I started to think about this. It seems that only a select few stories with voice acting.Metal Gear, FF10, Kingdom Hearts have a great story.
Then you have older games from NES to PS1 with simply incredible stories. Chrono Trigger, Super Mario Rpg, The Final Fantasy lineup and a slew of others.
Maybe it's not the new age shooter that's killing stories but rather voice acting limits story telling? There has only been a couple games this generation who's story I've enjoyed and looking at Final Fantasy 10-2, 12, 13, and 13-2 all have voice acting. I know that 10 had it but it seemed to go downhill from there.
Put into prespective a character like Yuffie from FF7. I would imagine her voice sounds high pitched and horrible but it was up to you the reader to attribute these traits to each character, but when you have to hear it it changes your experiance.
Which bring up the point that if you read what a character is, there is a sense of you define them yourself. They have there own actions but in the end you create in your mind what kind of person he/she is. Like my version of Cloud was more of a rugged hardend person then what Advent Children precived him as. Maybe this lack of self defining can make your experiance less enjoyable? Giving him a voice sealed his personality.
Just think about the story-related games that you love. Are they voiceless or recent? Is it possible that while voice acting may not be the bigest contributer to thel lack of good story we have gotten out of DEVS this gen it still has an effect on how they tell there stories.
