--------------

Most of the skits in Tales of Symphonia didn't have voice acting and they continued on at their own pace. Most of them were better than the skits in Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, but the latter had voice acting, which I found to be a big plus, so I enjoyed them about the same.
 
In DA:O, I haven't tried just subtitles, but having voice acting with subtitles (at least at the top of the screen) is really jarring to me. But in the case of Alistair, I think it would be hard to imagine an equally amusing voice.

I play all my games with subtitles if it's an option, old habit from when I used to watch tons of foreign movies.  I watch all my movies (even US released english movies) with subtitles now, it just feels weird otherwise.  Even I am watching an english movie, I keep looking for english subs to read. 
 
That said, I'm totally okay with voice acting as long as it is done well.  If you can't get the voice acting right, I'd rather not have it at all, but good voice acting certainly trumps dialogue boxes.  It's just a matter of getting that dialogue down.  I find it actually more immersive to have good voice acting rather than dialogue, but that is personal preference.

Nice way of putting it Brodehouse. Recently, my roommate purchased final fantasy XIII for the 360 and has been running through it. From what I've seen he's enjoyed it; however, I have Final Fantasy IX at the apartment and he decided to drop it into our PS2 when he found a place to (finally) stop in XIII. What I witnessed was a complete 180 in the way he approached the game. IX having absolutely no voice acting in it beyond the general grunts, gasps, and screams in the cutscenes relies entirely on dialog boxes. As you have stated it's a different style of interaction than XIII. What was also present in IX that we didn't get out of (or as much of) in XIII was a sense of character. Only having dialog boxes forced the game to create elaborate and interesting character animations to go along with their text, something that has practically disappeared with modern games.

Can you get subtitles on the ambient dialogue (people talking when you are near them) and when you actively talk to people (like in Chapter 9)?  I thought I had all subs turned on and yet I don't have subs for those 2 instances on the PS3 version.

 I'm a big fan of the text box, and all of the power it holds.  My favorite video game dialogue comes from titles that are text-only, and utilize well the text box (and character animations) to their potential... games like Ace Attorney and Paper Mario.  I feel like if Ace Attorney were - somehow - voiced, all of those funny lines would've lost all their charm and delivery.  I think there is something to be said for hearing the voices of characters with your mind rather than your ears - perhaps it really does make the experience more personal and enjoyable.  I agree wholeheartedly with you there.
 
Not that these new-fangled approaches are bad or anything.  I'm actually a fan of a lot of voicework done on games, especially recently.  I can tell you the names of voice actors better than I could tell you the names of movie stars (for what that's worth), and sometimes hearing of a certain actor's involvement will even turn me on to a game.  But that being said, I might always prefer the "blip blip blip" of the ol' text scroll, and the consciousness and involvement that comes with it.
 
You're definitely on to something there.  There is a place for reading in games, as its power exceeds what voice acting is capable of, methinks.

If I don't deactivate subtitles, I just end up looking at them instead of the characters.
 
As for the text box thing, the only difference I see is what kind of dialogue the writers can get away with. Stuff that reads good as text might, and often does, sound ridiculous when it comes out of a guy's mouth. FFX had a bit of a problem with this, but I think Square is getting the hang of it.

"Also, I would argue the music has changed. Ever since X, there has been this shift (a bad one in my opinion), away from true orchestral scores toward bad pop-style music. I remember playing through an early part of the game with Sazh and Vanille and the music sounded like something I'd hear in a coffee shop rather than a game. It was really pretty bad. The main theme is also piano heavy to an extreme. Compare this to the orchestral version of the music from VII or VIII and there is a big difference. "

This is what I've been preaching for years now, and you can find many, many of my posts on giantbomb saying exactly that:
 
Voice acting single-handedly killed the JRPG genre.
 
It is futile to elaborate on that point because nearly everyone disagrees and cannot even remotely understand. But its good to see that I'm not the only one who is dearly missing video games as interactive stage plays instead of semi-playable bad movies.

Text boxes, variable in position, animation, text speed, transparency (for conveying thoughts / simultanous dialogue), filled out by people who know how to write, put into the mind of the player via game characters with a large set or premade animations.
 
Story telling heaven.

Really don't think it makes much difference text or voice. My favourite part of ffxiii was on the beach with snow wandering around and chatting with people and feeling like there was an actual society in the game for once. There was even a nice doggy. And when you're in palumpolum the other best bit was when you meet a boy and a dad seperately who are looking for each other, and after you do a fight you see them and he says "i found my son", that was a nice touch. There's just so few bits in the game where you get to see people or society, playing for 60-70 hours just for those 2 moments is really dull to me. That is why FFXII was so good, a lot of the game was about going around rabanastre, or archades, etc. and interacting with the poor and rich and different races and it was so interesting. So many interesting interactions like with bagamaan or whatver he was called and even just guards in the city, they existed and really guarded the gates of an immersive city, they weren't just faceless enemies running around.

" Really don't think it makes much difference text or voice. "

"@Cristofyr:  I think a large part of that has to do with translation, and the difficulties in localizing a game set in a future fantasy setting.  Medieval games can be given Ye Olde Englishe treatment (like the reworked Final Fantasy Tactics), and modern games can be moved over quite nicely... however, there are moments in Final Fantasy XIII where the dialogue clearly was not written in English first.  You see this a lot in Metal Gear, voice actors trying to wrap their mouths around constructions that don't appear natural in English.  This generally ends with the graphical avatar displaying an emotion that doesn't match the voice, or the feeling of wooden acting as the actor struggles to deliver natural emotions to an unnatural phrase.  As for the music, you're thinking too literally.  The music hasn't changed in that it is still used to deliver emotion the same way, much as the visuals have.  From MIDI to synthesizers to real instruments, it is still designed to amplify the emotional effect of a scene. To Zanarkand is no different in scope and delivery than the Battle Theme from the original on the NES. "

" @Cristofyr:  You're confusing the medium with the message.  The medium of music is to express or evoke a mood through melody and texture.  The exact song may have been a poor choice, but that doesn't somehow alter the medium.  Also, the music during that segment in the Vile Peaks is pretty canny.  You may not have got it, but I sure did.  As soon as I heard it, I knew they were attempting to give a sonic profile of Sazh's "jolly" character, and focus on the difference between Lightning's style of leadership with Hope, and Sazh's leadership with Vanille.  In a purely musical sense, the other thing I noticed was that while it did have a jazz nature to it, it was not very organic sounding jazz.  They made it sound somewhat off-kilter and askew, with the  fragmented percussion and electric guitar lines.  I assume this was to evoke the 'junkyard' mentality of all the area, a sea of Pulse refuse crudely assembled together. "

"Is replacing all of our once text based entertainment with voice acted entertainment truly wise?  Is there a place for reading in games? "

 @Cristofyr:  (I think you're still missing Brodehouse's point, but...) FFXIII takes a more ambient approach, to be sure.  I'd argue that if most the time you're too engaged in the experience to notice the music, then it's doing its job.  Oddly enough, you were complaining about the one track that (as far as I've seen) sticks out like the music in the older games did - where every time the music changed it was abundantly obvious and stuck out in your head.  Just like you think of Aerith's death whenever you hear her theme, I know I'll always think of Sazh and Vanille's off-kilter adventure through the junkyard whenever I hear that jazzy arrangement.
 
Anyway, I wouldn't say this game is doing bad at setting the mood.  In fact I've been pretty impressed by the music so far.  Again, the method is just different now... kinda similar to the change from text-box to dialogue, you feel it on a more subconscious level, as it's doing its work in the background rather than being this huge centerpiece on the table that keeps catching your eye.  Or ear.  Staying true to my hopelessly old-school self, I think I probably prefer the classic way here too...  but, that's not to say I can't enjoy this as well.  Different doesn't mean bad.  But, y'know, it's not even that ambient.  Just in the short time I've been writing this post a whole bunch of FFXIII themes have popped up into my head... oh Whitewood theme, cease haunting me!
 
And you can't tell me the battle theme isn't a memorable piece of song.

Do I have a point?  Nope.  Just rambling.

 It also forces developers to come up with dialogue that doesn't come across as trite or cliched when spoken aloud.