It depends on the game, but I'd say 90% of the time, I don't have an issue with it.
Link definitely didn't need to talk in BOTW; besides tradition, I feel the structure of the story being told mostly through flashback means a bigger focus on Link remembering these events that happened around him and nothing more, it was a minimalistic approach for a story.
Samus not talking is fine since the world and environment of those games (especially the Prime trilogy) tell you more than enough (also Other M was a thing).
I don't think a voiced protagonist in XCX would've mattered; the way the story was structured is way different than the first two games, and there was a bigger emphasis on the side quests for injecting more story and world building I feel (one of a good handful of reasons why I didn't like the game's story).
Gordon Freeman not talking while somewhat odd, feels kinda natural due to the game being a first-person shooter, so I feel like the characters are directly talking to me, even if they refer to me as "Gordon".
Persona is a weird case; with 3 and 4, the characters are blank slates, but then you have the anime adaptations that make them established characters and inject some unique personality that wasn't obvious in the games, if it existed in the first place. They made it clear that Makoto Yuki is somewhat of an introvert that usually didn't care what happened, and Yu Narukami was both a serious but very light-hearted guy, and I feel these personalities would've made their games even stronger. Joker/Ren Amamiya is a special case cause even though he's basically a silent protagonist, he still says a good amount of lines when saving the game, making certain choices, and in combat, and they add just the subtle amount of personality I feel. If you go out of your way to listen to all of Joker's voice lines in the game files, you can tell they wanted to make Joker a carefree, mischievous guy, but because his voice lines are extremely underutilized, that's not super obvious when you play the game for the first time. It doesn't really bother me cause in the end, I am focused on building relations with the other characters and getting to know them all better, so a silent protagonist doesn't feel weird or anything, since it allows me to get a more personal connection with these characters.
And yeah, Astral Chain is a bad example of doing silent protagonist, everyone makes a big deal out of you, from your sibling, to your father, to all your comrades, and the camera likes to focus on you during cutscenes, and yet your character awkwardly does neutral emotions, and I feel like they wanna say something. Doesn't make any sense when you consider both genders of Akira are voiced, so idk why they made it so you're silent, doesn't seem like a natural choice, but a lazy one.
"Just for comparison Uncharted 4 was 20x bigger than Splatoon 2. This shows the huge difference between Sony's first-party games and Nintendo's first-party games."
