Quote Originally Posted by Mercen-X
I can't stand main characters that don't talk. Especially in the games which the other characters speak as if he/she is talking. It's so ridiculously irritating.
IIRC, the original idea of that mechanism was to allow the person playing the game to identify more with the main character: The main character supposedly did speak, but because the words were not specified, the gamer could substitute their own words and mannerisms for those of the characters, and infer from the context of the situations what the general content of the speech should be. The idea had several flaws in execution, but it was pulled off successfully in a few cases, but in other games it either became an annoyance or helped to continue the "somber, silent hero" stereotype.