I started a new DOS2 character while I was waiting for the full release of BG3, and it helped me remember how much I love CRPGs (it’s the only one I’ve played aside from BG1 when I was a kid).
The narrator was something that really stuck with me, as you didn’t always see detailed actions of your party and NPCs during dialogue, so you had to use your imagination based on the narration.
Having now started BG3 with it’s fully cutscened conversations and interactions, it really feels like an evolution. They are so well captured and acted that it makes the game feel so much more engrossing.
My guess would be it’s a cost-cutting/time-saving measure. Fully voicing all the PC lines would skyrocket the total amount of lines each VO would need to read (think not only of all the dialogue you select, but all the dialogue you don’t, as well as all the dialogue that results from those other options you didn’t pick, and dialogue specific to backgrounds and classes that’s not available to you on a given playthrough). That‘s before accounting for the extra animation and whatnot.
I agree that it would be really cool, but if it’s even half as expensive as I imagine it would be, I understand why it’s not in the game