In July 2014, when the switch to episodic was announced, I theorized on the RTG forums:
If you bring a minor character voice actor into the studio five times, it's five times more expensive than doing it once. That's kind of the basic mechanic at work.
Back then, Ragnar replied:
No, that's completely wrong. We pay actors and studio BY THE HOUR. It costs no more to have an actor in for a three hour session once than to have that actor in for three separate sessions spread over several months.
I have been doing voice recording for games for two decades now, and I feel I know how to optimise time spent and reduce budget as much as possible. For most games I've worked on — including Dreamfall — actors were brought in multiple times during the course of production, to record dialogue for the same characters. We like to do continuous voice recordings and allow for changes along the way, rather than do it all at the end.
So no, splitting the voice recordings into multiple sessions is not going to cost us any more. That's the basic mechanic at work here.
I do see how both statements may be correct though – local labor laws and regulations being the magic mechanic. If I'm not mistaken, bringing a voice actor into a German studio means paying a day rate. If he or she is done after an hour, they made a good deal.
The whole "German voices on release day" thing was a fairly absurd idea from EuroVideo (whom, for their Steam fetish, I can not really empathize with). It was fairly, fairly obvious that they would eventually not be able to deliver in such a ridiculously short time frame.
Let's hope that the quality of their work will improve with the new schedule.
