Dragon Quest always features a silent protagonist who doesn’t react to events: this used to be the best choice, but now it just risks appearing like an idiot, says the creator.
Dragon Quest XII: The Flames of Fate
Yuji Horii – creator of the Dragon Quest series – recently participated in a dialogue related to role-playing games and revealed a curious detail linked to one of the modern challenges in the creation of RPGs like Dragon Quest: the transition to 3D graphics, especially increasingly detailed and expressive ones, makes it difficult to maintain the silent characters typical of the series.
The information comes from a Japanese to English translation by Automaton Media.
Dragon Quest Creator’s Comment
“Dragon Quest is essentially dialogues with the townspeople, with very little narration. The story is created within the dialogue. That’s the beauty of it,” explains the creator.
Another cornerstone of Dragon Quest is its silent protagonist, or as Horii describes it, “the symbolic protagonist.” The idea behind it was to allow players to become the silent protagonist: they could freely imagine the character’s reactions and easily project their own emotions onto the protagonist.
The allies of the protagonist of Dragon Quest XI can instead have clear reactions
However, this approach was partly facilitated by the graphics of the time: “as game graphics evolve and become more and more realistic, if you make a protagonist who just stands there, he’s going to look like an idiot.”
There is no easy solution to this situation. Horii notes that having a protagonist who explicitly reacts to events can make it difficult for players to relate and connect with them, jeopardizing immersion. “Because of this, the type of protagonist present in Dragon Quest becomes increasingly difficult to represent as the games become more realistic. This will be a challenge in the future as well,” the creator concludes.
What do you think?
At least Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake doesn’t have that problem since it features more old-school graphics.
