[Feedback] Wuk Lamat's English Voice

[Yshnal]

I play the game in Japanese, so I had to go back and listen to the cutscenes to see first hand what people are talking about. And yes, it's terrible. Everyone already noticed it before the expansion, and despite the hopes of some that the quality would improve in 7.0, apparently the same issues are still there. The acting range is not very good, and both the tone/pitch and accent sound really forced, especially at times (and worse, it's the most important ones, like when the actress should put her all in delivering an emotional line).

I think that an effort is made, but the talent and/or experience to achieve the intended result is not there. As I commented when this was discussed before the expansion, the actress tries to do many things at once with her voice because they don't come naturally to her, and ends up failing on them all. Moreover, due to focusing on that the acting also suffers.

It was not the best casting for a character with so many lines of dialogue, where these issues become even more glaring. For that reason I can definitely see it downgrading the whole experience, and I can understand people's complaints.

[BunnyQueen]

It's bad. I feel like the character was miscast. Why did an American get hired for the role when the hiring studio is based out of London and everyone we've gotten has been from the UK so far?

The accent and pronunciation varies wildly and it shows how amateurish she is in comparison to the rest of the cast. I don't want to have to listen to a mid delivery from a character we're going to be stuck with for the entire expansion.

Give us the ability to swap language for specific characters so I can listen to the superior Japanese Tomboy Wuk.

TRANSPHOBES NOT WELCOME. THIS IS A TOPIC ABOUT BAD VOICE ACTING.

I love the VA, she did a good job IMO. Also love the msg at the bottom of your post.

[Mapleine]

Aside from Wuk, something feels like it changed, which is a huge problem given that the 3.0 cast and direction is what really gave XIV a lot of legitimacy in the West with voice work on par with old PC RPGs.

Dawntrail by contrast sounds far more akin to a rote JRPG, especially the newer voices. It sounds cheap and flat overall and comes across as very awkward compared past expansions.

It's like going from FF12, which used hand cast theater actors to... some rando Atlus game which uses social media or a cheap anime dubbing house to fill roles. Something is **off** ...Did Square lose so much money that they need to penny pinch XIV localizations?

[ClayyLmao]

Aside from Wuk, something feels like it changed, which is a huge problem given that the 3.0 cast and direction is what really gave XIV a lot of legitimacy in the West with voice work on par with old PC RPGs.

Dawntrail by contrast sounds far more akin to a rote JRPG, especially the newer voices. It sounds cheap and flat and overall comes across as very awkward compared past expansions.

There's a new VA director and she's been hiring her friends from twitter instead of people actually qualified for the roles.

[RabendaShin]

There's a new VA director and she's been hiring her friends from twitter instead of people actually qualified for the roles.

This would explain so, so much. The quality in both voice acting and localisation seems to have gone down tremendously. Including the bad writing in the MSQ , these practices are making me reconsider continuing my subscription. Sadly, the battle content does not make up for it at the moment.
I don't want this game to rot from the inside like other media I enjoyed before, and would rather keep my fond memories of FFXIV safe.

[Karious]

I hope this is a wake up call for SE and they reel in Kate's power over hiring. I don't want American anime dub quality in this game.

[starstorm91]

I'm not even kidding when I say that Wuk Lamat's english voice acting could be replaced with an AI voice and there would barely be a difference in quality. The VA director being this incompetent needs to have consequences and be removed from their position, no ifs, ands or buts.

[Aelin_Ashryver]

Swapped to JP voice and it's so much nicer... I'll be going through msq on an alt in JP and see the full experience vs english.

I hope they go back to the UK studio rather than the American one, they did not do a good job at the LA studio.

[TheOperator3712]

I'm not even kidding when I say that Wuk Lamat's english voice acting could be replaced with an AI voice and there would barely be a difference in quality. The VA director being this incompetent needs to have consequences and be removed from their position, no ifs, ands or buts.

That's an insult to AI, AI could do a better job.

[Amh_Wilzuun]

Wuk Lamat's performance was good. People are being overly-dramatic because a few bad takes that was likely due to bad direction.