogart the cover when we’re all behind a big crate.  I mean, the dude is huge!  Covered in natural armor and technological armor!  He totally doesn’t need cover as much as my tech and biotic-using human woman.

The only real annoyance I have?  The stupid truck.  The Mako.  It’s bouncy, handles weird, aims weird, drives weird, and they never give you a tutorial the first time they drop you on a planet in it!  I didn’t even know I had missiles until I hit the left bumper by accident, and I discovered my thruster boosts when I was flailing around in a button-mashing frenzy hanging halfway off a cliff.  I’ve decided that it’s just extremely happy to be out of the ship, and that’s why it’s so bouncy.  “OHMIGOD, this is AWESOME!  I’m FREE!  I’m so happy to be outside!  Whee!  WHEE!  I’m gonna jump around!  I love you so much Commander Shepard I love you Iloveyou!”  It’s like a puppy.  A big puppy with a gun on top.

Really, though, it’s a game where I get to play as a female character, interact with lots of interesting characters, and kill tanks with nothing but a pistol.  Makes me feel badass, so I can’t get too cranky about the truck.

I hope they make it less bouncy in the sequel, though.

I’ve been playing Brutal Legend lately, and it’s been a blast.  I’m only maybe four hours into it, but it’s been really fun so far.  (Except for the driving.  I have never been good at driving games, so whenever I’m driving with a deadline I hand the controller over to Chris.)  I love the writing and the characters and the amount of ass-kicking I’ve been getting to do.  It’s very enjoyable, and it’s been making me think about a particular debate that recurs amongst developers.  Do you want the player to empathize with your character, or do you want the player to become your character?

It’s the latter idea that creates most of the Silent Protagonists in video games.  A lot of people think that if the main character never speaks, the player will project him or herself into the character’s world, and become the character.  Frankly?  I think this is kinda bullshit.  I never see myself as Link, I never see myself as Chell, and I don’t feel like I’m my Fable II character.  I don’t even see them as extensions of myself.  (Maybe if I got to choose some dialogue for my Fable character I’d feel differently.  Seriously, everyone wants to marry her and I can’t explain to them that she’s not ready to settle down right now, damnit!  Leave her alone!  She has a world to save!)  Link, for one thing, is depicted as having an actual personality, even if he doesn’t speak.  I like Link because he’s Link, not because he’s an extension of me.  Chell probably comes the closest to making me feel like I am the character, but that’s a factor of the game design.  Since there are no other humans in the game, and she never speaks, and the only things that speak to her are AI that don’t use her name, it’s pretty easy to start thinking, “Shit, they’re shooting at me!” rather than “Shit, they’re shooting at her!”  In Fable II, I actually feel way more connection to the NPCs in the story, because at least they have personalities!  The only thing that makes me feel connected to my character is her dog.

I tend to prefer games that feature an interesting character that I can empathize with.  Eddie Riggs is funny, badass, and kinda sweet.  I want to play the game just to see what happens to him.  Same with Beyond Good and Evil (if I can ever get past this stealth part).  I like to play as a character who interests me, who seems like a real person in some way.  I want to have a connection with the character, and I usually don’t get that with Silent Protagonists.  That doesn’t mean they can’t be part of a good game, of course, it just means I’m going to be playing the game for the game, and end up having less invested in it.  When I care about a character, I want to get them through the game unscathed because I don’t want to see them hurt.  When I don’t care about a character, I just want to get them through the game unscathed so I don’t have to repeat sections.

Silent Protagonists aren’t bad, per se, but I don’t think they do what some developers think they do.