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Nuvendil on 01 February 2015
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curl-6 said:
Nuvendil said:
curl-6 said:
Nuvendil said:

Now if you give me a full blown character and have him/her silent, I find that extremely annoying. See Samus in the Prime trilogy; she went from being a well developed character from previous games (and Fusion and which came out at the same bloody time) to being a pair of mechanical trousers. That was lame, especially in the first two which were text based anyway.  They couldn't even be bothered to give her any freaking text?!

The point of Samus's silence in the Prime trilogy was the same as the behind-the-visor perspective; to fully immerse the player. You are Samus, so if she spoke for you, the effect would be ruined.

That may be the reason, but I don't buy it.  The cutscenes are third person so the behind the visor perspective doesn't fly as a good reason.  And we are playing as Samus, a character with a personality, not some new person who we don't know and can put ourselves into their shoes. 

Samus's personality was never really established up to that point; she was effectively a blank slate for the player to project themselves onto. We knew she was a feared bounty hunter, but not much more than that. And that was a good thing, because once they did give her a voice and personality in Other M, they turned her into a mopey wet blanket with daddy issues, somebody I didn't WANT to play as.

Bad writing is not a reason to reject the idea of characters getting development.  Other M is a case of bad game development, period, end of story.  It is not by any means a demonstration of the disadvantages of voice acting.  If they had not given the writing over to an incompetent, then it would have been fine. 

 

ANd Samus had been talking since at least Super Metroid, if not earlier, and she was talking in Fusion when Prime was released.  She had a personality and had been established as a speaking character.  Making her mute was unwise.  Especially when Retro clearly had the comepetence enough in writing to give her some flavor text at least.