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« on: January 23, 2010, 05:27:48 PM »
Time after time creative minds at Nintendo have explained that Mario is a silent protagonist so as to allow the player to take up the role of the character and use his or her imagination to create the personality, thus immersing the player into the imaginative world. I've never quite agreed with this notion; wouldn't the existence of a main character destroy the immersion? Not everyone can relate to a short, fat, hairy man, so why not just play an adventure game as your Mii? I feel that two relatively recent Mario releases, Super Paper Mario and Bowser's Inside Story, have especially highlighted the hypocrisy of the silent protagonist.
In Super Paper Mario, you start off as Mario who mostly remains silent in the game as usual. So when you later unlock Peach and Bowser and play as them, the consistent thing to do to keep the player immersed within the game's universe would be to have them become silent protagonists as well. On the contrary, the game developers allow Peach and Bowser to maintain their voices. Does your immersion in the game honestly shatter when Peach or Bowser open their mouths and speak a few lines of dialogue? Same thing in Bowser's Inside Story. When you switch to Bowser, the Koopa king continues to boast, give threats, etc. You cannot convince me that the game's world would have been more immersive without that characterization!
Do you find that giving playable non-Mario characters a voice destroys immersion? If not, doesn't this throw a monkey wrench, or at least complicate, the philosophy behind the silent protagonist?
On a slightly related note, consider the Mii. The Mii, what is quite literally the empty vessel for the player, is given a voice in Mario Kart Wii. I hate my Mii's voice! When I play as my Mii, I cannot help but think, "Oh yeah, that's not really me playing. That's just my Mii." Doesn't this vocal hypocrisy just drive you mad?!