Dumb protagonists in games! What a ignore?

Hello everyone, users and guests Stopgame.ru, my name is Gleb, and I want to talk to you today on an interesting one, as it seems to me the topic.

Dumb protagonists in video games. Why are some main characters not say? And how does this affect the game? I will be glad if you read what I have to write about this.

Let’s immediately define one important point with you. The dumb main character is not good, and not bad in itself. This is a concrete creative course of developers, which can be both successful and not very, and generally bad, and why they did this at all?

According to the rules of induction, we will consider examples of games with dumb prostagonists, try to reasonably answer the question of why the characters are there, and we can highlight the general principles by which such characters are introduced into the game. Of all this, we will conclude in what cases such protagonists work for the game, and in what cases against it.

“Gleb, but how can you judge the game design at all? Who are you finally? Where do you know how the developers think? You can fucking noob? Maybe a fucking fufel finally … some kind of disabled person?»May reasonably note a random reader.

Of course, I cannot claim the truth in the last instance, the games were never developed by me, so this article is always open for discussion. Nevertheless, I believe that I understand something in Gamdev and I will try to justify my position in analysis.

Half-Life. Character Development is cheap and cheerful.

– I’m Alex Vincess. My father worked with you in Black Mess. Although I’m sure you don’t remember me.
– .
– Hmm, taciturn.

I can swear with my left hand, that if you would be asked about games in which the main characters did not speak, many would remember the example of Gordon Freeman from the Half-Life series of games.

Indeed, Gordon Freeman is a classic and exemplary example of such a character. Throughout the series of games, old Gordon overcomes all the hardships and hardships of life in proud silence. Not a word breaks out of his lips, during fights and shootings, endless switching of levers, sticking and blowing of plugs, random and ordered teleports, parkour and other game events.

(By the way, silent protagonists, there were also the main characters of the addons to the first part, Barney Kalhaun and Adrian Shepard. The first-he learned to talk to Sicvel, the second-no longer appeared in the plot)

Why Valve – the developers of the game, decided to make Gordon so laconic? Consider this question with you.

Let us imagine that you need to make a really large-scale AAA game, which is destined to make a significant breakthrough in the game industry, in 1998, having the most limited resources, while not having a rich experience in the fact that we call the Chararacter Development in Russian villages. (Half-Life-was the first game Valve)

Wake up and sing Mr. Freeman. Wake up … and sing.

At the same time, more plot-oriented action than Half-Life, in those days there was no at all from the word at all.

The team had to correctly distribute efforts. Valve managed to create a charismatic image of the main character. You can argue with me now, of course, they say: “Gleb, there is nothing like that in Gordon, it is customary to praise it because it is Half-Life, and it is customary to praise it”

Here I will be forced to disagree with you. Gordon is really charismatic, he has a memorable appearance, prescribed the background, but the most important thing is that he can’t take away from him and it seems to be the reason for his silence – this is Gordon’s filigree organic.

Half Life despite the fact that he has a dumb protagonist – this is a very oriented game game. Without Gordon Freeman, Half-Life-does not exist. The world of this game itself is designed around the main character, many events are taking place around it, it performs a huge number of different actions through which it is revealed. He does not need to talk to us. The script of these games speaks for him, through the environment into which Freeman is organically inscribed. It was G-Man who chose him, it was on him that the resistance has high hopes, it was he who was in the center of the incident with the crystal. All this is not because the scriptwriter was not a good to do, and not because the marketers needed to close the quota on people with glasses, so that people with glasses around the world would not be offended, but because it should be so.

And this works wonderful-this is what, including, made Half-Life a great and breakthrough game. The chatter of the protagonist pulled over the development resources, reducing these to work out the world. She would also prevent this very world to perceive, with the conditions that we will be frank, Freeman does not fall in a situation where he really needs to say something.

A silent protagonist can be introduced if he is organically inscribed in the world of the game (ideally, he should be the plot, foundedly dumb, well, such a disease in a person, but I do not know such games). To make a dumb character – to pay more attention to the world and script, authentically this character, entering this world and script – this is cool. A little self -irony will not hurt yet – it’s just cool at all. Academically call this principle “The principle of organic immersion”

A few more examples of games in which this principle is more or less successfully implemented:

Bioshok 1.2, Doom, Portal, Shadow of the Colossus.

P.S. And remember the mind of Freemen? Funny machine with a voice acting of Freeman’s thoughts during the passage of the first part. Great idea multiplied by excellent implementation. Stopgame even made a transfer to this business. Golden were times.

Dragon Age. Mute heroes in large -scale RPG

– Hey handsome, tell me your name, and I will tell you what to observe the decency.
– [Suppose a welcome replica]
– So, and in wild lands you can say hello as appropriate! I’m calling Morrigan.

“Well, what to talk about halva? Gleb – Water Elemental! What else can you tell? There are so many more games of different, with dumb protagonists! Here my friend Anton loves to play in RPG. And you are talking about RPG, right at all, at all, he didn’t say anything. What are you, fucked up? Can you break your hand?”

Indeed, my dear reader. In the RPG genre, especially in the back of classic, party RPG, dumb main characters are the topic of a separate, complicated conversation. But this is a conversation, in the framework of this topic, probably the most interesting, since dumb characters in large -scale RPG, as a rule, work according to a very interesting principle.

Again, the origins of this problem are more rested on technical implementation than in a creative idea. The more variable and deeper, the more difficult and more expensive to voice the main character in it, although, often, large developers’ campaigns allow themselves such a luxury. At the same time, you probably noticed that RPG with the voice acting of a protagonist is more likely to lag behind the level of study of dialogs and the depth of the role system, from RPG this voice acting without having.

When your main character has the opportunity, depending on the choice of the player, in the same situation, there are many replicas, each of which, quite likely, has a different emotional color, and therefore requires a variety of intonation, presentation and, in general, speech. It will be difficult for you to voice the whole set of these options qualitatively. I am still silent, about the fact that your character may not be a man at all, but a courtesy, an elf, an orc, or some other, Furi Lis, or Darth Vader. So we get the “yes-no-sarcasm” system, simplifying the dialogs, after them simplifying the role component, but with voice acting.

That is why, those developers who want to leave a complex and deep role system, and paint dialogs, as a rule, choose an option without voice acting the main character. And this option works well.

This situation is very well traced on the example of the Dragon Age series. This is a long-suffering RPG-IGR series, in which everything came down, just at the moment when the main character spoke there. Origin, without exaggeration, became a breakthrough party RPG. Tactically and reverently referred to the golden times of the silent RPG, which were closer to books than to the games, she, neither less, was able to truly refresh the genre and attract new players who were not born into the lights during those very hardy RPGs. And I never saw that someone would criticize this game for not saying the main character there. She was criticized for a lot, because it is not difficult to work hard, for the fact that not enough casual. But the silent character in this game did not bother anyone.

I will insert a battle with a dragon, simply because, the battle with the dragon is cool, but in Origins they were even cooler, of course.

The following “speaking” games of the series, the success of Origin did not repeat, in the end they went out at all there. Well? We are waiting for the Dragon Age IV, which we were “shown” on Gamescom.

The subsequent games of the series would be a worthy continuation of Origins if the team had not been engaged in voice acting, without simplifying the dialogs for it? The question is controversial, and maybe we will discuss the fate of the games of the Dragon Age series, another time. But definitely accurately – this is the case when the voice acting of the protagonist did not do better.

In fact, dumb protagonists work in Dragon Age, as in any other RPG, thanks to yours, Anton, Psychology.

We conclude a certain agreement with the game, it gives us a colossal number of options for the development of events, the depth of wagering and good dialogs, and we forgive her the dumbness of our hero.

In the next dialogue, when we again have to choose a replica, without hearing a word from the lips of our character. Somewhere, at the level of the subconscious, we know for sure that in fact, in the world of the game, the character is not worth the idol by sending telepathic calls to the heads of those to whom he addresses. We are immersed in the illusion that the game created for us. In fact, the character pronounces his replica, we can understand this by building this replica itself, which has an targeted nature, and by reaction to this very replica of others, which react exactly as they could react only by hearing what our main character said.

A silent protagonist can be introduced by immersing a player into a gracious illusion, making such a good and worked out dialogue system, and so build the world around the main character that the player will accept a silent protagonist as a speaker. In this case, the speaking protagonist can even harm the game. We will call this principle the “principle of the worked out dialogue system” academically

As you understand, mainly this principle is realized just in RPG, since the genre is no more demanding on dialogues than this one does not exist, due to the fact that the dialogs in RPG are not separated, from the depth of wagging and the level of variability, which is the basis of the genre in principle.

Examples of games in which this principle is implemented: the TES series, the Kotor series, the Fallout series.

Gris. And so that no scum of her chatter, distracted you from contemplating fractal likeness and the unity of creature.

In my knowledge, I have https://nonukcasinosites.co.uk/international-betting-sites/ been so full that I seem to have been living on trillions and trillions of planets such as this land for a hundred trillions of millions of years.

“But, Gleb” – Anton will turn to me again – “maybe there are games that do not need to say anything, simply because they don’t need it, they are not about that.”

You’re right, my dear friend. There really is a whole layer of games that turn more to your contemplation. They have a very rich and filled visual and through it immerse you in a bewitching game world.

Here is a lovely and very aesthetic GRIS, for example. The heroine does not have to speak with us or the world. The game is revealed through bright visual images, calling to your feeling of beauty. Pray, get distracted from constant noise of everyday life, stay in silence and rest. Games like GRIS are close to painting like no other types of games. It would be strange if the picture, in the picture gallery, spoke, wasn’t it?

What a beauty, Lyapota

A silent protagonist can be introduced if the game builds his communication with the player through the aesthetics, based on the feeling of the beautiful, immerses the beauty of visual images in the world that should be contemplated in silence. Academically we will call this “principle of high aesthetics”

We will find the implementation of this principle in Rain (PS3), Far: Lone Sails, Jorney.

And another small addition

Some teams of developers who work in the field of category “B”, “C” and further, according to the alphabet, are not able to voice their main characters, for the simple reason that they simply have no resources for this.

True, over time, even the smallest games developers find a way to voice their main characters, and sometimes it comes out very well.

I will not give any specific examples-this is a whole layer of games from Steam for two hundred hundred rubles, often horror.

You can introduce a dumb protagonist if you simply have no opportunity to voice it, and you want to make a game – then I want. Academically we will call this principle simply: “The principle of lack of opportunities”

Intermediate result

And that we identified four principles of entering the dumb protagonists into our games

In cases where the developers follow these principles, the dumb main characters work efficiently, do not spoil the games and in short – it’s just good, well done, well done.

“Gleb, I read, read, but the article does not think to end! You are a fucking water! I’m not Ivanushka, your fairy tales to listen! Let’s already say in which cases the dumb protagonists do not work and the results are already summarized.”

This minute, I will try not to delay.

Far Cry 5. When your main character is cardboard

– So, the assistant, put your hand on Joseph’s word, renounce your deeds and recognize sins. Say “Yes”
– .
– Just one word

Far Cry5, yes, I just say yes. Don’t think anything so bad, Far Cry5 is a great game in general. Fan Cooperative, excellent types of Montana, interesting sectarian setting, firing impact, cool driving, a variety of game mechanics, many charismatic characters … The main character is not one of them.“Damn the main character Far Cry5, he is shorter, how to explain to you?” – with a heavy sigh, I lament.

The main character of this game makes me very sad, in short, by brow. Firstly, there is absolutely no charisma in it-it’s just an average American Rednek, it’s hard to imagine a more gray image. Secondly, he does not even have a name, I was sophisticated by the “Assistant” appeal by the middle of the game. Third, it is dumb – and this is stupid.

The anniversaries did not have a single worthy reason to make the main character of this game dumb. Organicity? What is there. Gordon was at least called by name. There are several situations in the game in which the character was needed to give a voice. The script is not written taking into account the nonsense of the protagonist, he ignores this moment completely.

Wabled dialogs? The depth of the role system? Occent! More or less large-scale direct dialogs in this game are issued only by antagonists, and the ending can be influenced by one solution right at the end.

Aesthetic narrative? Well, Montana, of course, is a beautiful state, but not so much so that through its visual images to conduct a narrative, the narrative in this game is classically evental.

There may be a lack of resources? Yes, two hundred times. This is the flagship project Ubisoft, and the fact that there you can create several characters, that the type adds difficulties in voice acting. But for some reason, for example, the Volition is a smallest office with a caliber than Ubisoft, back in 2011, they released Saints Row The Third, where there was also a wide editor of the character, with the choice of gender. And for each gender there were three male, and three female voices, as well as a rofal zombie-head and all this with full-fledged intra-game dialogues of an acceptable level.

It seems we began to forget who the real saints are.

“But what are Ubisoft, there are excuses for entering just such a main character?»Ask me with curiosity.

It seems to me that the matter is in a banal unwillingness to work out this aspect of the game, with the simultaneous desire not to spend the development resources either on the voice acting of the protagonist, or on the script of a dumb protagonist. But usually such a solution is associated with another factor.

A character factor – an empty vessel, which in itself is generally no. The player himself must fill him with meanings and think up his character, motivation, in short, almost like “have fun of yourself” in the sandboxes, only “make the character yourself”

Like, this approach has a very good effect on immersion, you are so strongly and inevitably attached to the character, as if you are living his life. The main character does not have his own thoughts, aspirations, motives – these are your thoughts, your aspirations, your motives. Yes, it sounds awesome, if you do not take into account one small thing – games, damn it, have a plot.

Your hero will still act as he was written by the scriptwriters – this is not a case of variable, deep roles, where this approach is justified, because your character is your wagging, this is you. And this little thing, in fact, destroys this whole story with immersion in the root.

Instead of immersing in the game-it is on the contrary, he doesn’t tear off from immersion, because it begins to seem that your hero is a mental disabled person, and to some extent this is so. He can be silent in a rag, when some situation in the plot desperately requires his reaction, or his silence looks stupid, because if something similar happened to the character-which the developers did not deprive his individuality, he would certainly react at least somehow. The game itself often does not explain such a weakness in any way, even without referring to it. As if everything should be.

A silent protagonist should not be introduced if you find yourself in a situation that the only excuse for entering such a character into the game (in addition to your laziness) is the desire to make the player penetrate your character, put himself in his place and thus begins this character for him. “The principle of the character is an empty vessel” as I express, academically.

And this does not work at all, such characters, ceteris paribus, will never catch up with the level of experience for them, in the level of emotional involvement of the player in the game process, the characters of the speakers and fully formed.

Examples of games in which this principle is implemented that, however, does not make them bad, but adds a spoon of tar to the gameplay: Dishonored, GTAIII, Metro2033, Dead Space.

We summarize

There are many examples of a successful entry of a silent protagonist in the gaming industry, there are characters who became cult as Gordon Freeman, or Hero of Ferlden. Do not underestimate these characters. The dumb hero does not harm your game if he is inscribed in it for a good reason. But with this it is worth being more careful. Empty pieces of plastic, instead of the main characters, will not add points to your game, neither in terms of the plot, nor in terms of immersion, and the voices of some characters may decisively miss.

I am very grateful to everyone who read this long opus and was with me this time, I hope you read this article not without pleasure.

Thank you for your attention!

Half-Life

Dragon Age: Origins

Far Cry 5

The best comments

Hah. Well, firstly, Claude was in the examples of the character-an empty vessel.
And secondly, he would not say anything)

Thank you very much for the review. I am very pleased that you devoted so much time and attention to my article and dismantled my mistakes.

Yes, I admit honestly, I don’t speak Russian in Russian – there is no excuse for this, I am a native speaker of this language, but I will try to write better.
I made some of the listed mistakes on purpose – it was an artistic course, because I wanted to create such an image of the author, to give the article an artistic form, so I do not want to correct them, they stood the plan, most often emotional. But most of the tips I will use and will correct. I have trouble with punctuation, it always seems that I use a lot of unions and introductory words, which is why I can’t wean a lot, a lot of commas. Now I will double -check again and figure out punctuation marks.

As for the character of the characters in Dragon Age, I said just about what you write. The game creates such an illusion that we do not have questions for the weakness of our character, since we know what he says, and technically – this is so. But this does not cancel the fact that in fact – it is dumb. Game mechanics are so arranged, we do not hear his voices, he does not voiced his remarks and Pillars of Eternity also applies to this – I meant under a nepiye and contrasted the next Games of the De series, where the main characters spoke with voice acting.

A good topic, I will add from myself that you do not need to voice when:

a) This is the first -person RPG (Fallout, Skyrim)
b) The breeds want the player to speak for the hero (Dark Souls)
c) the image of the hero is blurred for creating different theories (Half-Life, The Stanley Parable)

The topic is not new, but not bad is affected. It is strange that there are so many advantages and more than one commentary. Of course the sign of positive is good, but there are some shortcomings. A few examples below:

Characters there such And, So in the way, we can highlight the general principles by which in Gamdev Such characters

Certainly, I I can not claim the truth in the last instance, games I never developed, so my The article is always open for discussion. Nevertheless, I I think that I I mean something in Gamdev and I I will try to justify my position when analyzing.

Replicas, which is targeted, and by reaction to this very replica others who react exactly as they could react only by hearing replica Our hero.

– Avoid the close arrangement of the same words and their derivatives.

3) a lot of charismatic characters … The main character is not one of them. – Maybe it is better: “But the main character is not one of them”.

4) Now probable errors (I also have punctuation signs limping)

– Why with a capital letter?

– Probably it will be better “without even referring to her.“

My personal nit -picking:

And I never saw that someone would criticize this game for not saying the main character there.

– Technically, he says. I did not fully understand what was meant. After all, in Pillars of Eternity, the character does not say, but he has text replicas.

In fact, dumb protagonists work in Dragon Age, as in any other RPG, thanks to yours, Anton, Psychology.

-I did not immediately enter, and then I remembered that this name flickered somewhere in the beginning and as it were, a conversation was being conducted.

– Strange self -irony, given your physical, not mental illness.

Although people with disabilities.

The topic is not new, even on Stopgame there was a similar video, but I have something to tell you about this, since I myself am a person about this category of people.

Instead of immersing in the game-it is on the contrary, he doesn’t tear off from immersion, because it begins to seem that your hero is a mental disabled person, and to some extent this is so.

A couple of thoughts about yes 2:
-Firstly, this is not the talk of GG broke a series (a global change in stylistics, a breakdown of mechanics, the total fillery of the 2nd part, the spit on the canon of the 1st part and, in particular, “awakening”, etc.D.)
-Secondly-regarding the speaker of the GG in the 2nd part, the implementation was very much failed. The very idea to voice IP (game character) – OK;make the nature of the GG change from the choice of replicas – wonderful!
But all the remarks are not just very different in mood, they are also played almost caricatured: a kind replica – let it speak gently and on exhalation, a stinging replica – let it be puffed and grimaced, an evil remark – let every word puffs through the teeth straight through the teeth.
Because of this, when you choose different remarks in one dialogue, it seems that GG has a personality extension.

I also wrote about the controversy of the statement: “The voice acting ruined the DA series”. This requires a separate consideration, DA2 and without the voice acting of the main character had many different problems, from the imperfection of game mechanics, to not very successful plot solutions. I am sure that the voice acting alone did not become the decisive factor with which the series has stepped out of the wrong way, but this is the topic of a completely different conversation, which, perhaps, I have to discuss in one of my future blogs, since the theme of the Dragon Age series is a very interesting topic. Surely DA2 could be a much better game of the DA series, first of all, even if the main character was voiced, but many other aspects would have pulled it out.

But the fact is that the voice acting has become one of these fatal factors, and the point is not only that it is not technically performed perfectly. As I wrote, the voice acting of the main character did not benefit the game – this is at least if I did not harm her. Because for the voice acting inevitably I had to simplify the dialogs, since the process of creating the game would be much more time -consuming, and therefore would become a sheepskin that does not stand up.
RPG with this problem, in modern realities, do not know how to cope. With the decision to voice the main character, we will inevitably have to simplify the dialogs and we get the “Yes-Net-Sarcasm” system with rare interspersed “yes-no-sarcasm-love” and a rare opportunity to ask more about the situation of two, three options.
In Origins, and similar “old” RPGs, each dialogue was a multi -level wig, where in one conversation, thoroughly and consistently building it, you could find out about the situation, and the characters to reveal, and show completely different emotions, and even to raise, or lower fateful decisions, and decisions fateful decisions. And all this was woven into the plot much better and smelter or something, which is strictly “anger-a-free-irony-Bezing-Choose” the Origin did not achieve such successes in the dialogs, if the main character in it is voiced.
This is my opinion that I tried to reflect in the article.

I liked the article as a whole. Although it seemed to me that there are too many privateations in the “principles”. Когда у разработчиков есть ресурсы, когда у разработчиков нет ресурсов… Вообще, например, не рассмотрен случай, когда герой говорит какой-нибудь белибердой, а субтитрами уже пишется, что имелось ввиду.

I would personally reduce the principles to two:
1. The not -voiced protagonist works when he does not say anything in the plot – either because there is dumb, or because there is nothing to say (Starcraft), or because there is no one to talk to (doom).
2. The not-voiced protagonist works when the absence of voice acting is inscribed in the gameplay-there is no voice acting at all (many old RPGs), voice acting is represented by limited phrases or sounds (games where the protagonist is a robot or animal), only key phrases are voiced (again, many RPGs, where a greeting, but the phrases are not voiced).

Thanks for the review.
When the hero speaks Beliberda, he says. This is excellent from a dumb character. I do not know a single game where only the hero would have Beliberd, and the rest of the characters have a full speech. As a rule, if the character speaks Beliberda, then the world around him also speaks Beliberda – this is called the game language. Well, for example, Simpers in The Sims. The characters there are quite vividly communicate with each other.
But even if I don’t know something, and the game where the hero speaks incomprehensible sounds, and the surrounding characters with a full-fledged human speech exists. Then this still does not make the main character dumb.

About the classification you can argue. In two, out of four principles, you agree with me, your two principles are my first two principles. I decided to expand this classification to four. In my modest opinion, the silence of the protagonist in GRIS differs from the silence of the protagonist in Doom. These games are very different, and work in different ways, in the doom, an eventual story, in GRIS visual and creative. In Doom, aesthetics is an application, in GRIS, aesthetics are the essence. And when the game is so strongly based on the visual, audio becomes an application for creating an atmosphere, the character’s voice acting becomes optional.

My last principle is certainly controversial, consider it discounting, the principle – a concern, when the developers objectively did not have enough possibilities for this. Well, I recall the example of Outlast, in the sequel, when money came to the developers, the character spoke, but in the first part he only screamed, sobbed, moaned, in short reacted to pain and fear. There were events in which the hero should say something, how to react, his weakness is inscribed in the plot very mediocre, especially for the horror, where the verbal reaction of the character is a fairly important thing. But then the developers did not see the opportunity to do it. well, this is IMHO of course, I could be mistaken. But in general, such games where the voice acting only helped, but the developers did not have enough opportunities to make it, as if there was definitely.

I do not know a single game where only the hero would have Beliberd, and the rest of the characters have a full speech. As a rule, if the character speaks Beliberda, then the world around him also speaks Beliberda – this is called the game language.

Yes, I meant the second one – when all the characters speak Beliberd, then the player has no questions – why. You can also recall Kotor and other games on star warriors, where there are many races, each of which has its own language – droids generally communicate.

Doom Academic narrative, in GRIS Visual-Benerative. In Doom, aesthetics is an application, in GRIS, aesthetics are the essence.

In principle, I agree. But I still think that there is one general moment – both there and there the player is busy (in one case with contemplation, in the other case, the struggle with the monsters) and he is not up to thought about the speech of the protagonist.

The article came in, I didn’t have to miss.
Recently, the most offensive example of a silent character, and ignored by a plot, is an exodus metro. How did the moments enraged when they are asking the character to say something, to react to the situation in any way, and he is silent, but he is silent ..

I have a couple of comments:
1. In the second bio -shock, the protagonist is very talking.
2. Call the protagonist Dragon Age: Origins dumb Ilm silent technically incorrectly. Moreover, you even explain why it is in your article.

1) Perhaps. I played the second part for a long time, I have not passed it to the end, so I could miss something. Delta did not say in the main part of the game.
2) Why is it wrong? If actually – he is dumb. Or what else to call the fact that there is not a single dialogue either in the main game or in the DLC that would be voiced by the protagonist. (combat replicas, which are three for the whole game, and which, at all are not tied to the plot of the game, we do not take on the expense)
I thought that it should be self -evident, that non -perity is the inability to speak. Speaking is when we pronounce a set of sounds that are formed in words, and others hear us, that is, they perceive those very sounds through the organs of hearing. The voice acting of the characters is part of the game sound, and not part of the game mechanics, as I put it not quite correctly, slightly higher, and from the point of view of the game sound, the protagonist DA of the new.
But if you are not satisfied with this concept, I propose a compromise. The main character in Dragon Age: Origins is not voiced – that there is the same thing that in any other game presented in this article, the main characters are not voiced there either.

(combat replicas, which are three for the whole game, and which, at all are not tied to the plot of the game, we do not take on the expense)

If you want to call the character dumb in fact, you have to take into account all possible replicas. And the character speaks not only in battle: an unsuccessful hacking of locks and neutralization of traps, an impossible action, an attempt to destroy an invulnerable object, the discovery of a hidden enemy – all these actions are voiced in a voice.

And about Crysis 2 zero mention … there the character is also dumb, and the series of games is excellent.

I agree with the claim: not voiced by the GG and the “dumb” GG are two completely different things, because of this part of the article about RPG and about games with the budget deficiency, they are a little out of the general topic.
The dumb GG does not communicate with the characters and does not answer them in any way except physical actions: to choose the proposed weapons, give them in the face in response to a threat, etc.D.
And not voiced by GG – this is essentially a game convention. The character actually says, but not in a voice, but in the text, and in this case the player is supposed to “voice” him himself with the help of fantasy))