Originally Posted by DArtagnan
I agree

I clearly remember when voice acting started to appear as more than a novelty in games like Wing Commander and System Shock - and it was like night and day.

It has been a tremendous step forward - and today I have a hard time enjoying games that are text-based, no matter how good the writing is.

Text-based dialogue in games today is almost exclusively about budget constraints - and not an artistic choice.

I find it surprising that anyone would argue otherwise, actually.

I tend to agree. The poster below you mentioned certain kinds of games where voices acting is not dominant. And while I don't tend to play games like that(mostly rpg's for me) I can see how voice acting would not a have a big impact in those games. But I was speaking strictly of games like GTA, Most rpg's or any other narrative heavy game with a lot of personal interaction.

As for Dark Soul's, I think an easy mode would be a nice addition. Many artistic mediums these days are subject to a wide ranges of uses very different from the original vision. Photoshopping, modding, music sampling like used in a lot of rap music or just people do there own versions of songs, etc, there are group that dramatically edit movies for certain kind of Christan audience.