HotA is special because there was no mod support for HOMM III. So they had to do it the hard way. It also fixes a lot of bugs in the original game
http://heroescommunity.com/viewthread.php3?TID=39830
just mute it like normal person. If you played HOMM before, everything pretty much makes sense anyway.
Gonna buy it for sure. Very curious about mod support. In an ideal world we'd have another Horn of The Abyss