Hornet being able to talk definitely gave us a lot more insight to the story and the world of Pharloom than HK for Hallownest.
On one hand it's fitting as Pharloom is supposed to be a living kingdom. But the biggest plus is I don't need mossbag to tell me the entire story to know what is going on. Hornet and other character will just tell us whilist leaving enough room for speculation and theory crafting.
Opt-in approach is fine. With this implementation we can effectively ignore those crying about performance without disclosing their spec. We don't really lose anything.