Mute character? Yay or nay?

[Dark_Metamorphosis]

Would love to hear what your thoughts are upon a character that starts off as mute (due to circumstances in the game) but slowly opens up, mainly because of the trust and comfort that she recieves from one of my other characters. Is this going out on deep water?, and do you think that something like this would work?

What do you think would be the most important part to try and achieve in order to counter the fact that she's mute for a duration of the game? Would you find it boring, or would it actually be amazing once she speaks her very first word?

Inputs about this?

 

[MisterTorgue]

It depends on what kind of story you are going for and what you do in the game.

by default in my rpg (fantasy (FF6style)) by default my character talks very little, but the main (female) character does talk a fair bit.

Give us a bit of background on your game and what you are looking to achieve and we could give you a better insight

 

[Commotion]

I like mute characters in fact my current game has one so I say yea on it

and what I do for the fact of her being mute is I use bust expressions and sounds like you would if someone was mad,sad etc.

 

[Dark_Metamorphosis]

It depends on what kind of story you are going for and what you do in the game.

by default in my rpg (fantasy (FF6style)) by default my character talks very little, but the main (female) character does talk a fair bit.

Give us a bit of background on your game and what you are looking to achieve and we could give you a better insight

My game is set in a fantasy world, and touching upon a psychological aspect.

What you do in game following the plot point is in a summary that you are an Aspeian knight named Vincent Feracordis, that has a defect in his vital system (Vital system is the foundation of an individual that determines who they are, and what feauters they have, both in appearance and abilities.) The defect enables him to experience whispers and visions in his mind, from events that is not part of his own life. As amazing it is to have such a gift, the defect has more or less taken over his life and the fact that he's different has brought him a lot of pain. During the game it will be the first time he steps out on a new continent, and will experience life outside his kingdom for the first time and most of the game revolves around his wish to find the reason behind his defect, and who he is. There's of course another major plot that ties all this together.

I'm not sure what I can answer on what I want to achieve more than, that she has gone through a disturbing and frightful event that has brought her into shock, and she has put a wall around her. (You can take Newt from Aliens as an example similar to what I have in mind.)

 

[MisterTorgue]

To me that sounds really good, it gives you an in depth character development, and you could work on that so well!

Not sure what else to say but definitely go ahead with it!

 

[captainproton]

If you have a good story reason for him not talking in the early game, and have other characters address it for those players who might not pick up on it (Nurse, in early cutscene: "the poor thing is so traumatized...", etc) or have the character himself address it in some sort of narrative monologue in the beginning, then I say go for it.

I have played games like Dragon Quest IX where your entire party is non-speaking, except for the npc fairy who accompanies you, and this gives the player the opportunity to imagine for themselves how the characters react and interact. But then the Golden Sun games (enjoyable as they are) have a silent main protagonist with a party of speaking allies. It's a little odd and kind of takes you out of the game.

If, however, you address the character's silence by saying more than "He's just the quiet type" and actually explore that aspect of his personality, then it feels more real and natural.

 

[Doobles]

Depends on what you mean by mute.  If by mute you mean the character doesn't have their own dialogue or anything, like in Jade Cocoon or Chocobo's Dungeon (only 2 I could think of off the top of my head) then that would be interesting, as in those 2 games it is done well.  If you mean shy, then I'd be careful with it, as your character can come off as having very little personality.  If you mean mute, like the character is literally unable to speak until a certain point of the game, that could be interesting too.  With both shyness and "muteness" though, you'll need to connect the character's true personality and thoughts to the audience in some way, even when it is not clear to other characters in the game.  Truth be told, I've only experienced characters like the one I think you're describing as secondary characters, where they do add a lot, but it is difficult to connect with them as a main character as they are so reserved through most of the game.

 

[SOC]

I think it's a great idea if you're new to making games. Golden Sun had mutes and they were amazing. Chrono Trigger, ect., it's a lot easier to design a game with mutes and even easier to have them relate to your target audience.

 

[captainproton]

I think it's a great idea if you're new to making games. Golden Sun had mutes and they were amazing. Chrono Trigger, ect., it's a lot easier to design a game with mutes and even easier to have them relate to your target audience.

No, they had lead characters who just didn't say anything. They weren't afflicted with mutism, they just didn't have any dialogue. In Golden Sun Dark Dawn, the lead character could choose smiley face responses, but that was it. And yet, these blank characters are pushed through dialogue events as if they were making decisions and reacting, with no evidence of this except for the dialogue of the other characters.

It would be different if you were presented with simple response choices with a dialogue tree. Then it feels like the player is in the character's shoes, controlling the flow of events with their decisions.

If you're going to have a character who is prohibited from speaking by some condition, and you're not going to give the player response options to direct dialogue, then at least use things like face emosets and balloons to indicate the mute character's responses to dialogue and events, and hint at a personality.

 

[Dark_Metamorphosis]

If you have a good story reason for him not talking in the early game, and have other characters address it for those players who might not pick up on it (Nurse, in early cutscene: "the poor thing is so traumatized...", etc) or have the character himself address it in some sort of narrative monologue in the beginning, then I say go for it.

I have played games like Dragon Quest IX where your entire party is non-speaking, except for the npc fairy who accompanies you, and this gives the player the opportunity to imagine for themselves how the characters react and interact. But then the Golden Sun games (enjoyable as they are) have a silent main protagonist with a party of speaking allies. It's a little odd and kind of takes you out of the game.

If, however, you address the character's silence by saying more than "He's just the quiet type" and actually explore that aspect of his personality, then it feels more real and natural.

It sort of ties into the the story arc ye, you meet the character (one of the main characters sister) around 1-2 hours into the game and the event that has left her traumatized is tied into what's going on in the world and the plot around this point. The character in question will not be able to speak and will mostly have facesets during a '...' sort of dialouge, and different sprites. It will be adressed by the two other main characters when they realize that she's acting "strange" and can't talk (The older sister has been disconnected from her family for some time, but last time they met she was able to speak). It will also be presented in a specific event, due to my protagonists special gift. She will later on open up and finally leave her trauma and slowly bounce back to where she will be able to speak and be more like her usual self. The bit that I might find a bit tricky is to establish an aspect of her personality during the time she's traumatized, even though she will still have 'symptoms' left after she starts to open up again, as well.

Depends on what you mean by mute.  If by mute you mean the character doesn't have their own dialogue or anything, like in Jade Cocoon or Chocobo's Dungeon (only 2 I could think of off the top of my head) then that would be interesting, as in those 2 games it is done well.  If you mean shy, then I'd be careful with it, as your character can come off as having very little personality.  If you mean mute, like the character is literally unable to speak until a certain point of the game, that could be interesting too.  With both shyness and "muteness" though, you'll need to connect the character's true personality and thoughts to the audience in some way, even when it is not clear to other characters in the game.  Truth be told, I've only experienced characters like the one I think you're describing as secondary characters, where they do add a lot, but it is difficult to connect with them as a main character as they are so reserved through most of the game.

I mean mute as in the character is unable to speak until a certain breakpoint of the game (where she slowly starts to recover from her trauma due to a bond with one of my other characters). Yeah that's one issue that could be a bit tricky, mainly that it might be hard to connect with her (Even though you can have sympathy in what she has gone through), but if the period of her being mute isn't too outstretched I guess it could work better, and even showing the player a bit more in-depth about her personality in some other means, that the other charcaters of the game doesn't really know about. Do you have any suggestions on how that could be done?

Thanks all of you for sharing your thoughts about this

 

[Ms Littlefish]

I quite like the idea and if done right it would have fairly significant impact, I'm sure. The period of time in which she is mute would require a different means of connecting her feelings and thoughts to the audience. So you would probably need a pretty expansive emotion set . You could write her making "vocal sounds" at times as if desperately wanting or trying to speak, maybe even share her inner thoughts at times, but most importantly she is going to have to react with actions alone in scenes and they will have to convey her thoughts and what would the emotions behind her would-be speech. Basically her lack of speech does not mean an absence from the dialogue.

 

[whitesphere]

This sounds like an interesting approach for a character style I don't generally like.  Note that I REALLY don't like the "Silent Protagonist" normally, as in Chrono Trigger, where the protagonist never really speaks.

But, for this character, there's a really good reason for her muteness. 

As a player, though the only way I could really identify with her would be if I could see she actually has feelings/etc.  So, from my perspective, you'd need a wide range of emotional facesets for her and a fairly large number of cutscenes where she acts out her feelings.  I'd also add in a lot of non-verbal voiceovers, like sighs, crying, laughing (the latter as she starts opening up), etc.

If a character were a mute in a movie or in real life, their body language and face expressions could still convey their feelings (see: mimes).  In an RPG Maker game, we're a lot more limited in how much of that we can show in a, say, 48x32 sprite and facesets, so it takes a lot of extra effort to show a character's personality if they don't say anything.

 

[reno385]

I love the idea of this (and it's interesting you bring up Newt because I immediately thought of her when I read the OP, and I liked her character as well).

You just need to have a way for her to still be an actual character in the meantime, but just remember actions speak louder than words. So there are still a bunch of ways for her to have a personality- things about her like staying closer to people/the person she likes, avoiding people she doesn't, interacting with the environment (animals, say), wandering off to play while you're in a town. I think with a little creativity she has potential to be a very moving character.