They never met the real Griffin, just the proxy, so no, it wasnt him, nor his voice actor. (Heck the 2.0 voice actor is different than the one from 3.0 as well, so no, you just THINK you recognize him. But yes, the main characters should have, IF they actually ever heard it.)
I knew it was Ilberd though, only because he wore a mask, and there would be no point hiding his face, if we the players didnt know who he was already.

of course that was the worst possible idea they could have used.

(1) Ilberd didnt care about doing "the right thing" even for Alamigo, as he was just looking out for himself and coin.
So for him to now suddenly argue about how the "right thing" needs to be done is out of character.

(2) He had no reason to hide his face, other than to prevent the player from seeing it, as the Alamigo resistance isnt going to hate Ilberd for any reason.

(3) being the self centered person he was, he coulda survived the summoning, and used everyone else but himself, as thats more in character of him.

A better idea would be to use the old Tyranical leader of Alamigo (i forget his name) who was over thrown, which lead to garleans invading, while the place was weakened.

He could have wanted to take it back, which makes him look like a good guy, showing a sort of "change" in his way of thinking, trying to be the good guy, only to still want things his way, like before, but now he has been given the power to do so.
He should have finished summoning his primal, AND should have nearly destroyed half of galremald before being stopped.

Not one single player actually thinks Garlemald will be destroyed before we go to visit them.

Imagine how different the world/story would be, with such a devastating blow to the empire.

Anyways, they took the cheap route, and used cliched story methods, to reach uninteresting results.