I think that ultimately a big chunk of my dissatisfaction with the game comes back to here. Without dialogue grounding me, all the rest is just "the stuff I do to get to dialogue and roleplay." I love picking dialogue options and making choices, that's the part of crpgs I always look forward to. If I could get a choose your own adventure book with equal or greater depth of character customization than a game like PoE or DAO, I'd love that game to to death and it'd probably be my favorite thing ever. It just doesn't feel natural for me to do a lot of the weird, random stuff the game let's me do. Playing characters that do that just doesn't feel right. I can't think in terms of "my character would approach by this route" if I'm left free form, it ends up feeling more like "Well I guess I'll try this way." Which is not nearly as satisfying. Maybe if I thought differently I'd enjoy this game as much as other folks seem to. But I guess it just means Larian and the games they make just aren't for me.
Regarding voiced protagonists, it really is a matter of taste. I think for me at least, I'm constantly worried that voiced protagonists and the limitations on character expression they impose will eventually completely push out quality unvoiced crpgs, which would mean the death of the kind of experience I really enjoy. So I'm glad if BG3 really does have a silent protagonist since then at least thats a high profile game supporting voiceless protagonists.
Yes, sometimes it just comes down to different preferences as you say. And given I have different inconsistent preferences for different games all by myself, I'm certainly not going to judge anyone for wanting something different from BG3 than I do! I think we all just have to hope we'll continue to get a variety of games that will suit us all, or just suit each of us in different moods. I can imagine, for instance, that I'd also like your strongly characterised choose-your-own-adventure, but I'll admit it almost certainly wouldn't be my favourite game and it's not what I'd want BG3 to be. And while I can and do enjoy quality unvoiced cRPGs, I enjoy quality voiced cRPGs more, so while I'd not want unvoiced cRPGs to be crowded out given that they can still be made more cheaply and easily than fully voiced ones so increase the number and diversity of games out there, and enable new and innovative studios to get into the market, I'd be sad if those were all we had instead of the games I really wanted them to be.
Of course, we all want BG3 to be the game we most want to play, and why shouldn't we? I'm lucky in that it's clearly ticking a lot more boxes for me than it is for others and, though there's plenty of stuff in EA that would have needed serious work to make the game as fantastic as it could be in my view, BG3 definitely has the potential to be my favourite game. But given that tantalising prospect, I'm greedy! I want to be able to select from good, well-chosen dialogue options that suit my character (which as I've said, I don't think is the same as having lots and lots of dialogue options), but also to see them brought to life through excellent voice acting, and also to be able to roleplay my character not only in what they say but also what they do, and not only at sign-posted decision points but just as they interact with the world and solve (or cause) problems. As of EA, I think the game is doing much better on the non-dialogue roleplay, but I am still optimistic on the first item given the feedback Larian have had and hopefully listened to throughout EA. Given this thread, I'm now less optimistic on the second, but have not yet totally abandoned hope either that there will be a voiced protagonist or that the 4K+ lines will be used in a way that is somehow enough for me.
