Disclaimer: You're certainly entitled to your opinion about voice acting. If it lessens your joy, sobeit. But, your pedantic replies imply, to me, that you think other people should share your opinions.

Video games, at least in this context, are not books turned into movies. Analogies between the two medias do not work.

If you really want to play your character your way, play D&D/WhiteWolf/Pathfinder, etc. Video games are scripted; even sandbox RPG's are limited in what you can do with your character.

Giving Cloud a voice in the transition from FFVII to AC is a specific case, and can hardly be used as an example for VA in general. Actually, it can't be used at all. It's just silly, because the VA in AC had nothing to do with the way the voiceover was acted or directed and everything to do with the way the writers of AC chose to make the character. Cloud's character, his personality, is what shattered some fans' expectations, not his voice.

The "expectation" argument does not work, because, as I said above, video games are not books-turned-into-films. These aren't characters you knew through text. You didn't develop your own voice for Tidus, only to be disappointed when you heard him speak.

How could the voice acting have anything whatsoever to do with how you play a character? Unless you hold to stereotyped roles for characters (your big black guy has to have a big black guy voice and do big black guy things like shooting stuff) the voice should not change how you view the character, except for cases of truly bad voice acting, which is not the rule. Most voice acting, especially now, is passable when not actually spot-on. But when it is bad, it sure can be measured objectively, and is definitely not just the result of our expectations.

I aspire to the Keatsian concept of Negative Capability in regards to movies and video games. Let them be what they're supposed to be. I have more to say, but my computer's crapping out. I'll be back.