Why did they change all the voice actors?

To be honest, I like Alphinaud's new voice a lot more than the old one. The only new voices that really kinda bother me are Merlywb and Yugiri.

Please please please bring back the old English VAs -_-

I am curious, do we know whether they recorded the voice acting of both the ARR & Patch 2.xx at the same time? If they did, that could explain why so many characters have new voice actors. I wonder whether it is down to not being able to get the actors, or an actual decision to change them.

Must admit I grew very fond of the old voices, despite the fact these new ones are alright. That being said, Merlwyb really has lost something now... Still, so long as the story is good then I am happy, no matter who is telling it.

I'm pretty sure Alphinaud just went through puberty is all. :P

I feel conflicted about the new VAs. On the one hand, they're all (so far) pretty good, with Merlwyb being the only one I'm iffy about. On the other, while, initially, the original VAs were not as good as the ones we have now, by 2.55 I'd both grown accustomed to them and felt that they had all significantly improved to a level equal to that of the new ones.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by reillyblair

who would hes nearly as annoying as tidus was lol

---

I'm gonna get shot for this, but.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H47ow4_Cmk0

Are there any characters who still have there original voices left? Now that I have played the Main Story a little more, I am inclined to think the whole re-casting was a conscious effort on SE's part. Not sure why though, given how the original cast where very good I thought. Could the old voice actors have been too expensive? (Though I find it hard to believe that ever original voice actor was to expensive to be rehired.)

If I was to put a bet on it, I would wager that they wanted to get a cast in which they know for sure that they can rely on for future patches and expansions via contracts. Given that the game is doing nothing but well it seems, they may be thinking more about the long term future then they were when recording the main ARR story.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Hurlstone

Are there any characters who still have there original voices left?

---

His part is too short to be certain, but I believe Aymeric may be the same voice actor, which is good, since Ser Aymeric of the Voice has the greatest voice in existence (or did, if it's in fact not the same actor).



I'm really just posting to say I'm extremely disappointed with the new voice actors. They are nowhere near the quality of the old ones.

how can anyone be okay with Urianger, Yugiri and Ilberds voice changes? they are bloody terrible terrible TERRIBLE

I actually like Yugiri's new voice, but she pauses at the most random times and it's GRATING.

I wouldn't know. I play with Japanese voices and English subtitles for the few really complex words I don't already know in Japanese.

French voiceovers are the same actors :p

The only thing that bothers me about the english VO is that everyone is British, even the ones that weren't British like Raubhan and they made Merlwhyb (or however it's spelled) have a cockney accent.

I'm more interested in Tatarus VA tbh. Im half starting to believe in one of end of 2.5 theories about her. :P

Sheesh, the more I play the worse it gets. Alphinaud is different, Cid sounded different, now Tataru sounds different and I've heard all of the city leaders have changed too. Did anyone actually survive the expansion? Not a single voice so far (except maybe the elf people I don't care about) has actually remained. It's pretty annoying since even if the acting wasn't the best (can you really blame them with that dialogue?) I just spent a year getting to know these characters and associating their respective voices with them. Now it's like I'm talking to a bunch of strangers who happen to look like people I know. It sucks.

The voice actors sound like they just got a bunch of extras from Game of Thrones and were like "Hey do this video game for us." Alphinaud and Merlwyb are tolerable but I really dislike the new VA for Yugiri.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shadowsun

how can anyone be okay with Urianger, Yugiri and Ilberds voice changes? they are bloody terrible terrible TERRIBLE

---

Wait wait wait, URIANGER has a different voice?

GODDAMNIT.

Big part of why I was looking forward to Heavensward is because I love Gideon Emery's work. :/

There is not enough UGH in the world.

It's a shame that they decided to change the voices, because the actors improved a lot since 2.0. I didn't like them at first, because of the medival-equse the talking was, but they were refreshing to hear, midst all the silent cutscenes. I remember rolling my eyes at Nanamo's obnoxious, child-ish voice (like the scene when she burst out laughing after the Grand Company leaders were convinced to reject Gaius's demands.). Then she got 10x better and mature in the patch stories. THAT'S progress. And now its gone.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by reillyblair

cheaper to get new voice actors then to pay the same ones to return

---

Plus they can replace them and nobody can tell the diddly-ifference.

Least it's better than Dynasty Warriors 3 english dub lmao

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqF8mNNelFM

Gods, they didn't even try to get people that sounded the same. Some are worse then others. Cid and Alph were ok. Yuguri and Merlwyb were bad (like pulled some folks out of HR one day and said "Hey, read some lines in "X" accent" bad), and Urianger and Illberd's VOs were CRIMINAL.

Oddly enough, I didn't mind Rubahn's, but then again, I wasn't a big fan of the original voice actor, either.

Anyway, I understand VO actors might not be available, or they might want more money and you don't want to pay it, but you can't just throw whoever you want to do the voices. Completely different sounding with completely different accents? Totally immersion breaking. It's bad enough that I'm considering turning voices off. Not to mention a lot of the performances were so stiff and wooden that it makes 2.0 core story performances seem lively and emotional in comparison.

English VA in this game is sweet. I wanna marry Merlwyb's VA.

I never understood people who blindly think japanese voices are good regardless of their actual quality just for the sake that it's japanese. I'm American and I speak english, english will always be better for me.

You know for a game developer who seems to place importance on story to the point where even their MMO is heavily story based, these voice actors sure feel like an afterthought.

I am both disgusted and disappointed. If I wasn't already stuck with the early access I might well have canceled my preorder.

I always wonder why they speak in the aristocratic era european english.. it suppose to sound sophisticated?

I didn't have too many issues with most of the new voice actors until Urianger showed up and he wasn't voiced by Gideon Emery anymore...the new VA isn't BAD but he doesn't have the same emotion that Emery brought to the role.

Ilberd's VA change is a crime against humanity though.

I thought Merlwyb's new VA was surprisingly spot on, but she sounds more genuine/friendly now, as opposed to that very dry/sarcastic overtone she had to everything she said before. I prefer her old VA very much, but what we've got isn't the worst, imo. Raubahn and Alphinaud are vast improvements. Tataru... I'm on the fence about.

Yugiri sounds... ick. They couldn't decide if they wanted her to keep the whole British thing or if they wanted her to sound obviously foreign, so they got an actress who could pull off some odd mashup of both? Her odd emphasis on certain words is... just no.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by FoxyAreku

English VA in this game is sweet. I wanna marry Merlwyb's VA.

I never understood people who blindly think japanese voices are good regardless of their actual quality just for the sake that it's japanese. I'm American and I speak english, english will always be better for me.

---

Never understood people who assume that anyone who prefers Japanese voices "blindly think they are good regardless of quality, blah, blah, blah". Stop being insulting and trolling.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kikoten

This is loosely related, but wouldn't it be cool if, for one glorifying moment, in a cutscene somewhere in the game, your character spoke ONE line? I think I saw that done in one of the Grand Theft Auto games, where your character is silent all game, and then, out of nowhere, says something.

---

This would be great if they did something like this :)

As for the voice changes, it'll take some getting used to. It has happened in the past with other games. I'm gladded Alphinaud's voice "manned up". His bratty, cocky voice made me yell "shut up" to him everytime he would open his mouth.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Amelia_Pond_Behemoth

Plus they can replace them and nobody can tell the diddly-ifference.

---

The existence of this topic shows otherwise, js.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by FoxyAreku

English VA in this game is sweet. I wanna marry Merlwyb's VA.

I never understood people who blindly think japanese voices are good regardless of their actual quality just for the sake that it's japanese. I'm American and I speak english, english will always be better for me.

---

I personally didn't think one was any better than the other...

Except for Minfilia. I just did not like the English VA for her, and thought the Japanese VA did a much better job of conveying emotion and reactions.

I hope SE is watching this feedback closely. VA's have been a hot topic all over my server and I imagine its the same on other servers, too. Folks are generally not impressed with the changes.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by FoxyAreku

English VA in this game is sweet. I wanna marry Merlwyb's VA.

I never understood people who blindly think japanese voices are good regardless of their actual quality just for the sake that it's japanese.

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by FoxyAreku

I'm American and I speak english, english will always be better for me.

---

Lol. Arent you doing the exact same thing yourself, but with english?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Berethos

I personally didn't think one was any better than the other...

Except for Minfilia. I just did not like the English VA for her, and thought the Japanese VA did a much better job of conveying emotion and reactions.

---

Nanamo and Merlwyb's voices are awesome in Japanese. (im biased in nanamos case tho)
Overall I feel the english voices dont really match. To be fair, a large part of the reason is probably the english script they are using, not the VA's themselves.

Compare it to say FFXIII-2, I dont think I could ever play it with japanese voices, the english va is just that good (and character fitting)

It sounds like Ser Aymeric's VA (Blake Ritson) is the same, which is good.

I HEAR CHANGES

DO NOT LIKE

It's silly. Voice is one of the key indentifiers for a character, so when you change it... the whole character changes. Whhhhhy did you change Urianger? He was sooo good. Specially after Moenbryda.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Magis

It's silly. Voice is one of the key indentifiers for a character, so when you change it... the whole character changes. Whhhhhy did you change Urianger? He was sooo good. Specially after Moenbryda.

---

Especially when the character is animated, the voice determines so much. So to change it is no trivial matter.

This is like finally getting to see the much anticipated second season of (one of) your favorite series, only to find they recast all the characters with completely different people.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RaideDuku

Gods, they didn't even try to get people that sounded the same. Some are worse then others. Cid and Alph were ok. Yuguri and Merlwyb were bad (like pulled some folks out of HR one day and said "Hey, read some lines in "X" accent" bad), and Urianger and Illberd's VOs were CRIMINAL.

---

I sincerely doubt that was the case.

The point in the storyline I'm at right now, Merlwyb lacks the "authority" tone that was there previously. Illberd... what... I remember him previously having something of an accent, but this seems over-the-top.

Anyhow. It would have been preferable to keep VA's unless they didn't want to continue, or scheduling conflicts. It's a MMO, they could always fix stuff like this later if called for. We shouldn't really be going "oh the voice changed, it's alright, I'll deal", we should be going "No SE, bad *hit with newspaper*" metaphorically.

I really doubt it was a cost thing.

re: other nonsense
Japanese VA's can be awful too. The difference between NA VA's and JP VA's is that American VA's are unionized. That can be a good thing or a bad thing. Outside of the US, there are similar union systems in other English-speaking countries. This is often why you hear the exact same people over and over and over again. The production is either required to hire only from the union, or they can't use anyone from the union.

In the same line of thinking, this is also why a lot of early Anime dubs were terrible. I'm not talking "passable", I'm talking about how American VA's at some point in time found it beneath them to do "anime" dubs, so a lot of productions from the 90's and early 2000's just reused as many people as possible. Where a JP production might have 30 unique voices, the NA production might have 6. When a production decides that they can not afford 30 unique voices to do a few lines, that tells you the producers think it's not going to do well.

In video games, a lot of voices often start out as people on staff, the programmers, the HR department, etc and they save their VA budget for the main character/narrator and antagonist. If there's enough VA budget left over, then they start replacing the worst voices in the game. That's why not every line is read in most video games. We have plenty of space, what we don't have are hundreds of voice actors just to to read out three quest stories. It's often preferable to remove/delete voices from a game, than publish poor quality ones.

Am I the only one who prefers the new voice actors? Although I am still very early in the story, iceheart for example showed more emotion. It seemed less wooden. Anybody noticed this?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Adelard

Am I the only one who prefers the new voice actors? Although I am still very early in the story, iceheart for example showed more emotion. It seemed less wooden. Anybody noticed this?

---

Nope, I prefer most of them too. Only one that I find truely odd is Urianger, it almost makes him feel a different character altogether to me.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Gilraen

English voice acting tends to be treated as one-and-done or contracted for a specific period under the notion that they wouldn't be needed later. A classically bad example of this was the Dragonball/Dragonball Z series where they had around 3-4 different voices for Goku, 2-3 for Vegeta and Picollo. It's not really bad management, either. It's about predicting demand in relation to budget and contract time. Yoshida probably had the original voice actors only contracted up to the completion of all of 2.0's voiced cutscenes. You know, treating XIV like his Final Fantasy MMO. I have no doubt he tried to get his old voice actors back but they probably wanted more money so he went with someone else. Probably how we got different Gokus and Vegetas, too.

---

Erm.....no this is completely wrong. DBZ had so many different voices because it was dubbed by different studios over the years during the 90's. The two main ones that both completed dubbing the entire series was the ocean group which was published by pioneer and obviously funimation which pretty much everyone has had the same voice for all versions of DBZ released on tv/dvd/vhs. The only recent major change was kai where they changed some voices, but prior to that the entire series was dubbed with the same voice cast.

In the case of SE and this game....They have always half assed their voice cast and rarely put much effort into voice consistency. They could have easily built a contract to keep everyone. Hell swtor is practically a dead game and 3 years later all the original voices are still voicing their characters (excluding random NPC's obviously.)