User blog comment:A Heroic Smurf/Reporter's Inside Stories: An Interview with Hero/@comment-1323688-20131206112714

It isn't that Empath is incapable of using first-person pronouns, as in the novel when he speaks to the Psyche Master, he does refer to himself as "I". It's just that it's a force of habit that he uses "this smurf" instead of "I" or "me" most of the time.