Meaningful Blehs and Rabbid Gwahs: Identity Representation Through Non-Human Noise and Words

This paper examines how the non-human characters in the Mario + Rabbids games, Kingdom Battle (2017) and Sparks of Hope (2022), use noise, sound, and language to shape the identities video games can portray. The rabbids, humanoid rabbits from Ubisoft's Rayman series who have merged with the Super Mario world, are argued to expand identity representation through their chaotic, exaggerated behavior. Rabbid versions of Mario and his companions retain recognizable visual traits while substantially extending or subverting their personalities, whereas the original human characters remain constrained by decades of established, narrowly scripted conduct and minimal speech.

A central finding is that the rabbids' inability, or refusal, to speak in the first game allows their actions to carry broader and more open-ended meanings. Their shouting, grunting, whining, and wailing are described as detaching behavior from the semantic specificity of language, which the author links to radical potential in how identity is performed. In Sparks of Hope, this dynamic shifts: during narrative sequences the rabbids produce fully grammatical written dialogue, and the analysis contends that this flattens their excess into a more heroic and less ambiguous rapport. The contrast between the two games is therefore treated as evidence that the presence or absence of formal language meaningfully shapes representational possibilities.

The study is situated within scholarship on speech acts, non-human identity, and sound in games, drawing on work by Searle, Haraway, Collins, and Stingel-Voigt, and building on prior analyses of non-human characters in games. Its methodology is textual and interpretive, focusing on close analysis of two commercial titles rather than audience research or quantitative sampling. Its principal contribution is the argument that non-human noise and sound, following Georgina Born's conception of sound as a relational force, can be treated as a central means of articulating identities in video games.