I remember CDPR said (or implied) a couple of months ago that.... paraphrasing from memory: ”it is important to them that the voiceacting doesn’t clash with the players idea of his character, and that they’ve taken some measures to ensure that”. Or something to that effect.
But I have no clue what that means. That V is voiced as emotionless and flat as possible to not put words/emotional responses to the players mouth? Or that VO can be adjusted somehow? Or that VO can be turned off? No idea.
The issue remains, though.
To you: I'd never heard that, but I hope to see what they mean moving forward.
To the thread:
For me, silent protagonists are my first preference in the vast majority of RPGs, but I can understand and agree with design choices that go for a voiced alternative.
CDPR RPG? Voiced protagonist is expected and I believe it works well. It's not a freeform RPG, it's a linear (in terms of the overarching story and your character's pre-set personality) one. They are trying to add a bit (a lot?) more freedom, but none of us should be under any illusion that V is "our" character. She/he isn't. She/he is CDPR's character, and will be much more tightly bound by story and gameplay restrictions than the next type of RPG. This is not a criticism, just an observation.
Bethesda RPG? Sandbox RPG, story is not a focus. You are supposed to play whoever you want in a world of many, many possibilities. There are problems with this type of game design, but this is not the topic for them. Voiced is an awful idea here, and they learned that with Fallout 4. Also, voiced protagonist in an Elder Scrolls game would be nearly impossible to pull off with a reasonable budget. 10 races, male and female counterparts... Bad, bad idea, unless they want every single race to sound the same (except the beast races maybe). As a result, you can have more/greater variation in dialogue options.
Bioware RPG? The company's earlier games had silent protagonists and it didn't bother me at all (I liked it), but in this scenario, you're even
more limited than a CDPR RPG, so I think voiced works here, too.
So, I guess I look at it on more of a case-by-case basis. I will almost always prefer silent protagonists over voiced, but there are scenarios where my mind can change and/or I feel a voiced protagonist better serves the type of game that's being made.
I think anyone who uniformly says voiced protagonists are always the best design choice needs a reality check, just as much as anyone who says silent protagonists are always the best choice.