Doom is kind of a unique example though where the protag was portrayed as a mindless force of nature, basically. I definitely would not want him to have had a voice. However Half-Life 2? Dishonored? These games would be better with voice, because they're story focused and you're playing someone with motivations and such.

Ok, I'm totally frustrated. Can you please explain your reasoning? I mean, I get it - you like queer characters, I'm not going to argue your tastes. But how your preference in gameplay depend on sexuality of character?! Especially in games where those two are not related?

Half-Life 2 also had a lot of scenes where you sat around and watched the world gab around you or to you. It'd be improved if Gordon gave some kind of indication that he was actually listening. Freeman's Mind for example shows how much better it'd be.

Respectfully disagree with regard to the "mindless" bit. An entity with a singular purpose disregarding outlying consequences, yes, but I wouldn't call him mindless by any means. This is a sidecar discussion though and I don't want it to take away from the point you've made so I'll move on.

That's why I used Doom 2016 as a readily available example compared against these or others. Doom's narrative flows fairly rapidly and a mute character works to its advantage, without a doubt.

The narrative of a Half-Life or Dishonored title doesn't move like that though (well, I'd argue the first Half-Life moves fairly quickly but not comparable to that of Doom 2016) and that's where I'd agree with you (and why I wrote what I wrote in my previous reply) that having a dead silent character in such a story with the expectation of having the player accept it is hard to swallow when the game wants us to see them as characters with actual depth and reason to move throughout the narrative we're experiencing in those games.

It depends on the game.
I totally don't care in shooters, I just want the action, so the character can be mute and there can even be no plot at all.
In RPGs I want to talk, and a lot -because I think the only way to really roleplay is interacting with other characters, not only with sheets of stats- so I'd say "voiced" (I don't mean "with voice acting", of course). I don't consider RPGs games where you can't do things "your own way", or at least with as much choice as possible.

As said before, it depends but usually silent.,kinda liked the Witcher3 coments during gameplay though.
They way I do like the story told is during the game play, preferably with a narrator or some non-intrusive coments like Witcher. Music and ambient sound also works very well, no need for lenghty MGS dialogs turning the game twice as long.
A game like Last Guardian really needs a non silent character but no need to speak also.

Regarding cut scenes, I play most games as a Windows installer, just press next an skip every thing. Exceptions are when I'm really immersed on the game, like after a hard "boss fight" I do enjoy relaxing while watching a cut scene. Ori and the Blind Forest is notable exemple where I did enjoy them very much.
Yooka Laylee is prety much the worst exemple on that regard.

if INT > 2 then
if CH > 5 then
// in every dialog there should be a (...) option
else
// there should be no (...) option, only voiced
fi
else
// character has reduced mental capabilites, reduced dialog responses ("Muh?")
fi

For me, after a boss fight is a bad time to place a cutscene, as at that point I *really* want to save as soon as possible, and having to watch a cutscene makes me nervous that something will go wrong. (This is especially true if it's a game that's known to be unstable, or if the game has to read from optical media; the old PC version of Final Fantasy 7 is one particularly bad example here.)

I don't see these checks amounting to much; when stats start in the low double digits and reach triple digits by endgane, these checks will never evaluate to false.

They could also just voice "important" dialog and not much else thus saving on costs/time needed to record such.I liked Gordon being silent.....to me it'd seem odd/out of place for him to start quipping like Duke or Spiderman.


===============This depends....if the VA is very bad or bad in a certain way it can sometimes make for a much better game.

==============The "in-game" reason(iirc) is that he is in his own mindspace and functioning on mental auto-pilot during the first game.

Also he does talk in later games.....people still die regardless.

==============

Eh, I like it MORE for some games when they try to be like a movie....it gets me more immersed/etc.

What if the game autosaved after the fight but before the cutscene & said cutscene could be skipped? Sound reasonable or no?

Sadly, very few games have this.

Why would talking necessitate quipping?

It really depends on the game. At times, it makes sense that the character doesn't really speak, as it is meant to represent you more than anything else, think of Skyrim for example, but at times, it is obvious you are following the story of the character like in Hellblade for example.

The big difference is if the character you play as already has a ready-made personality or not. If it has a personality and part of the game experience is to see that personality as well, the voice away. But if the character is just a standing avatar for you, like in many RPGs, the silence works just as well. It's not necessary, but it also matters very little if there is a voice or not.

I know I was asking a hypothetical to see how it sounds to others.....also they need to make it more commonplace, dagnabbit.
Because people expect either that or cringey levels of "serious" dialog in most games, and to me it wouldn't work as well given gordon's background/seeming personality/etc

Maybe, but only if:
1. The game makes it clear that it autosaved, so I can quit the game if needed, and
2. The game allows manual saves and does not overwrite them with the autosave.
(Forced autosave as the only save is an anti-pattern found in many games; I hated it in classic Wizardry (which is why I always use save states in classic Wizardry (except Wizardry 4), and I hate it now how games like Shovel Knight, Hollow Knight, and Cathedral force auto-saves as the only save.)

Here's one interesting thing to note:
* It is primarily WRPGs, not JRPGs, where the character is (intended to be) a standing avatar for the player; JRPGs generally have protagonists with a ready-made protagonist. (Of course, there are exceptions to this, like Dragon Quest 3/9 and The Witcher series, but it's still true most of the time.)

By the way, if a game has the protagonist be an avatar for the player, the game better allow me (or whoever's playing it) to make a female character.