Why GTA 3's Claude was silent

The silent protagonist is one of the gaming world's oldest devices, and is still routinely used to get around the difficult problem of letting players feel like they can imbue the main character with their own personality.

Some of the most famous silent protagonists in games over the years have included Gordon Freeman from Half-Life, Link from The Legend of Zelda, Jack from BioShock and Master Chief from Halo.

Over 10 years since Grand Theft Auto III was first released, pioneering developer Rockstar has finally revealed why the game's hero Claude is mute.

The studio says it was only partly to "aid people identifying with him".

"It may now seem obvious that people should all talk in games, but this was not necessarily the case in 2001, certainly not in an open-world game," a Rockstar representative explains on the company's Newswire site.

"We were making up a lot of procedures as we went along, and we decided that the NPCs (Non Playable Characters) should talk and we would have to figure out how to make them talk (using motion captured cut-scenes, something that had never really been done before, at least not on the scale we were doing it).

"So we decided that the game's protagonist would not talk, partly to aid people identifying with him, but mostly because we had so many other problems to solve and this did not seem like a major issue."

Rockstar would later introduce a talking protagonist in sequel Grand Theft Auto Vice City, with players controlling Tommy Vercetti, who was voiced by Ray Liotta.


Many gamers argue that for Rockstar's more recent Grand Theft Auto IV the studio went too far, with many players bemoaning the heavy focus on storytelling and reporting that they felt no affection or affinity with main protagonist Niko Bellic.

"We started to discuss introducing a talking lead character when working on Vice City, but it was a lot of work," says Rockstar.

"While the structure of GTA 3 may seem obvious or natural now, and the use of cut-scenes made in the game's engine that look and feel like the game may seem simple and easy, it really was not the case back in 2001 when we had to figure out all of these things for the first time."

Grand Theft Auto III celebrated its 10 year anniversary back in October, and an anniversary edition of the groundbreaking game has just been released for iOS and Android mobile devices.