To speak for the "..."

This piece is my attempt to speak for the unspoken - the silent protagonist. The archetype has been in a rough patch for a while, with countless more to come, no doubt, but there's value in the character. Playing the archetype "straight" in today's climate would likely cause more people to roll their eyes but there is space for subversion.

Dragon Quest V is that sort of wilful experimentation that only comes from years of exploring the same subject matter. The Silent Protagonist is always the hero? Then let's tear them down and force them to watch a chatty NPC replace "their" duties instead. Dragon Quest IV showed shades of this deconstruction with its focus on telling the stories of your comrades before yours, but Chunsoft and Yuji Horii really laid the despair on thick in Dragon Quest V. It's a fantastic game that everyone should play if only to realise that Dragon Quest has been, and always will be, more than "the same old thing".