The Mute Protagonist

I'm all for mute characters if the other active members are vocal enough to cover for it. Dragon Quest 8 is a fine example of that. They basically have conversations around the hero, but not always involving the hero. The primary example being when Yangus tells his story of how he met the guv'. Angelo does the same thing, when he'll sort of indirectly talk to the hero.

Angelo - "I can't believe my brother would do something like that!"
Hero - *nods*
Angelo - "We'll just have to stop him."

In DQ8, the conversations involving the hero are often more indirect and more akin to thinking outloud rather than sitting down and having a conversation. The other positive aspect about DQ8's silent hero is that when he IS spoken to directly, it's almost always in way that can end in "Yes" or "No," so he can just nod away. Of course, there are the occassions where he ends up explaining the whole story up to a particular point to an NPC, but hey no one's perfect.

I like having a hero with his own voice as well, but Lloyd from Tales of Symphonia...he could've been mute and the game would've been better for it. I've got nothing against the Teen Titans' Robin, but it just didn't work out for poor Lloyd.

Grandia 3 did, however, have a pretty decent set of voice actors, but namely for the main character Yuki. Johnny Yong Bosch, more commonly known as the black Power Rangeror, maybe IF you've seen it, Vash the Stampede from Trigun, did a good job portraying a teenager.

Jam it back in, in the dark.