DRAFT

By now most gamers have been introduced to the concept of a silent protagonist. In the JRPG genre, a silent protagonist is one that conveys the will of the player but maintains a 'core personality' that emerges in limited dialogue options and linear storytelling. Characters such as Crono (Chrono Trigger), Minato (Persona 3), and McDohl (Suikoden) follow this pattern, deviating very little from their pre-established character bases, and proving that a hero's actions speak louder than his relative silence.

Other games, however, bring forward a different class of protagonist: one whose motivations are wholly designed by the player. This is more common in freeform games such as Fallout and Morrowind, but it is also present (albeit to a lesser degree) in games like Ogre Battle, Etrian Odyssey, and Dragon Age Origins. (Also Darklands, Wizardry, and most old TSR AD&D games.) In this scenario, character creations dares the player to craft his own narrative, giving him a firmer foothold in the game universe than he would normally enter with. The story of the character then merges with the story of the player as it unfurls within the confines of a fictional universe, furthermore eradicating player perception of those limitations by nurturing a self-made narrative that fills in the gaps as it goes along.

Here are my experiences.

While I am certain I began much early, I first noticed the evocative power of this technique in World of Warcraft through my iconic character, Eberict Silverleaf. He was not my first WoW character--that honour goes to Josef Bazalgette, Dwarf Hunter--but he is certainly my most storied creation. Intended as the spiritual successor of my FFXI elvaan prince, Eberict Silverleaf was brewed from a mixture of Sir Francis Dashwood (of the Hellfire Club) and Lord Byron (of popular literature and 19th century sensationalism), becoming the oft-maligned second son of the Great House of Silverleaf. His creative influences made him the perfect marriage of flippancy and passion, a hero by his own reckoning, but an exile from regular society, and it wasn't long until he emulated and reflected the basic tenets of the Byronic Hero:

Often the Byronic hero is moody by nature or passionate about a particular issue. He also has emotional and intellectual capacities, which are superior to the average man. These heightened abilities force the Byronic hero to be arrogant, confident, abnormally sensitive, and extremely conscious of himself. Sometimes, this is to the point of nihilism resulting in his rebellion against life itself (Thorslev 197). In one form or another, he rejects the values and moral codes of society and because of this he is often unrepentant by society's standards. Often the Byronic hero is characterized by a guilty memory of some unnamed sexual crime. Due to these characteristics, the Byronic hero is often a figure of repulsion, as well as fascination. [SOURCE]

Since I did not discover this succinct summary of the Byronic model until after I had played Eberict for over a year, I was immediately struck by how suitable he was to the part. A troubled but brilliant man of great passion and temper, Eberict epitomised the Byronic archetype right down to the guilty memory that defined his mental state. Not sexual in nature at all, he was driven by remorse for death of his mother, whom he abandoned in the Third War in order to save his brothers instead. He constantly relives this moment of filial impiety through letters written and addressed to his dead mother, and the poisoning of his soul that this engenders furthers the rift between him and his younger brother, Casel. It also fuels the evil he later does in the name of 'the greater good,' until the cycle of betrayal and need of salvation finally ends in madness. It is only at the end, when world-weariness hangs heaviest upon him, that he gains the lucidity needed to break the chain by accepting his mother's passing, burning the letters, making peace with his brother, and disappearing finally into server myth.

(I am told that people still reference Eberict as some form of ideal. As I've been gone for a year and a half, this cult following surprises me.)

My justifications for Eberict's travels (dungeons and raiding) through Azeroth were myriad. His travels began as an escape from inane Silvermoon society and continued within the predefined purposes of guilds such as There & Back and the Black Omen. Finally, they culminated into a self-interested venture called the Sandfire Trading Company, an organisation of smugglers created to back Eberict's delving for lost, forgotten, and often forbidden knowledge. The investment I had in the character at this point allowed me to pay attention to the world's history, to read quest text furtively and with purpose, and to examine the lore with a scholar's intent--all of which I had failed to do on my dwarf hunter. Instead, as Bazalgette, my attention was focused on which beasts were best tamed, their migration patterns, and the most efficient methods for killing and profiting from their wholesale slaughter. Effectively, by changing characters, I changed my awareness of and involvement with the game.

Perhaps the most noticeable phenomenon, however, in my time as Eberict was that I never needed to reveal his backstory nor discuss the motivations of his character; simply by interacting with him, other players seemed to know how to react with their characters, and it wasn't long before he was highly celebrated and simultaneously reviled by his peers for his unorthodox, often criminal, methods. Other players--human beings, not computer protocols--confirmed the success of my design and, by doing so, convinced me of its merit. Although I ultimately suffered similar ostracism as a player for my portrayal of the misunderstood freedom-obsessed elven scholar and eventually left World of Warcraft to focus more on my work, the character stayed with me to later play the pivotal role in future (single player) experiences.



Left: Tom, Eberict, Demonic Blade, Akiri, Ephraim, & Gazrael face off Elledro.
Centre: Eberict, Gazrael, & Haskil talk round the campfire.
Right: Gazrael & Eberict, a gift from Gazrael's player.

Unlike the shared communal narrative that is World of Warcraft roleplay, creating your own personal story through the medium of single-player gaming is less of an exercise in active roleplay and more of an experiment in passive suspension of disbelief. The first place I took Eberict to outside of Azeroth was the Forest of Etria (or the Labyrinth of Yggdrasill), where the slate was cleared for a more goal-oriented and responsible Eberict to be placed at the head of his guild of like-minded adventurers. Here the turmoil of his Byronic existence is eschewed in favour of putting the focus on his enterprise, the Sandfire Trading Company, a group of hired hands, goons, and archeologists out to learn the secrets of the mysterious Yggdrasill.