[Feedback] Wuk Lamat's English Voice

[AddictedToWitches]

Dunno why people are targeting her for her orientation or beliefs, when the fact is that she's just a shit va who was unqualified for the role

She has an extraordinarily narrow range and difficulty adjusting pitch or tone to convey emotion, extremely poor pacing, poor clarity, a monotonous, almost derisive cadence that sounds like a customer service operator smiling through their phone, and little consistency in performance of her character's accent

Nothing about her resume speaks to this role, she's self-admittedly a poor casting choice for wuk lamat's character archetype having discussed role suitability a number of times on her socials, and amidst a cast of highly experienced, theatre-trained talent these factors are made all the more blatant

Why she was cast as the lead of this expansion is beyond me

Several times I have stated this exact argument only for people to respond with "Wow, kinda transphobic?"
and it's like, when did I ever talk about her being trans?
It's all so tiresome. I've elected to just shut up and swap to JP voices from now on if no change is made, as I highly doubt anything substantial will happen. Kate will keep her job, and Wuk won't be recast.

[RabendaShin]

Several times I have stated this exact argument only for people to respond with "Wow, kinda transphobic?"
and it's like, when did I ever talk about her being trans?
It's all so tiresome. I've elected to just shut up and swap to JP voices from now on if no change is made, as I highly doubt anything substantial will happen. Kate will keep her job, and Wuk won't be recast.

That’s what happened just a few pages ago. It’s like the classic ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’: don’t point out the obvious lest you risk your head. The hypocrisy of her defenders is staggering, as evident by their responses following my post. I did not mention nepotism or DEI, yet here we are, arguing with each other over hypotheticals.

I’ve read many times that the only place to give SE feedback is the official forums: hence why I suggested highlighting the fault in choosing to cast this troublesome voice actor, be it because of her disappointing performance or her divisive public persona. People have been replaced in projects post-release for less.

[Isseki]

As I said, transparent as hell.

What’s the goal here? Do you earnestly believe any dev is going to give your feedback any consideration at all given its content? You guys are just so empty.

Calling valid feedback empty... I dont know *shrugs*

The goal is simple:
While I doubt it will change anything for now, I hope things will change for the future.
Since I doubt they will recast Wuk Lamat, I just hope we dont have to have her around especially as much as now in further patches.

[wigleht]

Dunno why people are targeting her for her orientation or beliefs, when the fact is that she's just a shit va who was unqualified for the role

because they're forcing an unnatural vocalization technique that's straining and limited due to it. there's a clear reason for being this bad in a particular way

[Shibi]

because they're forcing an unnatural vocalization technique that's straining and limited due to it.

There are any number of professional well known talent who can do top quality accents. It's their actual profession after all. If it was too unnatural for this particular talent, then they are clearly not the right one for the job.

I've witnessed how this particular sausage was made for the best part of a decade. Even if the talent's inability to actually do the character's voice wasn't picked up in casting, or it was a case of covid making their performance lackluster, there are (should be) so many people in the loop, that should have detected these problems before it went to release.

[Zakuyia]

Just the final trail of woke lamat going Speeeeeeene made us in chat go oh wtf that voice single handedly killed any good will I had in that typenof voicing it wast amatuer at best I did some research on voice actor cause thats what you should do. There imd score is mid to low take dawn trail out of list highest they have is 6.0 on down, best part is that it shows in how god awful they are at ranging, screaming, yelling, showing/conveying emotions during voiced cutscenes.

Now if you like Wuk Lamat voice not her jp I mean her English voice then congrats don't let ppl tell you no. Yet for me that voice got me wondering was dawn trail a fever dream and im still in arr and this was a premonition of the future and were the ascians right to wanna rejoin the reflections....oh god....what have we done Emet Selch was right.....

[PaleYonder]

Now if you like Wuk Lamat voice not her jp I mean her English voice then congrats don't let ppl tell you no. Yet for me that voice got me wondering was dawn trail a fever dream and im still in arr and this was a premonition of the future and were the ascians right to wanna rejoin the reflections....oh god....what have we done Emet Selch was right.....

I'll accept that take, good thing that we're warned ahead of time and can do things right.
This is what the Sundering made out of people. There's no salvaging this, we have to put things back in order.

[Nyxs]

We just want a recast so the rest of the expansions isnt ruined. Expecting a good experience isn’t abnormal. In the future perhaps the higher ups should step in to analyze who they are casting as well. There is no way they wanted this to be such a flop yet here we are.

People were expecting a pseudo-vacation where we agreed to go view the competition yet we were forced to do the same menial tasks for others like in ARR (which had to be cut down) for a super annoying women to follow us around preaching.

[RabendaShin]

We just want a recast so the rest of the expansions isnt ruined. Expecting a good experience isn’t abnormal. In the future perhaps the higher ups should step in to analyze who they are casting as well. There is no way they wanted this to be such a flop yet here we are.

People were expecting a pseudo-vacation where we agreed to go view the competition yet we were forced to do the same menial tasks for others like in ARR (which had to be cut down) for a super annoying women to follow us around preaching.

In my opinion the first half of Stormblood had similar issues like Dawntrail with its writing and pacing. At least the voice actors then were well cast, and (as far as I know) presented themselves professionally outside of the scope of FFXIV. Yes, Lyse was disliked as a character, but not to the extent Wuk Lamat currently is. I feel the devs reduced Lyse’s presence due to the criticism she was subject to. They have shown they are willing to course-correct.

For Dawntrail, I can accept the story and characters being badly written, even though in previous expansions the writing was of higher caliber. Ultimately it’s a means to reach the end-game content. I still expect the quality of presentation to be on par with previous expansions. To have the MSQ be dominated by bad voice acting because they cast a contentious person whose character has what feels like 97% of the voiced dialogue… it’s a tough sell. I’m uncertain if I want to keep my subscription if further patches focus on Wuk Lamat.

Be better, Square Enix. Recast and replace Sena Bryer with a better, actually professional voice actor. A full rewrite of the story isn’t possible, but at least make the presentation tolerable without having to suddenly switch to Japanese/German/French after greatly enjoying each previous expansion in English.

[ZephyrMenodora]

We have people in this VERY thread combing through months of Sena's twitter and copy pasting the tweets here trying to paint her as some insane awful person who shouldn't be hired due to her morals. Yea, that's what I would call a bit obsessive. If you don't like her voice, hey cool, I'm not particularly a fan either, but trying to frame this as some insane DEI (wth does that even mean btw, I just know alt-right types use it when they're talking about wokeness taking over) is just ridiculous.

The reason this has happened is the "star" of this expansion's performance is so jarringly bad in multiple scenes, that people wondered who this is and how in the world they got the role. It doesn't take more than a minute of curiosity to scroll.

I follow multiple voice actors (that I actually like) on Twitter. They are kind of my version of celebrity as a gamer, and it's fun to see what their new projects will be.

Personally I avoided Sena's since amidst all her boasting about how her work is universally loved, I'd be tempted to disagree and why bother. If they want to live in a delusional world that her performance is universally praised and that makes her feel good - whatever.