The Voice Acting. . .

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Originally Posted by Theodric

Voice acting is a very expensive undertaking. Would it be nice to have each in-game region have a distinct accent? Sure - but it'd cost an immense amount of money, especially when you consider that they're already paying to have voice acting for many different languages.

The English voice acting improved considerably as of Heavensward and beyond. As a British guy, it's very nice to see the various different accents associated with the UK reflected in such a prominent game.

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It doesn't have to be substantially more expensive. Like you can pay one voice actor who can do multiple voices/accents. Many of the best voice actors can switch it up convincingly well. But yes, I've def noticed the different voices for the same character. It threw me off more than once.

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Originally Posted by Nandina

It doesn't have to be substantially more expensive. Like you can pay one voice actor who can do multiple voices/accents. Many of the best voice actors can switch it up convincingly well. But yes, I've def noticed the different voices for the same character. It threw me off more than once.

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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.

Yugiri's first VA was also murdered, so its kinda hard to keep the same one in that case. It was a sad event that happened a few years ago.

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

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Originally Posted by Theodric

Voice acting is a very expensive undertaking. Would it be nice to have each in-game region have a distinct accent? Sure - but it'd cost an immense amount of money, especially when you consider that they're already paying to have voice acting for many different languages.

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Indeed and Enix is only a small indie company...

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.

FF14's english voice acting is so terrible I switched to japenese and never looked back. If they're stretching themselves across too many languages, it's another example of bad planning, like using the 1.0 game engine. As I've said before, FF14-ARR feels like a game they never expected to succeed and invested minimal budget in and now it's a success they're stuck on improving it. They never made plans to. They had no confidence in themselves as developers, and still don't have any, and are paying the price.

I always feel weird in these conversations because outside of a few voices I've never found the english voice acting that offensive, while others treat it like it's the worst acting they've ever heard. Certainly better than most english dubbed anime.

The voice acting is not that bad at all, and to be honest as a European I'd much prefer the voices to be in British English than American, as the latter truly is terrible (most anime and games can confirm it). It's fine if some players prefer it in Japanese instead, but generally it doesn't change anything and unless you know that language inside and out then a lot of the interpretation can actually be lost.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

Yugiri's first VA was also murdered

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Wrong. It was her second voice actor who was murdered (ARR and HW 3.0 Yugiri are not the same people).

Anyway, the English voice acting (and localisation) in this game is fine (fantastic, even). I get people have their preferences, but I am going to disagree with the people who say it reminds them of a really poorly dubbed anime (when I read "really poorly dubbed," I think of things like Chaos Wars. Yes, this is real).

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

MMO's like WoW manage decent voice actors right down to random humanoid mobs that spot you in the open world.

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Ah, yes - WoW.

It's ironic that it's brought up given the supposed context of this thread when WoW's voice acting largely consists of American accents and little else (bar a few exceptions).

Personally I vastly prefer FFXIV's voice acting - a lot of the 'open world' voice acting in WoW is just various orcs and demons screaming in over the top voices about how the world is going to burn.

FFXIV is a breath of fresh air when so many MMO's lean on American voice acting and little else. The localisation of FFXIV is also a large reason as to why I stick with it.

I love the English localisation of this game but even I'll admit that they've had a few... flounders, especially since Stormblood's release.
Off the top of my head I can think of two scenes where it feels like the voice acting doesn't quite match what is being said or what the character's animations and movements are (Alisaie saying Alphinaud isn't bouyant and Asahi's breakdown). I don't know if it was a result of bad directing, the VA's having little more to work with than the script itself, or both, but they're two cases where I definitely went "Ok this clearly wasn't localised properly and it probably makes a lot more sense with the Japanese VAs" and sure enough, at least Asahi's scene is much, much better in JP.

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Originally Posted by Nandina

If you were to close your eyes, you couldn't distinguish a Doman like Hien from your typical Eorzean NPC. Like given the whole far eastern theme, wouldn't it have made more sense to use a Japanese man with a Japanese accent? To be honest, it doesn't even have to be Japanese, per se, just different.

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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