I haven't played the game yet, so I don't think I should vote without actually playing the game. But as a concept for this game? Yeah, I think it's a dumb way to go.

I don't since I always have a helmet on and I don't really care about the story in Destiny.

Yeah, especially when you consider they had a voice in vanilla Destiny. I was really bummed when they became mute in the expansions.

Yeah it kinda sucks. I got over it in Destiny 1 though, where your character says like 3 lines total.

Ideal for me would be unvoiced dialogue options. Don't even have to carry narrative weight, just let me occasionally "say" stuff to the people who're constantly talking at me. FFXIV does that some, and while it doesn't radically change things, it's a nice touch.

It's more distracting because of the way they wrote Ghost. So much of its dialogue seems to be based on assuming a response that never comes. It's like listening to one end of a phone conversation.

@therealturk: That sounds like Half-Life and HL2, which was really stupid. Having Alyx talk and have an in-depth, emotional, potentially romantic connection to this mute man that never responds or acknowledges her was absurd.

I wish games as a whole would abandon the whole "silent protagonist" concept. It just doesn't help anything, and it never makes me feel more in tuned with the character. It just makes me not care about them. Unless, of course, they are actually a mute person, such as Crysis 2 where their vocal cords are damaged. I mean, it's cheap, but at least they put some effort into it.

Absolutely. Now that they're going hard at a story, it seems really dumb, like your character is mute and can only shake his head. Should have been voiced. Such a silly design choice, like there's no way they didn't notice. Maybe they requested a voice actor and Acti said no, lol.

I have never gotten the appeal of silent protagonists in games with any kind of focus on story. I don`t think there is a single game I think has benefited from a silent protagonist in my opinion, but there are several games I feel have suffered because of it like for example Half Life as someone mentioned above. It just seems so counterproductive and dumb.

Oh wow, so they went "South Park: Stick of Truth" with the sequel? Sounds... kind of wonderfully absurd. "Oh God, I'm dying... Guardian, come closer..." *silently stares* "You always knew how to cheer me up. I... I... love you." *stares silently* "I know." *final gasp*

Then you get a purple gun from a weapon type you never use and actively avoid. Roll credits.

Never cared before, don't care now.

This has never been an issue for me, especially in first-person games

Don't really have an issue with it, but I did notice. I sometimes feel like the character has a funny look on their face, like they have something to say, but have just decided to keep it to themselves.

I hate it. They had a voice, they had a couple of pretty good lines and even contributed to one of the only warm scenes in the otherwise painfully sterile story.

I don't understand how you make a concentrated effort to make the story better and then make sure your character can have no participation in it.

Games still pretty rad though, so I'll live.

Silent protags in FPSes sorta turn me off ever since Bioshock Infinite, though it's still primarily the norm. (Far Cry voices them too. That's about all I can recall at this point.) I can deal with it but it's a little disappointing nowadays.

Yeah, it bothers me a little (although I suspect I'll care less the more I play). There were times in the original where I quite liked the interactions between your character and your ghost — the "little light" moment springs to mind — so having no chance for that really does feel like your onscreen persona is reduced to a shrugging cipher.

I don't have a huge problem with it, but the more time goes on, the more I dislike silent protagonists. I have a character who previously spoke, I am playing as this character but I do not feel like I am roleplaying as this character, so for the love of God have him or her say something. It's getting more and more creepy with every game that does it.

...maybe I have a bigger problem with it than I thought. It's not going to stop me from playing anything though.

Destiny 2 still looks like a great game and I look forward to playing it when it comes out on October 24.

I feel like there have been multiple scenes now where my character has been about to respond to someone and the ghost says something first and the guardian looks annoyed.

Which is like.. maybe that's cute once but eventually it's just another example of mocking your own dumb bullshit is only highlighting that it is in fact kinda bullshit.

It seems a bit wrong and kinda dumb sometimes but I'm not bothered about it, so far. There have been a few moments where it's felt like it is written with player character dialogue in mind and it was either cut or not added in the end.

A bit, especially considering the mc would talk occasionally in the first game.

I think my biggest problem with it was that NPC's would be directing questions directly at you, you could see your character open his mouth, then Nolarbot would pipe up and take over the conversation before you could say anything, so it seemed like he was always cutting you off. Especially when you are suppose to be "The Guardian". It felt weird due to this. Had they not created these weird interactions, it would have been fine. I loved the story other than that though. But yeah, the non talking character was weird here.

The worst bit was the cutscene when your character visibly gets annoyed at the ghost for speaking over him. It's like, you weren't actually going to say anything anyway so don't fake it.

Yep this.

No. But I will say that I was somewhat skeptical of the entire look of Destiny when I first bought the game, and so my main Titan is an Awoken with a yellow face tattoo over his eyes and forehead plus that floppy bangs haircut over one of his eyes. I hate how he looks and honestly wish you were wearing your helmet the whole time just like you were in the first game. The less I hear from (and see of) my character the better for me.

I have a black robot man who has a visor over his eyes so it's perfect

I'm ok with them being mute when the rest of the dialogue is so painfully bad.

It's kinda weird and it doesn't feel right at all.

I don't care in the slightest. It's an MMO, on top of which your characters don't even have personal individual names. Why would I care, or expect, my character to talk when he is very obviously a non-entity blank slate?

@quarters: it worked in HL2 imo because you were supposed to fill in the blanks.

Also, was I totally wrong when I thought the PC was talking in the quick look? Or was that some other guardian from the story?

I’d be very curious to know how people would react if they didn’t assume that Blizzard-Activision/ Bungie somehow couldn’t get/couldn’t bother to get voice actors for the MC so they just didn’t make the character speak. If they believed it was an intentional choice, and perhaps had a glimpse at what the intent was there.

HL2 certainly did this very well. It put you into the story and let you interact with it. If you didn’t you may just not be very imaginative. I remember talking to the characters in Half Life.

This seems to be going for something else. The character is mute but not devoid of expression. I think that’s fine and I don’t get how Zelda gets away with no voice acting for as long as it did but one mute character who at least expresses themselves occasionally is a bad thing.

Well put.

Man, that moment when Ghaul kicks your ass off the ship and you don't even make a sound before, during, or after is really awkward.
Sure there are many more moments (some mentioned here) but at least give us a male/female grunt or scream to break up some of that silence. Thinking Destiny would be better with a speaking character though.

I thought it was weird in Destiny when my character DID speak. It just seemed jarring, like wait this is supposed to be an actual person with a personality and backstory? There's nothing else in the game to indicate any of that.

I don't like it. Your character in Destiny spoke (sometimes) and I can't see why they didn't do the same here. It makes the dialogue real weird as everyone is speaking to you and your Ghost is giving the replies. It's like you're a Japanese Yakuza boss that eats noodles in the background while his right hand handles all the business.

It is one of three things I don't like about D2 though. Everything else I absolutely love.

It's definitely not a MMO there's only 3 people allowed on a fireteam, a little higher for raids, and in some hub/social parts I see about a dozen people. Battlefield's multiplayer is more "massive online" than Destiny.

It seems lame and lazy to have a mute main character in this game. When your ghost loses power, gets kicked off the ship, and the hero reaches down "like no!!!" was hilarious when it was supposed to be a very serious and dramatic moment. The friends I asked about the moment said they laughed too. People asking you questions and your ghost answering gets annoying too.

Even if it was an MMO I don't think that's a very good excuse anymore, MMOs are doing great things with their stories and characters now.

Although taking the wind out of my complaining somewhat the one doing the best at that right now also has the player character be mostly mute with occasional dialogue choices.

@efesell: Hmm, FFXIV?

@nodima: Maybe you shouldn't have made your character look, uh, the way you did?

@zevvion: It's worse than the noodle eating boss. The noodle eating boss is too important to talk to underlings. Your character in Destiny 2 at several times goes to reply before getting cut off by his Ghost, only for him to not say anything. Not even "Hey, let me answer ffs". Nothing. When you get pushed off the ship at the start - it's so lacking of any emotion because your character isn't making any noise at all. And he spoke in Destiny 1. It's the same dude!

You grunt throughout the game as you take hits and fall and get bumped, so you have a voice, but they just never use it. And it makes you look like a lackey instead of this powerful Guardian who is going to save the universe.

Yeah especially since every NPC IS SO LONG WINDED.

It's kind of a bummer. I always liked the banter between the Ghost and my character in the first Destiny. There was just enough to give a bit of personality without being annoying or getting the way of the roleplaying elements of the game.

I like all the writing in the new game, probably even more than the general consensus, but I miss the stuff like my hunter calling the Ghost "little light" and stuff like that. I also find it odd that there is a lot of banter-type situations and back and forth situations where I don't have that happen and the Ghost just talks to no one. I guess they feel like everyone else talks so much and quips so much that it's not important, but I still miss it and think that it's a net loss and makes the story elements feel a little less impactful, imo.