American accent in CRPGs. Yes or No?

[ThacoBell]

American accents are very dull and boring as it is, having to listen to them yet again in a video game is just torture. And its completely out of place, even for colonies. Imagine if BG1 or BG2 had such low quality accents, how would you have been able to immerse into the game? Imagine if Sarevok spoke with the dull american accent, would you have played the game and subsequently played all its babies like POE?

What accent do you think Sarevok speaks in? Sounds American to me. Also, racist

[Yonjuro]

....

You can't have it both ways.  If one real world accent is immersion breaking, so are the rest of them.  Don't confuse their accent with just average or poor VO.

 

 That's pretty much it - it mostly comes down to the quality of voice acting. 

 

 Other than that, there are a few things that can go wrong. One is that if an accent is strongly regional or identifiable, it will carry whatever associations that accent has for the listener. For example, if a character in Deadfire was channeling Steve Irwin, the crocodile hunter (that is, a strong Australian accent), that would have an effect, probably a bad (or, at least, comedic) one for most Americans whereas, for an Australian it might sound fine (especially if everybody in the game had Australian accents). 

 

 On the flip side, if an accent is unidentifiable, either completely made up or just done poorly,  that can be distracting. The best (or, perhaps, worst) example I can think of is when call centers in India tried to train representatives to speak with an American accent. The result was often completely unintelligible whereas, if they had spoken in their own South Asian English accent, it would usually have been fine.

 

 I don't know what conclusion we can really draw except that voice acting is easy to get wrong, sometimes because it's bad and other times because it reminds some of the listeners of things that are unrelated to the game.

[arober]

American accents are very dull and boring as it is, having to listen to them yet again in a video game is just torture. And its completely out of place, even for colonies. Imagine if BG1 or BG2 had such low quality accents, how would you have been able to immerse into the game? Imagine if Sarevok spoke with the dull american accent, would you have played the game and subsequently played all its babies like POE?

 

There are many youtubers who post vids them playing POE who have a much more appropriate voice/accent than many of the voices in the game. I dont think its a budget problem, its something else

as a person who works every single day with lots of Brits, I can say that nothing is more boring than a pretend fantasy person speaking like they're in a high shool production of Macbeth.

 

maybe consider that what is boring to you, will actually be refreshing for a whole bunch of people.

 

and also tell me this - what makes you an authority on how kith from Eora should speak? do you have a degree in Eora linguistics and phonetics? have you created this world and can speak with confidence about how an Island Aumaua raised in the Ixamitl Plains or whatever would sound? what exactly does "appropriate" mean in this concept?

[Yonjuro]

American accents are very dull and boring as it is, having to listen to them yet again in a video game is just torture. And its completely out of place, even for colonies. Imagine if BG1 or BG2 had such low quality accents, how would you have been able to immerse into the game? Imagine if Sarevok spoke with the dull american accent, would you have played the game and subsequently played all its babies like POE?

 

 

 

 Uhh, Sarevok did have an American accent. Very American, in fact.

 

 Several of the major characters in BG1&2 had American accents. Some of the actors used unusual prosody (stress, rhythm etc.) with an American accent to make the character sound interesting. 

[gkathellar]

I was sort of charmed by what Dragon Age did, where all of the humans had various European accents, and the elves and dwarves had American accents.

 

In general, though, I'm all for American accents because I'm honestly just tired of everybody in fantasy media having an English accent. I get it, people associate England with knights and horses and peasants and whatever. Can we move on?

[Masticator]

I didn't care for Xoti's voice at first, but it grew on me. I'm in love with her voice now. I was even imagining her voice outside of the game. That's not crazy is it? The other Dawnstars accents I still don't care for though. But Xoti is my girl, so don't say anything bad about her.

 

The above post says Dragon Age elves had American accents, but Sera had this weird Irish accent thing going. And the bald one has an English accent I believe. And then there's Merril, the one everyone hates. I can't remember what hers was, Irish maybe? I'm okay with how Dragon Age handled it. Wither series was fine as well.

 

Consistency is the thing. I get why Americans may not want American accents because it seems too familiar. But keep in mind these games sell just as well in Europe as they do in the U.S. and Canada. And they I'm sure they sell decent in some Asian markets as well. Maybe to them an American accent sounds more exotic (though probably not because of so much American media over there).

[Juodas Varnas]

I didn't care for Xoti's voice at first, but it grew on me. I'm in love with her voice now. I was even imagining her voice outside of the game. That's not crazy is it? The other Dawnstars accents I still don't care for though. But Xoti is my girl, so don't say anything bad about her.

 

The above post says Dragon Age elves had American accents, but Sera had this weird Irish accent thing going. And the bald one has an English accent I believe. And then there's Merril, the one everyone hates. I can't remember what hers was, Irish maybe? I'm okay with how Dragon Age handled it. Wither series was fine as well.

 

Consistency is the thing. I get why Americans may not want American accents because it seems too familiar. But keep in mind these games sell just as well in Europe as they do in the U.S. and Canada. And they I'm sure they sell decent in some Asian markets as well. Maybe to them an American accent sounds more exotic (though probably not because of so much American media over there).

I think Merrill had a Welsh accent.

 

I liked it. It was adorable.

[Jorian Drake]

"American accent in CRPGs. Yes or No?"

 

I am Hungarian and play RPGs now for over 20 years. If you start discussing languages then I should start with asking why even speak in any form of English to begin with? In the end the used language doesn't matter, unless you want immersion and make a game in something like let's say a fantasy India and you want Indian dialects, or a fantasy Mongolia (under whatever fantasy name these would be called) and have Mongolian voice actors.

 

Accents and dialects don't matter if the game is not taking place on Earth, especially if you don't play games in the published languages (like sometimes the case for US-ians with Japanese or European games) worrying over these makes absolutely no sense anyway.

 

edit: looking through above comments I note I wouldn't mind a campaign taking place in a region where everyone speaks in Polish, Lithuanian and German instead of English and have this all be subbed for those players who don't understand these languages. It would be quite refreshing from all the standard 'everything is English' games.

Edited May 21, 2018 by Jorian Drake

[Tagaziel]

I'm an American from the south but I don't have an accent like from Louisiana or Texas. Xoti's voice made me want to gouge my ears out. And that stupid idiot kid from Eder's quest and all those idiot Dawnstars made me cringe whenever they said "Gaderian Bosc" outloud. It's awful, that whole accent is awful. I don't mind it in real life, but I don't know, hearing it in a fantasy setting threw me off and I don't like it. I feel like that whole accent is a result of a decline in education haha. Just....terrible 

 

Eder is from Dyrwood and doesn't sound like that. He does sound like a regular American from the south. The Dawnstars all sound like they screw their cousins and live in a swamp.

That sounds like Readceras, all right.

[Masticator]

I did forget to mention one thing that bothered me. A couple mispronunciations bothered me. As a Navy veteran the mispronunciations of forecastle bothered me. I know you can actually say it like it is, but I believe the character saying it was a sailor, and it should have been pronounced like sailors pronounce it. There was also one other word that was mispronounced, I don't remember what it was exactly, but it was a word that was probably of French origin and should have been pronounced that way.

[Lord_Mord]

 

I dislike any voice acting in crpgs in general, because i play these games in my mother language. It's ruining my immersion when i read something and hear the same in english, so i just disable speech sounds.

 

Dann spiel's Englisch, weil die Übersetzung eh' nix daugt. Oder dreh' die Stimmen ab. Kann man im Menü seperat einstellen.

[MaymAU]

Words cannot express how much I dislike strong American accent's in PoE2.

 

Xoti is terrible, Eder is great. Eder is subtle, Xoti is jarring and shatters the illusion of this being a fantasy game in another world.

 

There is no precedent for strong southern accents in fantasy and trying to establish it now is ridiculous immersion breaking. As soon as Xoti gets excited I feel like she's going to burst into colloquialisms any second, or I add them in myself, which makes it worse.

 

To be fair, this is no worse than strong Aussie accents (G'day!), West London (Just go up them apples and pears) that I've heard in recent games, but it's just too much to bear sometimes.

 

Xoti works when she is talking quietly and suppressing the stronger, but when I imagine her screaming Yeehaw I just cringe.

 

I'm hoping someone will create a mod that lets me disable some NPCs voiceovers

[Fardragon]

Making up accents from scratch is pretty much impossible, so you pretty much have to use a real world accent. Then, if you want to create a national identity for your fictional lands, it's pretty much inevitable that you say "people from here speak with that accent".

 

I'm fine with American accents, probably because I'm not American. Is Xoti southern? I'm not familar enough with it to identify, it just sounds exotic. I think people start to have issues when the accent is too familar. Although in the case of London and Scottish accents, I'm fine if they are authentic, it's just when they sound fake (which is usually the case, especially in US TV shows) that it jars. I've never heard a Scouse accent in a computer game! Perhaps because Americans can't tell the difference between Scouse, Mancunian and Brummie?

[gloomseeker]

After my first run through Deadfire I've been replaying BG and NWN2 (among other things) and there are some instances of American accents but they're not too obvious; with the exception of the High-strung Evangelist soundset which was probably meant as a joke and of course Imoen who sounds like a California girl.

 

With that being said it's probably a question of context, when I played Mass Effect Andromeda I was slightly taken aback by some of the aliens having an Australian accent. There was an explanation for that but it was indeed a bit odd and for the record it's not the accent as I'm totally fine with characters having such an accent in Mad Max.