Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Option to turn OFF voiced protagonist

From what I gather, Larian already decided to have full voice acting for the main character, which I consider to be a huge mistake.
However this needn't be a dealbreaker!
Could it be possible to have an option at character creation or in the options menu of the game itself to just turn off the voice acting of the main character? It could be like a checkbox.
The reason I bring this up is because by voice-acting a character you inevitably give that character personality, which totally ruins my immersion. I understand that many people however absolutely love voiced protagonists because they make for a more cinematic experience, however if it became optional both crowds could be pleased at once. This would of course require that all the animations of the main character wouldn't play either, It would be awkward if the MC would just silently move it's lips, but I think this may not be that difficult to accomplish (forgive my ignorance, if I'm wrong).

Sadly, I can't really get into games with voiced protagonists (Witcher, DA2, etc.), and it would be a shame if I couldn't enjoy BG3 to it's fullest because I can tell this will be an amazing game.

Please, would you consider my request? I think it would alleviate many people's concerns about this issue.

Oh ? Where did you gather that ?

I doubt they plan to do full voice-acting (whatever "full" means). They already have 4 voices. All voices currently have voicing here and there. Making the game fully voiced sounds like a huge lot of investment.

The creators said that there will be full voice acting.
Here's the source:
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/fhk1u3/im_swen_vincke_creative_director_at_larian/fkbnauj/

I"ve proposed this a couple times already, but I think there should be those four voices for full voice acting (if Larian go with it) and a multitude of "voicebark only" voices with plenty of archetypes to choose from. And on top of that an option for a completely silent protagonist, because why not, it doesn't cost them anything and some people (like you, OP) might prefer it.

I think the cinematics would be trivial to fix, there was even a thread where we discussed it. Just reduce protagonist "screen time" by a lot. There's also a matter of reactions not fitting our custom protagonists (a Lolth drow squemish at violence?), but that's another matter.

From what I could see in the link, Swen only said "Yes, custom characters will have voice acting - you’ll choose a voice as part of character creation."

Voice acting doesn't necessarily imply full voice acting. I'm happy to have just the "voicebark" and banter. And like Uncle Lester, I'd rather have a lot more voices/archetypes.

I'd love to hear fully voiced protag, right now it's a little too un-immersive for me to see everybody talk and gesticulate except for PC (it's my biggest worry that if I choose a pre-gen character he/she won't be as much fun to observe as he/she is when he/she is a companion). But it would be nice if there would be an option to turn it off.

I am glad to see a good opinion on this theme…
I don't really like all these voices right now. Because they are mostly designed for a sympathetic hero. And all the voices are really similar, I can't hear the difference between them. I already wrote in another topic that adding a voice can greatly spoil roleplaying. There is no character in the voices we have now.

I have to admit... I felt it was laughable, ridiculous and criminal to discover that we have only two voices per gender to choose from, and those two voices are 'vaguely city brit' and 'vaguely country brit'

In a game where you define and develop your character, with the intent of role-playing them to some degree (whatever degree is your preference), having only two voices is beyond ludicrous.

There really need to be a large spread of voice-bite sets; two is not even remotely close to sufficient. I would far, far prefer to have a dozen different voice sets of in-game bites to pick from (which is the standard for most character based rpgs where you create your own character, and especially so for D&D games), including a silent option, which is also common, than to have only two very similar voices to select between, even if they're more extensively cutscene-voiced.

Not Swen - Adam, one of their writers. And read further in comments:

I think we could both get what we want if they gave us the option to have a silent protagonist. Of course this would have to mean that characters actually say what is written in the dialogue options and not just some vaguely similar thing.
Personally I'm also interested in playing origin characters and them being fully voice-acted would not bother me at all, because they are their own persons, but if I'm the one creating the character, having a voice inserted into my creation just ruins it all. That's why silence is preferable in my case.

I would like to have full VO for the main character, and I'm fine with only having four voices to choose from, but I would also definitely like the option to exist to have the protagonist be silent.

Not really - while I find it hard to believe further posts strongly indicate full-full VO.

Well, it turns out I didn't see everything then.
(Also, it wasn't Swen, but Adam.)

I'm fine with both options. I will read dialogues anyway and it's faster than VA talking his part.

Yes it would be great to have some new voices, and accents too! But the problem of the sympathetic hero is not in the voices but in the writing, right now characters have no personality branching whatsoever, you don't get to choose alignment or personality traits. I hope they do that too, and add personality tags that allow for certain unique interactions.

I disagree on personality tags, that would just lead to a very limited set of personalities (like DA2's witty, nice and jerk or MAss Effect's nice and jerk).
There should be numerous ways to respond to all situations in dialogue all with their own consequences. The game isn't supposed to do your roleplaying for you.

I dont see how one can ROLEPLAY in this game...animations dialogues are set, voices are set, low companion count, very easy class roll checks can always fail, classes don't matter so much (due to crazy itemization) , no time/calendar (even simplified day/night cycles).....too much immersion breaking stuff like what is being mentioned in this post.

You play the BG3 how Larian wants you to play it.

You roleplay by removing a voiced protagonist and by removing the animations that they would make, and also by reducing the camera time that the custom protagonist gets. Also there are plenty of race/class/deity dependent dialogue options from what I've seen and not all of them are roll checks.

But right now your character also has a personality, it's just GOOD, and I don't really want to play a GOOD DROW.

When my character walks past dead fishermen, she says almost sympathetically, "probably fished nearby, no luck" (or somth like this) you know, when I seeing Astarion's version of this phrase, I can clearly see the difference between the characters. How they speak and wut they speak.

Why the hell would a drow sympathize fishermen?

Its not in dialog, its just phrases, I can't even select them. But it would be nice to control at least the intonation, and this could be done with voice variations based on the character's archetype. Even if you're not a drow, it doesn't matter. There are many such phrases that put your character immediately in the position of "hero".

I agree that you should have more voice options if they insist on fully voiceacting the MC. It just doesn't make any sense otherwise. The problem is that there are so many roleplay options that you can't just have 3 (good, evil, neutral). Also, what if someone wants an ethnic accent other then the british one?