The Power of a Silent Protagonist 

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I had my airpods disconnect for a second and i thought the entire video was going to be silent because it was called ''The Power of A Silent Protagonist''

see im not autistic, i’m just a silent protagonist

It's absolutean Shakespearean that two completely different video games, from completely different genres, from complete different periods, are iconic because the player character repeatedly screams "SHAUN"

The best for me is like when thr Master Chief He doesnt yapp all mission but in cutscene he just says a quipp or a question

Ghost, you are a very rare type of RU-vidr. Your insight, humor, effort, and--most importantly--your positivity make all of your videos an absolute joy to watch.

A silent protagonist that I believe is done in an interesting way is Morgan Yu, in the game Prey. Morgan Yu was the willing main subject of an experiment testing out a device that could physically alter a persons memories and personality, with each experiment changing them just a little bit. Throughout the game, you’ll find recordings of Morgan talking to you, the current one. And each has a completely different outlook on your situation. But despite the fact that all these recordings of Morgan Yu are voiced, not once in the game does your character utter a word. You play as someone with a fractured mind, and the end result of what’s left of Morgan Yu ultimately depends on you. Despite the fact that Morgan Yu is an established character, with established history and relationships, they can still ultimately be anybody. You can play the game as humanely and empathically as possible, helping and saving every single survivor, or you can be a deranged maniac beating innocent people to death with a wrench, and both work completely within the story. Morgan Yu is this fascinating combination between a voiced character with established backstory and history, and a silent avatar who’s actions are only predetermined by the player. Morgan Yu’s mind has been taken apart and put back together again, and the player decides what’s left.

Voices only really work for characters who have a DEFINED character by design or more linear stories.

Oh boy, when you mentioned Tight Lipped Characters and how they are mostly as mascots, it reminded me two very precious games for me: 1. Transistor (although Bastion also follows similar narration) has Red as a protagonist which just before the start of the game lost her voice. She can still hum to the sound of soundtrack and has a sword that is an active narrator of what is going on but still in his own way. Transistor (the sword) was imbued with soul of her lover, so his narration is more like companion rather than a all-knowing entity. 2. Cross Code... Lea is literally a forced mute. She's an avatar of the MMORPG VR setting that is the centre of the lore of the game. Lea's avatar in this world has a voice malfunction that makes her a silent protagonist outside of her own expressions and few words that get added to her very limited dictionary of words, like "Hi!", "Lea!" " Bye", "Why", "How", "Wait" etc. It is very charming how much character can be expressed through several sprites and no voice acting whatsoever!

YEAH CUZ IF BRO IS TALKING ALL THE TIME IM FINNA FEEL LIKE I GOTTA DO WHAT BRO WOULD DO BUT BRO AINT PLAYING GAMES IM PLAYING GMAES

I love the silent protagonist. Some guys it works, some games it doesn't, but if it was up to me, all rpg protags would be silent

My favorite experience with a silent protagonist was in Stalker Anomaly. I took up a job of sending a message and ended up slowly sneaking through a forest as gunshots ran out to heading to a large office building when a storm hit and turning on a radio to listen to whilst waiting out the storm. Between moments like that to things such as a bandit actually hiding in the dark and turning off all of his lights waiting in ambush after all his compatriots got murdered and suchlike really made stalker Anomaly a special experience for me.

To quote the iconic Commander Sheppard; "Report to the ship at once! We'll bang, OK?" This was a fun one, and I'm here for when you do more content like this! It makes me think of a French RPG called OFF. The player character has a voice, but is a separate character from the player. It's an interesting take on "the game knows it's a game" with some NPCs talking past the character to you, and the player character's comments on things in the game sometimes being something he's saying to you.

Honestly, the Courier is probably my favourite Fallout Protag, since they have 0 lore backstory outside of working as a courier. Unlike other protags that were locked in a Vault for most of the timeline the courier could have been anyone anywhere, you can roleplay them every way you want! also they are already familiar with the wasteland, no need to really explain the brotherhood of steel or super mutants, unless you specifically want to

I want a rpg where your character has a voice but still has the speech options, with the option for him being silent. Didnt talk at all? You become a feared myth, remembered for thousands of years as "The Silent", with thousands of stories, some made up and some true glazing on and on about the strength of your character, and the mysteriousness of him. Talked confident and gloated? You become a legend, remembered for his overwhelming strength, never once bested (no matter if you were bested once or many times) and had thousands of fake stories made up about him, with few of them being real. This would be amazing, and also make it so npcs react to how you act. Stayed silent? People get straight to the point, no banter, and they always sound tense, as if slightly scared. Been gloaty? They sound excited, to meet a legend who has unlimited strength, and also like to add in alittle extra talk.

Giving the player character voiced dialogue was just a terrible choice for Fallout 4. I really hope they choose not to revisit that for the next Elder Scrolls game. There's a reason the player character in BG3 doesn't use voice acted lines. You're experiencing the world, the world doesn't need to experience you.

I think the best balance is struck by Baldur’s Gate 3 and Persona 5 where the player character has a voice and can talk but you only ever hear them speak somewhat rarely. It leaves enough room to put your own character in there while also getting a nice surprise/moment whenever your character does say something

This is the first video you uploaded since I first subbed and man I gotta say I tore your library up! Love the videos, dude!

Ghostcharm uploaded, I can finally awake from cryo stasis

your channel reminds me so much of Psych of Play/Daryl Talks Games. Love how both of you dig deeper into our fav titles!

I vastly prefer silent protagonist in mostly RPGs, you know so that i can actually role play. This falls short with Jrpgs tho.

I appreciate the Quake 2 clip. Favorite game of all time for me right there.

am a 2077 lover,, female v one of the best acted voices i ever heard (also think mp’s voice is always funny for 2k although obv not immersive) butttttt the guardian has to be my fav protag so i understand the love for the silent protagonist (also also is v not a preestablished character in the world? ik u get to customize them so it is kinda ur character but at least in the streetkid backgroun they come back frm atl and are recognized by characters like the bartender guy and padre,, kinda makes them feel preestablished to me but idk idk idk)

Part of the reason why the first Jak & Daxter game is the best one

In an RPG setting I see a lot of potential in the idea of player choice regarding exactly how silent their protagonist is. Take the Dark Brotherhood questline in Skyrim as an example. Imagine that the player is able to have fully voiced dialogue similar to in Fallout 4, except for when they choose the option of remaining silent. Now imagine that, but it's across an entire game with the silence option always there, and you can even enable/disable the player grunts in a menu somewhere. If you so choose, you could have a silent protagonist through the entire adventure. Maybe NPC's could even "remember" when you've been silent in the past, and react surprised if suddenly you decide you have something to say. Alternatively, they could be used to you being a bit of an opinionated chatterbox, and take your silence as a sign of how serious a situation has become. I know this would be really ambitious to achieve and expensive compared to the more traditional alternative, but it would be a huge best of both worlds type situation that if pulled off well could really enhance the immersion significantly.

Would love to see more videos like this and glad to hear your interested in making something that feels less intensive. (If that's the right word for it?) The varying levels of how outspoken a player character is can be so important in how you want to design a game. Especially in something like an rpg where writing choices for your player can shrink immensly when knowing you have to forward recources in voicing every line.

The Mass Effect trilogy (Both versions of Sheperd) and The Witcher 3 (Geralt) are my top voiced protagonists in games. Mass Effect handles the info that Sheperd knows in the form of index pages and plot convo's.

Female V has amazing voice acting imo. It was night and day for me, she just has such an adaptable cadance I felt I could insert myself into those tackle glow up plastic boots.

Would have been interesting if you talked about whether you liked the female V voice instead and why (also Jennifer Hale’s Shepard should be mentioned with Mark Meer’s)

If Fallout 4 was written well no 1 would have cared too much about the voiced protagonist. The pc of Starfield is mute and the writing is as shit as ever.

I thought the same about V at first but when I heard him starting to break down with the desperate voice cracks after the intro. That's when I knew his voice was something special. Never once thought of muscle man though. Also YEAAAHHH MAH BOY HENRY!

IT is pretty straightforward, the agency provided by the interactive nature of videogames connects you to a protagonist so closely that their voice can contend with your own inner voice; where as film for example, you are only an observer, disconnected enough that it is very hard to draw you close enough in that this becomes an issue. With that advantage giving the protagonist their own voice is a risk with little reward in many cases; only with a distinct reason why, intrinsic to the character or setting would it worth it. Unlike film the silent protag doesn't need a reason, almost never has one and is ubiquitous however almost never actually brought up unless it can be used in arguments comparing two similar games. You don't have to have a silent protagonist to use silence in every way, in fact the silence of a protagonist can have weight that cannot be achieved without being voiced. I feel like there is some veneration of the "coolnessS" of their silence that stems from the introverted nerdy culture games come from, just like people who like their protoganists talking non-stop, making annoying quips and jokes all the time is "smart"/"witty" and "badass"

My favorite silent protagonist will always be amaterasu from okami, although she does bark when she has something to express sometimes lol

I think a great example of amazing use of a silent protagonist is Bastion. I’m not sure if you’ve ever played it but the main character is completely silent. The only characters you get talking are the narrator that comments on what you do and leads you through the story (as it continues it obviously has its twists which I won’t spoil here) and side characters that speak to the character

I agree with your points near the end about silence being golden. One of the few examples I can think of about voice being added to a silent protagonist and it being a good thing is the Dead Space remake, and I feel that is primarily because the character you embody when actually making choices in the game is silent. Dead Space is definitely not a crazy branching narrative with deep choices, but the character the devs build in the moments where the protagonist talks isn't intrusive in any way, (in my eyes). In the original with the silent protagonist, you weren't making narrative choices either, so having a character you embody in the remake just feels natural. I honestly also feel the remake with the voices protagonist feels more immersive because of the character the devs build, it would be quite weird if this person who is supposed to have all this knowledge about the location they are in and not talking about it.

I just recently had my phone stolen, this was the first channel I resubscribed to for videos like this. Well this and v-sauce in the hopes that they finally upload again, but great work prince ghostcharming.

Ironically, being silent while having some of the most unique and dynamic dialogue options out of the other fallout protags makes Courier one of the best out of all of them

3:33 Already digging the Mass Effect Galaxy map music. 🤘

Such a good video. I can't help but think of when I'm playing MTG and I'm like a silent protagonist and my cards do the speaking for me.

Damn, this is one of those rare gem creators who should be getting 10 times the views. Glad I discovered this channel!

And just when I get disappointed you don't mention Shepard as a memorable voiced protagonist, you hit me with that Mass Effect music. You sly fox!

Your music selection is phenomenal.

I really love Cyberpunk 2077, but I guess I never realized why the male V voice sounded a little odd through my playthrough. I think the female V just sounds so smooth and when you brought up muscle man I just couldn’t take male V seriously anymore

I got nothing clever to add. Just sitting here in silence enjoying a fantastic video, seeing the echoes of thoughts I've had and the ripples as others have seen and thought the same. Excellent work sir, thank you kindly.

My first playthrough of Cyberpunk, I played as female V and really loved her voice. The male voice kinda put me off. Second playthrough I played as male and tbh his voice kinda grows on you. Or at least, it did for me. I think the problem is just that some of the lingo in the universe is so just unapologetically cringe.

Great editing and Good watch experience. Hope you keep up the good work homie

Point and click adventure games, particularly the lucasarts ones, I feel tend to have a great track record when it comes to voiced protagonists, Guybrush Threepwood, Manny Calavera of Grim Fandango, and especially TellTale games’ run of Sam & Max

For the voiced protagonist In 2077 ,I had to "create" the character around the voice. I never felt that I had free reigns to make a character I wanted to play but instead had to make a character that fit the voice. For male V, it had to be a Nomad muscle guy who likes shoguns with a Rutger Hauer/Dolph Lundgren look. Not because they sound like male V, but because I could believe that a guy who sounds like male V could look like that.

Nothing has the power to pull my attention on my for you page better than a fresh ghostcharm video

For me it depends a lot on the game, and the feel it wants to give, BG3 is actually an example of a game I wish had full voice acting for the PC, especially since you pick a voice in the beginning, granted I understand why it wasn't done because there are 8 different presets which would need to be voiced for each and everyone of the thousands of pieces of ingame dialog, it would be simply insane to try, so while I would have loved it, I recognized it would also be insane to attempt.

2nd separate comment. I realised when I think about Fallout New Vegas, I am inserting myself into the story as the courier. I just don't ever think about Fallout 4. But if I do then I am watching the story in my head; not being a part of it.

27:30 Wandering Flame 🥺

No matter if your protagonist is voiced or silent, there is one driver for voice acting that makes or breaks the MC's character: do they have a "catchphrase" for the lack of a better word? Henry of Skalitz has "I feel quite hungry", Commander Shepard's got "I should go", even silent protagonists like Courier 6 say lines like "General Gobbildigook" when the player wants them to. One good line will help firm up that character for the player.

Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a Nuclear Winter.

I don't know if its just me but I would appreciate it if you'd put the name of the game currently shown in the bottom corner, because often I see games that look interesting but I have no clue how to find them. Nonetheless keep up the great work 👍

Something you didn't mention was games that let you choose from a selection of voices in your chosen language. Like Female Deep or Male High-pitched.

Yo if youre having trouble with either voice in cyberpunk 2077, youve gotta try out the mods that change the language that V speaks. Switching from english to French completely changed the tone and/or implications of what V was saying in some instances and it definitely felt more engaging than some of the english voicework.

I've had this exact feeling since Fallout 4 came out but couldn't put it into words. Thank you for making this video.

Another absolute banger ghost keep em coming dawg

You’re blowing up man! Keep up the good work!

Kenshi mentioned!

I would love to see an inverse of this video and just more general discussion videos like these

One phenomenon I've noticed particularly in modern games is a voiced protagonist in an open-world game who is competently written and acted, but who talks WAY too much during periods that I traditionally expect to just be exploring and mostly alone with my own thoughts. I first noticed it with Far Cry 6, when I started to wish there was an option to stop Dani from singing along with the radio or making little quips every single time I entered a restricted area, performed a melee takedown, disabled an alarm, etc. If I wanted to see and do everything in the game, I'd be doing these actions dozens of times each and I reached the point I just wanted the yapping to stop. But it was far more of an issue for me in Days Gone. Fine game, good writing, good voice acting, but I couldn't tolerate Deacon constantly talking to himself during fight scenes. It just got silly when I was trying to sneak around zombies or line up a shot on bandits and the protagonist seems hell-bent on revealing his position to anybody with working ears. And again, during a scripted mission I wouldn't mind but if I'm doing side content I expect some peace and quiet.

Dude I spit out my drink laughing at the muscle man clip. Idk how I never noticed!

Man any of the ace combat games would’ve been a fantastic fit for this script. Just finished playing through the franchise and the way those games utilize the silent protagonist genuinely serves to make you feel like some tide-turning war hero. Amazing games, I highly recommend them.

It was definitely a hurdle when Fallout 4 first dropped, that was the main thing my friend and I weren’t happy with, that and the limited dialogue options (4 at a time? Like Pokémon? A gameboy game?). There can be verbose silent protagonists too like in Disco Elysium where you have to do a side quest to even hear his voice.

Drop everything and Watch sort of RU-vidr. Love your videos man

Nice, cozy, ghost charm video by the fire

This video has kinda made me realize why I love Tomodachi Life on 3DS so much. For a majority of the game, YOU are the protagonist. Everyone often talks directly to you, the player as you take care of them. Even your own Mii, your first avatar on the island, talks to you like you’re some kind of lookalike as him and acts the same as everyone else.

Me personally I always loved the silent protagonist. Mostly cause it’s you in the game and you are the one going through the journey and you are making choices yourself not scripted dialogue. Also mostly cause the silent protagonist can be unpredictable you have no idea what they will do or choose like in baldurs gate you can be an absolute jerk that is a secret sadistic killer with no morals and no humanity in them while you can also. Goose to be the knight in shinning armor type. God I love them so much

I could be wrong, but "ghost" feels like a reference to "A song of ice and fire".

I'm part way through but skimming ahead doesn't seem to show off this experience so I'll mention it here. One silent protagonist thing that was pointed out to me was the mobile game, Kingdom Hearts Unchained Key (KHUX) your initial avatar is at best tight lips. No text box, no language, clearly some "explanation" movements but only when absolutely necessary. Keykid is usually dragged along onto these adventures, or the cutscenes don't have the keykid at all. And then, about halfway through the first arc, the keykid talks. And talks to yell at most likely their mentor. They talk after that, not a lot, but they do. And then, at the very end of the game, the Keykid actively tricks even the person playing the game to fake going evil in order to save their friends. I had stopped playing KHUX by that point (it was pretty much impossible to play (especially in PVP) unless you were dumping a lot of money into the Gacha, the translation took way too long, the story updates were... tiny when they did come Like you could wait 6 weeks, get 6 missions, and they have no plot. It was BAD) and the people who stuck with it are people who ADORED the game. So they may be a bit biased. But it was a very... interesting idea that they seemed to have pulled off well

Duuuude this may be my favorite video of yours so far

There are some good voiced Protags Shulk,Commander Shepard being the ones that I think are good. Mainly cause they emote well.

I've found there are 2 types of people who like RPGs and I've noticed this divide on voiced protagonist through it. Some people need to feel like they are the character. This means voiceless and first person is preferred (I fall into this category). I need to feel like I'm in the head of my character and speaking on their behalf or I feel disconnected from them. I have been surprised to hear some people need their character to be removed from them. To make a separate being that they essentially write where voiced and third person is preferred

10:00 Where can i listen to, and/or buy, this cover of Arni (Home)?

What is it Glados says about Chell? "You dangerous, mute, psycho"

Agree with basically all your takes. Great video!

See, I dunno.. to me, when it came to the dynamic of silent VS vocal, I think we got the best of both worlds witi CEC Engineer Isaac Clarke from the two _Dead Space_ games, I'll provide a couple examples. For one, both games make fantastic use of 'aggressive silence', which started for me back in the first Oddworld and is even being done in lucky matches of _Lethal Company_ these days, if not on purpose. The idea in the first game is Isaac is mostly silent except for panicked and frenzied shouts and vocalizations. This works in the context because he's a mechanic, not a soldier; the Necromorphs eerily went for the armed humans first, almost like they still knew which were the biggest threats of the landing team. You keep mashing the button to stomp 'dead' foes, and Isaac will start yelling and crap because he is FREAKING OUT a little bit. The aggressive silence comes in with the immersion when he's not only silent as the grave to keep from attracting attention, but the weight of galactic silence is really felt on the spacewalks; muffled noises, an EKG beep, Isaac's breathing.. even inside the ship, it is usually a tense silence.. _Dead Space 2_ plays the opposite approach, with Isaac now speaking, but after all the trauma and mental strain put on him by the Unitologists and the Marker itself, he's gone a bit scratchy at the psyche. He's seeing things, hearing things, overly alert, angered; he's gone from a terrified technician out of his element to a horror-hardened, paranoid and outspoken basket case. There's a thick melee early in your egress from the hospital where your guide chimes in over the mic and Isaac just cuts them off and hangs up, HE IS BUSY AND UNDER ATTACK! One of my favorite moments in gaming right there~ The aggressive silence is decorated in this one because you're also aboard an orbit colony near Saturn, that place has population and you gradually hear it going from screams to _nothing_ when the Necromorphs surge out of that hospital like a chainsaw blade parade. Banging on the hull, strange noises, muffled conversations; they're all brief in the game, but they were timed great, along with moments of Isaac possibly losing his mind. There's much to both qualities in a game, but the most important thing is for the situation to be taken _seriously_ at least a token droplet. A lot of what is more or less distilled down to a 'modern snarky quirky lack of sophistication' rubs a ton of people the wrong way because no one wants to BE around a shitty person like that for more than a minute at a time, and we have to SPEND THE ENTIRE GAME WITH 'EM? Maybe silence is golden because duct tape is silver.. and I like silver, it's a tastier word. Anyways, love your work, Ghost, keep on rockin' in the free world, and remember-- " . . . !"

It's a bit weird at first, but I think one of the best dialogue for protagonist was in Original Sin 2.

Once again you bring the people a video of stellar quality!🎉👍🏼👍🏼

Glad to see you spending your time on good topics. I'd really lost faith in the channel after the Jiub video.

I realized through this video that I typically only play games where you play as a blank slate character. Apart from the games I play where none of this apply (map games, rimworld, etc.), I find myself only playing games like fallout or the elder scrolls (including fallout 4, I kind of just ignore the voice and character's story). I don't realize it but I absolutely do just sort of self insert, though I never really saw myself as that type of player. I couldn't get into the Witcher because I didn't like just being some dude with an established personality and moveset and powers and skills. While you could argue for days that the Witcher 3 is a better RPG than Skyrim, for me the freedom of Skyrim is endlessely more appealing. I also find that story driven games, games with no choice, or linear games, just don't appeal to me. I'm so used to having the freedom to be what I want and do what I want that being restriced to playing a character just puts me off entirely. In games where there is a fairly established character (or at least design) but no voice acting, or especially no dialogue from them, I can still impose my personality and thoughts onto them, but with dialogue AND voice acting it creates too much gap as you said, unless you still are given many other freedoms and choices to make that character look and act how you want (respective to, for example, the Witcher vs. Fallout 4). Anyway I found it interesting how your points helped me realize something about how I play games. I wrote all this in hopes I provide a good example of how much a voiced protagonists effects one's experience.

An Outer Wilds visual reference AND a HROT mention? This dude is checking all the boxes I tell ya

I like both silence and voiced protagonists, the problem for me it's overtalking protagonists. Here in Brasil there's legendary VA's that save some games for me. There's localization problems sometimes, Cyberpunk was too much localized, as an example. But most of time the dub is better than the original.

Although the tav/durge will mutter random lines in BG3, I think it's a proven fact at this point that we do NOT need our protag speaking in RPGs I will say though, when it comes to a preset protag like Geralt, I have no issue with them speaking obviously. More specifically for created characters inside a world filled with roleplaying elements. My favorite example of a voiced protag being Bigby Wolf

counter point for the pokemon trainer: as much as it worked in the early gens, where there wasn't much story or plot, as the series started to put more story and plot into the games, specially since gen 5 (regardless how good those stories and plots are) its kinda of jarring seeing the pokemon trainer having the same blank smile while every character is panicking that some legendary is gonna destroy the world or whatnot. 16:36 the entire game suffers from bad audio engineering/compression . Kalas is actually an interesting character, with a good twist; even tho you are not playing "him" as much you are playing some vague spirit that guides the characters or something.

Love this channel so much

27:11 caught me off guard xDDDD

That was cool. Very interesting to hear your thoughts on this.

I think one of the problems people have with V comes from the entire promise of Cyberpunk vs what it actually is, I dont see V as an avatar for the player in the same way an RPG does it, V's a lot more similar to Adam Jensen in my eyes. V's got an established history with Jackie and follows what's ultimately a pretty linear story, you're given the choice of histories but they're ultimately just a little dressing and a couple of speech options, I mean V's even got an established name; Vincent or Valerie. Some of this might come down to the voice actors though, they were both given free reign on their delivery and didn't hear each other at all, but I kind of read the dialogue choices in the game for Vincent as different options the same guy might go through, he's equally capable of any of the choices you make for him but at the end of the day he's still the same smug kid putting on a big face trying to be Night City's biggest badass as he tries to cope with how scared he is of dying.

Try Armored Core 6. The protagonist is totally silent and the script provides a valid reason for it. Your character's deafening silence even affects certain NPCs. (e.g. Iguazu) Very clever writing. A *literally* silent protag by design.

Souls protagonists aren't mute, they actually say things and the npcs often Paraphrases their words like "hã? How to enter in haya Lucaria?"

KENSHI MENTIONED RAAAAAAHHHH WHAT THE FUCK IS HEALTH AND SAFETY RAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH

i guess it boils down to whether you are going through the world and story or it is the story of a character in the world that you just happen to control

Great video, and goes to show that as so often when it comes to game design, X is not inherently better than Y. It always, always, always depends on the circumstances and context of what you're building. A chainsaw is a useful tool, but it's not gonna help me much if I'm trying to cook lasagna.

I think you are a light in an otherwise saturated and dark world of content. Do what you enjoy and I'll always listen!

I prefer my protagonists/PCs unvoiced if it's a choice heavy RPG and the like, but if it's an established character with a history and set personality (with or without slight variations)I do not mind VA at all. It's the difference between a Fallout PC (well, west coast at least) and Shepard/Geralt/V. Dragon age is a bit of an odd one out though, since Origins and Inquisition have you creating basically a blank-ish slate with some set backstory (a la cRPGs) and 2 has a fully formed character you direct down certain paths (a la Witcher etc). I loved Hawke, as well as the Origin options in the first game. The Inquisitor though... Don't get me wrong, all 4 VAs did a bloody great job, but how that protagonist tries to do splits between the chairs, it just ends up going nowhere.

Lotro music at the start woooo

There's such a big difference between "How would I want to interact with this world?" and "How would this character interact with this world?" even for people who aren't really in it for roleplay. There's always going to be that subconscious note in the back of your head reminding you that this isn't necessarily your character, it's just one you are controlling right now. As someone who actually likes the voices for V in 2077 (though I admittedly much prefer the female VA), I have to agree that it was a lot harder to immerse myself into the world because of that extra layer of separation between a voiced protag and a silent one. It can absolutely make or break the experience for people who prefer one over the other.