Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General performance as narrative, or: how important is voice work to you?

I know this thread is focused on voice, but performance includes gestural stuff and movement as well, which we see on full display in our very first "cutscene convo" to crack Us out of their skull-prison. So just to get into that non-verbal flair for a moment:

Watch how the Main Character approaches...

Regardless of which voice/class/background etc you select, the MC is going to slow step over to that corpse in a chair, popping their heels and floating their hands along the way, like they are walking the catwalk, and they know the whole universe is watching their ass.

Now reload and instead of using a hotshit Elf, Human or Tiefling MC (that everyone is probably playing) watch how this scene plays out with a burly Dwarf doing the same. It's pure comedy lol.

And that's just dissecting how the main character walks. Now add in the facial expressions they make during this whole exchange. Is that your character?

Then take the next scene with Lae'zel and watch her gestural performance there, compared to the MC's reaction shot. I can tell exactly what Lae'zel is about and who her character is (an aggro fighter) without even hearing her voice. Now look at the MC with their hair blowing in the wind looking all extra vapid in response hehe.

You quickly realize that it's not just Voice that is going to intrude on your sense of character (the MC is silent in these exchanges) but all our gestures and movements and reaction shot facial expressions. They are pre-dialed, and our performance is predetermined.
This is what happens, because all the direction is the same. Same blocking, same gestures, same speed. It doesn't matter if your MC is a massive Gith warrior, or a dainty Elf rogue, the animations and whole scene will be basically identical regardless. I'm not saying they couldn't do stuff with enough variety and differentiation to make each Main Character performance feel unique, but it goes well beyond voice acting.

I loved Morrigan! Now that was a complete performance! I just think the more cinematic the experience becomes the more work they have cut out for themselves. I stop judging it like a crpg video game at those points and start judging it by the standards of theater or cinema. I don't want my protagonist to feel like a bad actor on top of everything else lol. Again it's not that they couldn't pull it off, but I don't know that Larian has demonstrated they understand how to use the Prologue. They are using it currently to set up the Plot, rather than the Character. Trying to make the audience care about Plot before they care about Character is very challenging.