Bethesda’s Starfield is just a few days away from its release and not a day goes by when the game is not talked about. The upcoming game promises an extraordinary gaming experience to the players and has a silent main protagonist, which was confirmed more than a year ago. Now, a senior developer from Bethesda has addressed the why behind it and explained the decision.
Some of the AAA titles from Bethesda in the previous years had silent characters as protagonists and the first characters that had a voice came in 2015 with Fallout 4. Lead game designer Emil Pagliarulo explained that the decision to give the protagonist was taken as they wanted to give an emotional story that what a silent protagonist will convey.
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Bethesda Designer Explains Reason Behind the Silent Protagonist in Starfield
In an interview with Polygon, Designer Emil Pagliarulo found himself explaining why they decided to reverse their decision of a voiced character in Starfield. He said that this was a very freeing decision as the game already has more than 200 thousand lines of spoken language and to record the protagonist’s voice on top of that would not have been possible.
He added that Bethesda had no plans for a silent main character in the game but they wanted to go on the path of Fallout 4 and even hired a voice actor, did a few recording sessions and eventually dropped the idea. He also said that as Starfield lets players customize their characters, the best way to protagonist have an impact was to leave voiceless.
A Flawed Dialogue System Led to a Silent Main Character
Emil Pagliarulo said that the feedback of players for Fallout 4‘s voiced character influenced this decision in a way. He said it was ultimately the developer’s decision to not take this route as they had considered all alternative ways.
He admitted that the dialogue system in Fallout 4 was flawed and players usually chose to hear responses that were entirely different from their character and this led to players skipping their character’s voiced lines if this had happened in Starfield after so putting in so much effort, it’d have made it all worthless.
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All of these reasons ultimately led to Bethesda‘s skipping a voiced main character and deciding to go with a silent one. It’s still unknown how players react to this decision, it shows how Bethesda prioritized player choice and role-playing. Starfield will release on September 6 for Xbox Series S|X and PC.
Source: Gamerant
