Maybe you're right, but honestly I think that the level of development required to make the personality system into something that could provide the level of quality and flexibility in a crpg like say, wrath of the righteous would be so great that it would end up barely resembling Solasta's system, as much as a gun barely resembles a bow and arrow, despite the latter being the conceptual brithplace of the former.
I don't think it requires much development.
We already have the basis with alignment wheels and Solasta's prototype.
All it would require is setting the "Alignments", writing the dialogue for them and then getting them VA'd by the relevant parties.
My point was almost opposite of this. I absolutely care about what my character is saying.
Except you don't.
Your entire thing is that you can make up exactly what you pretend your character says, you don't care about what they ACTUALLY say because if you cared about what they ACTUALLY say, then the responses to what they ACTUALLY say would be important (Even if they are misunderstood, having them misunderstand the thing you specifically said is still important).
Your stance is that you want your characters to say what you want them to say and in the tone you want them to have, whether or not they actually do that or anyone responds to it so long as you can imagine your character saying it that's all that matters.
Which completely undermines the entire purpose of communication as a concept. Where the reality is that what exactly is being communicated is irrelevant, what matters most is how it is received (Since the purpose of communcation is to convey ideas to others)
Having a silent protagonist is beneficial to you BECAUSE you can disregard dialogue. You dislike the idea of voiced protagonists because it limits you to what the dialogue options provide, you find it harder to simply ignore it like you do with purely text based options and replace with your own headcanon.
The difference is that companions are far more predictable.
Not at all.
Protagonists have set dialogues just like companions. They pick dialogue options just like when companions respond to said dialogue options. Protagonists literally are written just like any other character in the game. Their dialogues happen at scripted times just like every other character in the game.
The literal only difference, is the idea of having freedom of creation of a protagonist. Whereby unlike appearances which you're limited to picking from a set of options, we need this vast choice of different vocal types that can be manipulated to create the most nuanced behaviours (Like having personality shifts throughout a campaign, which are reflected in the very way the character speaks).
Yep. Nothing else needed.
Unless you somehow need explained that all the "protagonist" says is what I just read before deciding the option I want to pick.
I assumed thats bloody obvious but YMMV.
Yes, the protagonist says what you just read (Depending on whether the game fully articulates the entire dialogue option or abbreviates it leading to the protagonist saying more than what was read).
That is obvious.
However, you've not explained WHY that is stupid.
Nor have you bothered to read points about how when the protagonist is saying the thing that you just read, they're engaging with the people in the conversation. People in the conversation are responding to your character saying these things in real time. Body language is used to aid with communicating the thing you just read.
A simple sentence said by a living person contains more than just the bare text that you would read.
