Cid sounds like a pirate now

In Shadowbringers, I finally got to the part when he actually speaks again and his voice sounded so different I t nearly screwed up the whole mood of the cutscene for me. Had to look up what happened to his voice. Did he spend too much time in Limsa while we were on the First or something? xD

Many voices in 5.4 were different due to lack of direction, practice, equipment or all three. Cid had not been voiced since 3.5, so it may have been all three.

At one point I found myself head-cannoning that Cid had a sore throat or something which made me realise that might not be far from the truth. It's possible the voice actor may have been recovering from COVID as even a "mild" case plays hell on your lungs.

The VA sounding is probably changed due they are recorded at home instead at the studio (pandemic). Different equipments leads to different sounding easily.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Soge01

In Shadowbringers, I finally got to the part when he actually speaks again and his voice sounded so different I t nearly screwed up the whole mood of the cutscene for me. Had to look up what happened to his voice. Did he spend too much time in Limsa while we were on the First or something? xD

---

I assume you mean English, I hadn't noticed anything different about him or anyone else myself, I run Japanese audio.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lanadra

I assume you mean English, I hadn't noticed anything different about him or anyone else myself, I run Japanese audio.

---

Cid's English VA has been through the ringer essentially. The OG was replaced along with the entire English VA cast with the transition to HW due to SE switching which VA studio they patronized, and from then on out because Cid barely gets any voiced lines going forward his performances have always been spotty. Made worse by the fact that his VA hadn't appeared in over two years with this patch /and/ the COVID issues forcing his VA to record at home. Most of the English VA's this and last patch have this issue though. You can pretty clearly tell there's a drop in quality and direction because they weren't able to be in the studio to be properly supervised with industry level equipment.

Pretty sure VA was changed. He sounds like a completely different character.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MagiusNecros

Pretty sure VA was changed. He sounds like a completely different character.

---

Gwilym Lee is still credited so I'm not entirely sure that's the case.

Well, at least he doesn't still sound like he does in the Praetorium.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jennah

Well, at least he doesn't still sound like he does in the Praetorium.

---

The original (2.0) voice actors were replaced for HW, which is why he doesn't sound that way anymore. I still miss the Admiral's voice from that era ...

Yeah I generally like the VA in this game but when Cid started talking in that cutscene I remember thinking to myself "this sounds really bad, this doesn't sound like a professional doing a serious voice"

This is why I enjoy Japanese voice acting standards. You generally get the same actor for the character for rest of time.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Canadane

This is why I enjoy Japanese voice acting standards. You generally get the same actor for the character for rest of time.

---

Soken addressed this awhile back.

Quote:

---

GE: The voice acting in Heavensward… I noticed a lot of NPCs have different voices now and I was wondering why those changes were made?

S: It’s a tough question to answer. When we’re thinking of the business of an MMORPG we would love to use the same voice actor throughout the series, but there are contractual obligations and sometimes it doesn’t allow for us to buy the rights to their voice for a perpetual amount of times. Sometimes there are other reasons that might come up and so we would have to sometimes recast the actors that are voicing our NPCs. Our intent is that we want to avoid having to recast them.

This might be because it’s a long running game, it might be out of the ordinary, but if a voice actor decides to leave the industry, it would be inevitable that we would have to recast them.

There are instances where within the development process that we would have to recast and have new actors record voices for certain NPCs. Our stance however is that we’d love to keep as many of them as possible from 2.0 moving forward, continuing to reprise their roles in upcoming expansions and the updates throughout.

Sometimes due to business reasons we have to change the voice actors. From the creative side of things however we want to keep them, it’s not a situation where we don’t like them or anything like that.

---

My honest guess? Something happened on the contractual side of things. Either they couldn't keep paying for the VA's they had, because if you look at the names some of them are VERY big names, and had to switch studios. An unlikely scenario is that they had to switch recording studios due to moving their sound team to a different state but SE isn't the NA Anime Industry where that is actually a concern due to VA companies being primarily congregated in like three states, so I doubt that's what happened.

Yeah that's exactly why I said I prefer the Japanese standards.
You don't see things like that happening very often.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Canadane

Yeah that's exactly why I said I prefer the Japanese standards.
You don't see things like that happening very often.

---

I'm sort of the same way. The Japanese VAs of most most games and anime a far, far, far better than their english counterparts. I only listen to FFXIV's english VAs because I'm just used to it and don't feel like transitioning. Plus they're actually quite decent compared to other english VAs. Especially the anime ones who all tend to sound the same with little to no effort put in their acting.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Canadane

This is why I enjoy Japanese voice acting standards. You generally get the same actor for the character for rest of time.

---

Exactly why I stick to JP audio also. Consistency.

Well, that and the fact that a good few of my favorite Japanese seiyuu's voice characters in this game.

The reason for the English VA change from ARR to HW is because of contracts. The original studio was in Los Angeles then it changed to a voice acting studio located in the United Kingdom. So funny enough all the accents are genuine now. For Cid, his HW and onward VA is from Bristol, which has the same accent that the "pirate accent" originated from.

As far as preferring one language over the other, my friends who speak Japanese as a first language said that the Japanese voice acting can be really bad and over the top or just plain wrong a lot of the time. Some of it is really good but a lot of it the voice actors just go full ham and the difference in quality in the same scene is distracting. Everyone has the same flat accent and it’s not like the English version where you can tell which country some of the characters are from based on their accent.

I think it’s one of those cases where if you don’t know the language, you can’t tell how bad it is lol.

Video please

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jin-

Video please

---

Skip to 1:05:10

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Canadane

Yeah that's exactly why I said I prefer the Japanese standards.
You don't see things like that happening very often.

---

Me too, and of course, for people who know Japanese, there is a whole different story in some places. Significantly different to the janky English audio.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shibi

Me too, and of course, for people who know Japanese, there is a whole different story in some places.

---

How so, out of curiosity? I know about Haurchefant being written very differently in terms of personality - but are there any other major differences elsewhere?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Theodric

How so, out of curiosity? I know about Haurchefant being written very differently in terms of personality - but are there any other major differences elsewhere?

---

The one that jumps out at me is the puns, I do know that Koji-memelord-Fox has altered the English translation to be more irreverent than the Japanese text. The WoL being so done with everything during the Nier raid is apparently an English thing. The English translation often differs in subtle but noticeable ways from the other three as twitter user Ashara_xiv compiled here in regards to one quest:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EygJKfnV...name=4096x4096

(Open the image in a new tab since the forums aren't wanting to play nice right now with the sizing.)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Theodric

How so, out of curiosity? I know about Haurchefant being written very differently in terms of personality - but are there any other major differences elsewhere?

---

Midgardsormr and Fray are the two that I seem to remember.