Hot Take. Wuk Lamat's voice actor does a good job...most of the time.

I've been seeing a lot of very strong opinions for or against Wuk Lamat because of their voice acting. Figured I would throw a slightly more nuanced take.

I feel like this is an issue of these the voice direction they gave Sena Bryer or that Sena Bryer may just struggle with inflection of their voice during emotional moments.

During voiced cutscenes where nothing intense is going on, I think they do a great job and never had a moment that took me out of the experience.

During emotional moments, however, I feel like their delivery is a bit flat or stilted. I can tell they are trying to inflect to sound sad, angry, intensely motivated; but it just doesn't land how I hope.

I really hope Sena Bryer can work on this because I love the character and I think overall they fit well.

I have to agree, I actually like her VA. From what I've heard from others, any issues she might have with more emotional scenes could also be on part of the voice director, so that might not be her fault.

I thought maybe it was bad direction too, but I genuinely enjoyed all of the new voice actors this expansion minus Wuk Lamat's VA. And for me what solidified that it's Wuk Lamat's VA doing a poor job is how often she drops her accent and forgets about it, especially during scenes where she is being emotional. Koana's VA did an amazing job, Otis' VA did an amazing job, Sphene's VA did an amazing job, Bakool Ja Ja, hell even Zoraal Ja's VA did an amazing job IMO.

Were there issues with some of the voices sounding glitchy/bad quality sometimes? Sure. But all of the acting was still there. This was not the case with Wuk Lamat's voice acting. Every time I would get invested into a cut scene her bad acting would always take me out of it, and it happened a lot because she was in like literally all of the cut scenes.

She's great when she's not required to display any emotion. The "SPHENE! LISTEN TO ME!" in the final fight was actually painful.

I mean, most of us could do well if all we had to do was read lines without any emotion lol. But she is a voice actor. She should not sound like she is simply reading a book aloud when something big is happening, or even when you aren't supposed to be emotive for that matter.

I also agree. The Wuk Lamat voice was one of the things of her that didn't annoy me.
Things like here screaming a name I won't mention because of spoilers was kinda flat but the voice itself was ok. Not groundbreaking but not bad either. It was at a good english voice over level.
So Sena Bryer was the voice actor? I give my upvote for that.
The voice actor is not responsible for the role of Wuk Lamat in the story.

I had more problems with the kids in the last zone.

I liked the voice acting for Wuk Lamat in the end. I don't believe the VA had a lot of range, which I think comes with a good VA director and experience. However, the character was so flat and 2d I don't think a lot of dimension was needed. No matter which VA did Wuk's voice, the character's dialogue and story were the problems. Slap on some nice paint onto a piece of garbage isn't going to make it stink any less.

But yeah, I stuck with the english side and though when I checked out the JP it was much better, I've grown too attached to those eng VA's to throw in the towel due to bad VA directing and a horrible MSQ.

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Originally Posted by DonutSteel

I have to agree, I actually like her VA. From what I've heard from others, any issues she might have with more emotional scenes could also be on part of the voice director, so that might not be her fault.

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I have come to this thread to say this : even the best voice actors when badly directed are not capable of doing a great job. Moreover, there's always multiple takes on each voiceline and the director choosed to keep this ones because they were thinking it was good enough. You can put it in any form you want but imo the blame should solely be on the voice director because they choosed to hire this VA, keep their voicelines etc. That's their job to make the final cut and as such are the true culprit.

Yeah, I absolutely agree. I think 90% of her work is pretty damn good, and I love the accent.

Whenever she has to scream or express high emotions, however... Yikes.

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Originally Posted by Higashikata

She's great when she's not required to display any emotion. The "SPHENE! LISTEN TO ME!" in the final fight was actually painful.

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Yeah, that whole mid-fight cutscene was pretty cringey and kinda ruins the fight. I think that's one of the worst VA scenes. Not to mention it's just way too long and empty for a mid-fight cutscene.

Honestly I had many issues with Wuk Lamat’s character but the VA was very bottom of the list for me. As others have said, I did feel like she struggled with certain more emotive scenes, but in general I thought she was fine for ‘optimistic youthful protagonist’ vibe they wanted for her. Plus, it’s hard to say which parts are the VA and which parts are things like voice direction etc. I feel like maybe a better script would’ve served the voice actor much better tbh.