A senior developer from Bethesda has shared the reasoning behind the silent protagonist in Starfield. This insight comes after the studio confirmed a year ago that the main character in Starfield won't have a voice.
In the past, Bethesda's big role-playing games featured characters who didn't speak. But this changed with Fallout 4 in 2015, where the main character had a voice. While this choice divided fans, lead designer Emil Pagliarulo explained that giving a voice to the main character in Fallout 4 aimed to tell a more emotional story than a silent character could convey.
Fast forward eight years, Pagliarulo is now explaining why Bethesda decided to return to a silent protagonist for Starfield. In an interview with Polygon, he called this change "really freeing." He expanded on this by revealing that Starfield has more than 200,000 lines of spoken dialogue. Given the huge amount of dialogue, recording the main character's voice on top of that would have been too much.
Interestingly, Bethesda didn't initially plan to have a silent protagonist in Starfield. Initially, they wanted to follow the Fallout 4 model, even hiring a voice actor and doing some recording before changing their minds. Because Starfield lets players create various types of characters, keeping the main character voiceless feels more immersive, according to Pagliarulo.
When asked if the player feedback against Fallout 4's voiced protagonist influenced the decision for Starfield, Pagliarulo admitted it played a role. However, he emphasized that the choice for a silent protagonist came after exploring all options. He also acknowledged that Fallout 4's dialogue system had flaws. Players often chose a response only to hear something entirely different from their character. This discrepancy between selection and response led players to skip the voiced lines altogether, making the effort to record them feel less important.
In the end, all these factors led Bethesda to go with a silent protagonist for their upcoming AAA RPG, Starfield. While it's uncertain how fans will react, this decision aligns with the game's focus on player choice and role-playing.
