Voiceactors. Hey! Its that guy!, Wait...I don't care. Options

[Voran]

So I finished my 1st playthrough of New Vegas yesterday and really enjoyed the experience. Will take a little break before running through it again.

However, it did get me thinking. While they didn't make a huge deal of it, part of the initial adverts for New Vegas pointed out who various named-actors were lending their voices to characters in game. Hey its Worf, playing that supermutant again! Hey its the Guild girl/Slayer prospect playing a brotherhood scribe! its Chuck playing...etc etc.

I wound my way through the game, only to realize, does it really matter who the voice actors were? Was my game experience enriched by having those actors voicing those characters? And I had to say...no, not really. The only real voice I care about in Fallout is Ron Perlman, and they got him. In general, the fallout 3+ series has done a good job with voice actors, the workhorse ones, not the special appearing 'named actors'. I'm pretty sure I recognized a few voices from the anime/voiceacting world, I'm pretty sure Crispin Freeman, for example, is in fallout new vegas.

It makes me wonder why we care if some named actor is lending a voice. Mass Effect was fun in that it tended to model both the physical model and voice after the actors, but fallout for example just plugs a floating voice into the characters.

Anyway, named actors lending their voices, does it hurt or help a game?