I think that really depends on the developer and production quality. So far, this game has exceptional voice talent.
NPC's can have good voice acting, PC's can't, because that is our character and how they should sound is a subjective opinion and varies from one character to the next.
DA2 had quite a few problems (*cough* reused assets *cough*), but I am not convinced that voiced protagonist was one of them. For one thing, in DA:O everybody else was already voiced, so your options were still highly constrained by the lines that they recorded for NPC's. On top of that, the Warden would stand like a doofus with his/her arms crossed and nod during every conversation. Oh how I hated that!
Hawke was reasonably well voice acted, and entertaining to watch. The dialogue wheel (or whatever they called it) was often frustrating to use, and I hated not knowing what I was going to say until after I started saying it... but at least I didn't stand there like a moron while everybody else did the talking.
If you want more roleplaying options (and I agree that this is a very worthwhile goal) then that probably means that voice acting for NPC's must be replaced or heavily subsidized with text. I would be thrilled if BG3 went this direction, but I really do not expect it. Failing this, I really hope that they record dialog for <charname> so that I don't stand there like a mute Warden again.
I will take MY doofus vs someone elses voice acted character every day. That's the difference between the Warden and Hawke, Warden is more or less MY character, Hawke is an established Biowares character, same as Shepard for example. I don't have a problem with playing an established character, but I prefer my own.
You're reading into this what you want. DA2 was, for all its failures, part of the natural evolution of RPGs. The dialogue choices always tended to be overrated filler material that to a very large degree only lent the illusion of choice. DA3 was all voiced, including some of the overly convoluted "text-style" conversations, that and at least for me, boring, conversation with characters I didn't really care all that much for. I dislike "lore scrolls" that some RPGs consider staple with a passion as well..I have no inclination reading through hundreds of pages of text if the developer did not deem them important enough to have voiced. The days of text adventures has long passed for me.
I'm not sure how real those "resource constraints" when it comes to voice acting really are anymore. At least generally speaking. They certainly were back in the day before gaming became mainstream, but now with more people working for longer periods of time on AAA games than on most Hollywood movies? Not so much. It's all about prioritizing, and for many this issue is pretty vital. That said, I completely understand why Larian don't do it. Their "origin system" in effect requires mute protagonists as all the companions can play the role of the player character/protagonist. So we aren't really talking about just adding female and male voices, but the voices of all the companions too. The "origin system" is Larian's baby, but I would gladly throw it out with the bathwater for a fully voiced protagonist. I believe the large majority prefer making their own player characters rather than use Larian's, even in DOS2 where you were more clearly punished for doing so.
The reason you think voice acting is better is because your tastes are conventional, you are part of the majority crowd that is easy to satisfy. I agree that in an ideal world voice acted PC is obviously better than a silent one, however not a single PC voice from any bioware game ever even remotely fit the kind of character I had in mind. When I am talking about unreasonable voice resource constraints I am talking about satisfying all the needs for custom characters, it would be a 500+GB game with ATLEAST 50 different PC voices + maybe same voices but different demeanors to fit every niche custom character concept, imagine the cost. As it stands i would rather have a silent PC than to have another generic one size fits all voice that doesn't fit the idea of my character in any way shape or form.
When the PC is silent I can just roleplay and imagine them having ANY voice I like in my head. Having no voice is better than being stuck with one that you don't like. I play RPG's like this one to create MY characters, not play another Geralt.
You seem to be insinuating that they would have to have multiple VAs for all of the origin characters and that is so much more difficult, when in fact, they already voice EVERY OTHER CHARACTER in the game, besides the PC.
Properly voicing the PC would take much more work than voicing every single other character in the game. 50+ voices that talk all game long in every single scenario.
