He was the graphics director on Trigger, iirc. Regardless it is irrelevant since it has never been just the "silent" part that I have been worried about, but the "completely without a set character" part. If you really think having a set character is irrelevant to the kind of writing you can involve that character in and is purely cosmetic then we are just going to have to agree to disagree and move on. Having a changeable name is very easy to write around and offers very little limitations to any story choice. I am unsure if you are being purposely dense at this point, but really don't know why that would be the case.
To humor you though, lets take a look at that picture there. Notice how the only people that the PC is connected to are what appear to be other party members and he has no connection or relevance to the world past that? That is the exact thing I am worried about. Of course I wouldn't try to use that picture as proof of that fact since there is still a lot we can find out about the game. I've only ever expressed concern over the choice of being able to customize your character since I much prefer playing at a set character with their own story over the novelty of being able to make space Rhianna.
You could also point out that in the original Xenoblade they arent connected to anybody in the party at all, including people shulk knows personally, its just in the center untouched.
Connecting every single npc to the center of the diagram would probably be a visually indecipherabe mess. The very fact that they appear at all, is because the player got involved with them.
Again, you are conflating story involvement to character descriptors being mentioned in game, to that end, you can simply choose to play as any character in the game, who already has a pre-defined role, as in a movie or book.
The other end of your problem, has no basis at all. The very fact that diagram exists shows that the things the player does, acivates various states, that then activate other states, like changes in dialouge incorporating what the player did, and new events like quests, related to things that the player did, which is a hell of a lot more involving than an npc making a comment about what the player character looks like, or that they like coffee.
You keep saying you want to be more involved in the story, but thats probably not what you really mean. You seem to want to be more detached, and watch someone elses story, which, you can totally already do.
However, you are placing faaaaaaar too much importance on a cosmetic choice like whether or not the character is a mute protagonist, when by far the much bigger factor is who is writing the story. There are tons of really crappy jrpgs with predefined characters. Thats not a factor in whether the story is good or not, You didnt enjoy Xenoblade because shulk was a preefined character, you enjoyed it because the characters were well written, as was the rest of the games story. Thats not going to change. Shulk is not in this game, we are not getting a shulk with his character ripped out. We are getting a full roster of fleshed out characters, and you can play as any one of them. A player created character is being added to the playable roster.
