The Voice Acting. . .

[ElHeggunte]

MMO's like WoW manage decent voice actors right down to random humanoid mobs that spot you in the open world. Their world quests and invasions are largely voice acted, side quests, main quests, regular npc's you click on, raid bosses and so on. WoW has some very memorable voice acted boss lines.

It's easy for WoW when you have Chris Metzen voicing 90% of your characters and bosses*.

Also, world quest "voice acting" and the generic lines from NPCs gets old very fast and I'm full glad that most games don't follow suit. I can only hear "GREYMANE'S FORCES HOLD THIS WARDENS TOWER! BREAK THEIR RANKS! SHOW NO MERCY!" so many times before I want to puncture my eardrums.

*Only a mild exaggeration. Chris has voiced a lot of characters and bosses, many of whom are uncredited.

Edit: The one thing I did like was some NPCs getting upset with you if you clicked on them too many times. Like Taoshi, a Pandaren rogue, implying that your body will never be found if you persist in annoying her.

[Nandina]

I'm going to have to stop you here. The voice actors/actresses for Hien, Yugiri, and Yotsuyu for speaking English ARE Japanese voice actors/actresses.

Eleanor Matsuura is Yugiri in Stormblood this time. Andrew Koji is Hien, and Naoki Mori is Yotsuyu. All 3 are the English speaking voice actors/actresses.

https://twinfinite.net/gallery/voice...v-stormblood/4

Just because they're Japanese, doesn't mean their accents differ. There are plenty of Asian-Americans with typical American accents for example, so you're missing the point I'm making. Have you heard someone who's native language is Japanese speak English? While they may have proper grammar and perfect understanding of English, they don't sound like your typical American. That's what I'm referring to. Let the foreign characters sound foreign.

[Nandina]

I think some are missing the point of the thread. It really isn't about the quality of the voice acting, though tbh, it's a hit or a miss for me. It's really about immersion. If there's a region inspired by the country of India, then I expect to hear an Indian accent for example. And if not an Indian accent, something different than the general one heard. If SE can take immersion so far as to make as repeatedly run back and forth for fetch quests, I'm sure they can further immerse us with the voice acting. $12.99 USD from thousands of subscribers can surely fund this.

[Kurando]

snip .

We also have to consider that characters like Hien and Yotsuyu are (or were) high up in social status and just like in real life, such people would of mastered a foreign language or two whether it was part of education growing up or required/learnt on the job. Several royal families in the world for example can speak something foreign perfectly and you would never actually know where they are from, so with these characters their accents are just fine and what I would expect. You'll also be surprised how well foreigners can perfect a language if they try. As for the common folk such as the odd NPC's that have a speaking role but are not pivotal to the story then yes maybe they should have accents.

Although it's also possible the Echo instantly interprets everything (or almost) everything the same so that's why there is little difference. A bit like in Star Trek the universal translator made almost every alien race American... which seemed silly, but that's how they did it.

[Nestama]

The problem around giving characters (of a different culture) an accent is that the person voicing them will need to be of that culture as well (I feel. As an example, having a white guy do a Japanese accent doesn't sound like a good idea, imo). That way it sounds natural... though that's also if they can voice act (take Forbidden Siren 2 for example. The voice acting is great in Japanese, but not so much in English... even though I think they got the Japanese voice actors to voice in English as well).

Voice acting in general is pretty expensive (especially in this game as there's Japanese, English, French and German voice actors) and I'd rather my sub payments go toward gameplay/QoL stuff than voice acting stuff.

[Nandina]

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I can't co-sign that, fully. I speak multiple languages myself, and while I agree that's it's possible to mostly erase an accent with much practice and persistence, Hien and Yotsuyu should still have a different accent, particularly a Garlean accent as oppossed to an Eorzean one. And if we were to assume the Echo was a universal translator, it wouldn't explain why characters without the Echo are able to converse, despite being from foreign lands, which means that the language is the same.

[Nandina]

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This is the one counter argument that makes the most sense to me. There would be a ton of people getting offended if someone mimicked their accent. But my argument to voice acting being expensive is that, if they're going to hire a voice actor to do a specific character, why not just hire one that already has the differing accent? Unless maybe those who voice key NPCs also voice others. Then I could more easily concede the point.

[Powe]

Well since this is still technically spoilers I’m gonna change be names, the English voice actress for the lunar bunny goddess did amazing, like I think she did even better than the Japanese VA, the way she changed her voice during the fight showed how the primal was trying to take full control while our favorite witch tried to take it back. While yes some VAs are ehhhhhh, I love with who we got( though maybe We can get Malps old VA back please >< ) also I love a British accent

[Kurando]

snip.

Ok let's say for the sake of argument that they needed a Garlean accent, why would it only now be an issue when there have been many Garleans (with speaking parts) in ARR and HW? I mean the biggest example we have here is Cid, why does he speak like an Eorzean? What should a Garlean accent actually sounds like? Because it seems SE have since the beginning had no intention to seperate the two, perhaps they don't deem it necessary or there is some lore relating reasons that haven't been revealed yet.

[HyoMinPark]

You have to remember, they likely didn't set a contract on many of the ARR voice actors due to the issues that had plagued 1.0. they weren't sure if they were going to have a success or not.

^ To be fair, by the time Stormblood (Heavensward even) rolled around, they should have pretty much known the game was a success.

Also have to consider the idea that some may not have wanted to renew their contracts regardless of how successful the subsequent expansions were—maybe SE wasn’t offering them enough money to do so, maybe they had other contracts from for other projects that conflicted, or maybe they didn’t renew for personal reasons. We don’t really know.