: Depends on the game, but let's be honest. The silent protagonist only ever
: originally excisted due to sound/hardware limitations. It's one reason why
: Duke Nukem 3D was widely praised when it was released. With a universe a
: fleshed out as Halo you can't keep playing as a blank slate character. To
: be perfectly honest though we never truly had a blank slate character in
: Halo until ODST, which looking at this now is fairly ironic.

To me anyway, the idea of a blank slate character only works if they are meant to represent YOU, i.e. it's a role playing game (in the true sense of the word, not in the JRPG sense), and the game changes based on your choices as a player. In Deus Ex, it doesn't make much sense to give Denton a personality, because you can focus on whatever skills and align yourself in many different ways… Part of having a real character is that person having convictions, so you pretty much already KNOW what they are going to do. That works when you game story is fixed, but not when it's affected by player choice.

Halo obviously has no such choice, and as such suffers from a weak protagonist if they are silent and blank.