Yes, absolutely. Not just "more", but "better"
Yes, it’s absolutely essential in a roleplaying game where we need to pick from a fixed set of dialogue options (no matter how many of them we have) to always have a neutral option that will move things along without expressing a judgement one way or another. I don’t mind my character sometimes being silent about what exactly they think. And, in fact, most of my characters wouldn’t say what they thought about absolutely everything even if they could. But it sticks in my craw when I’m forced by the game to actively express an opinion that doesn’t fit my character. And I agree Larian’s current dialogues sometimes do that.
But as long as there is always a neutral option, then I’m happy to just pick options that actively express the character when they come along. And I don’t think that the restrictions on the amount of dialogue imposed by the need to voice protagonist as well as NPC lines would be so severe that it shouldn’t be possible to give me
enough opportunities to express my different characters’ personalities and values, even if they can’t always say exactly what they’re thinking. At least, it should be possible to give me enough for me to count the trade-off between seeing my character brought to life by a voice actor versus more dialogue options one worth making in favour of the former.
And of course, I understand others might have a different attitude to this trade-off.
In the meantime, I'll keep hoping for … less focus on Tav's reactions (facial animation and voiced lines).
I struggle with this one. We undeniably linger too long on exaggerated facial expressions at the moment. But I do enjoy seeing my Tavs react on those occasions when the expressions and lines happen to work for the character I have in mind. I wouldn’t want them standing there like a lump. And I want to see them there in the world, interacting with NPCs. I don’t like games where we hardly ever see our character. The Outer Worlds was a really extreme example where it was possible to pretty much forget what your character looked like, but while I don’t think there’s any danger of BG3 going anywhere near that far, I mention it because I think there is a danger of cutting too much of our character out and for me that is far worse than showing them sometimes expressing stuff that’s not appropriate. In short, while I don’t think Larian have got the balance right now, I wouldn’t want them to go too far the other way. And as long as they remove the most egregious examples, I’m willing to compromise on having my character not always express
exactly what I’d prefer as long as it’s not too far out, for the sake of seeing them being an active, reactive participant in conversations.
Again, it’s clear this is going to be a matter of taste!
