I don't think you understand the finer points of circular reasoning.....
You sir, are a walking fallacy!

it all depends on the context, in certain situations its just odd but in others it works quites well.

For some reason it bothered me in Dragon Age. Every time the camera focused on the hero in a cinematic, etc, it kind of highlighted the fact that there was no recorded lines for him and pulled me out of the story. Normally in games though it doesn't bother me and it was perfect in Half-Life 2.

I'm not even sure how you are applying circular reasoning here. Logic doesn't work on the subject. It doesn't work on anything that is subjective. In other words, I have no clue how you percieve my reasoning to be circular.

Overall, silent protagonists for sure. I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the original Metroid Prime; it was one of the most, if not THE most, immersive experiences I've ever had in a video game, and there was no dialogue whatsoever.

A hero need not speak. When he is gone, the world will speak for him.

And now you know why Miyamoto keeps saying Link will never have a voice.  Aside from the grunts and yelling he does.  He learned his lesson with Star Fox.

And I fully agree.  For every game we have with good voice acting, there's 50 bad ones to back it up.  And frankly, the majority of my favorite games and series feature silent protagonists (Dragon Quest, Zelda, Metroid, Chrono, Pokemon, KOTOR, etc.).  Adding voices is sometimes not worth the risk and mostly seems to only appeal to those who buy games based on seeing a few cutscenes in a store display.

I hate silent protagonists, and I hate games like Fall out 3 and Oblivion and Dragon age:origins that when you pick a selection or answer or ask a question it says nothing! Besides its annoyance factor its retarded. Are we doing sign language to talk to them? Can they read are fucking minds? Just give them some damn voice acting! I am tired of reading my choices out loud, my girlfriend thinks im going crazy .-.

Besides that dragon age:origins is awesome, i still hate fall out 3 and oblivion though.

I hate silent protagonists, too especially Dragon Age where there is soooo much dialogue that they have done voice work for, but not for the main character....

A phrase goes some way to expressing what the character is feeling, but the talking in Mass Effect was so much better than Dragon Age, Shepherd has much more of a personality than Theron, my Dalish Elf

For me, in these situations, Theron just becomes a bi-stander, and has no interesting story of his own, and I like to get to know my character, but in DAO I am far more interested in Alistair's story than mine

With only a FEW exceptions, I MUCH prefer the silent types. It might be different if somebody would make a character that wasn't full of insipid, useless curse-filled ranting. If you like horrible Michael Bay action movies, then yeah, you might like your protagonists to talk, because that's the model that gets used in most of these games.