[Feedback] Wuk Lamat's English Voice

[Turtledeluxe]

Being Hispanic does not magically give you an accent or the ability to successfully perform other accents. Just ask any person from Idaho trying to speak with a Boston accent.

Try harder.

I can confirm I've heard Sena's real voice, about five minutes ago, and the accent is totally fake. As someone who thinks the performance itself is on par with most VA in XIV, I still find it a bit upsetting they hired someone to fake an accent. I understand the VA is Hispanic and were probably inspired by family or something, so it's not the absolute worst case, but it's still kinda cringe.

Didn't the team like..pledge not to do this exact thing??

[Folsom]

I can confirm I've heard Sena's real voice, about five minutes ago, and the accent is totally fake. As someone who thinks the performance itself is on par with most VA in XIV, I still find it a bit upsetting they hired someone to fake an accent. I understand the VA is Hispanic and were probably inspired by family or something, so it's not the absolute worst case, but it's still kinda cringe.

Didn't the team like..pledge not to do this exact thing??

Exactly. They managed to cast someone who made Gulool Ja Ja sound authentically Central American, with the aspiration of the s on point. But for some reason Wuk Lamat sounds like a someone doing a parody of a Spanish accent, exaggerated and inconsistent. It wouldn't be as bad if she were a side character, or if she were doing an accent she could actually perform, but she's the primary character. It's like SE's English voice casting team just gave up and said, "eh, this will have to do." Or, as someone said, connections with other staff might be a good explanation.

Tangent, and mostly an irrelevant nitpick: Accents don't make sense in Final Fantasy XIV. To have a Spanish accent, someone has to have either spoken or been around people who speak Spanish; similarly with Hindi. But no one speaks Spanish in Tuliyollal; not even the crowd mumbles are in Spanish. Everyone speaks fluent Eorzean--and I mean fluent, first language, "I was educated at the Studium" Eorzean, minus the occasional Limsan pirate or brigand. You can walk up to a random NPC who lives in the wilds and has clearly never even been to major city, and there's no dialectical or educational variation outside of very specific characters, which results in everyone sounding exactly the same in text, and often in voiced speech as well.

[DiaDeem]

Accents don't make sense in Final Fantasy XIV

English changes from country to country, and even region to region within the US.

What doesn't make sense is to give accents in the game correlating to zones in the real world, and it's actually only a thing with Radz-at-Han and Southern Tuliyolal for some reason. Hien and company don't have a Chinese accent, Magnai and Sadu don't have a Mongolian accent, Garleans don't have a Siberian or Norse accent, Horse the Fount and company don't have a French accent etc. Once we get to Shaaloani, we get no more IRL region-corelating accents, not even some really bad Native-American one, thankfully.

Overall, It doesn't bother me as much in general, but yes: It doesn't really make sense to have Spanish (or any other language) give region-corelating accents in XIV. I have no idea why they did this for Radz and Southern Tuliyolal.

[Folsom]

English changes from country to country, and even region to region within the US.

Right, but that's usually because of drift when people are isolated from each other (though it also happens because of exposure to and absorption of other language's traits) and aren't exposed to developing linguistic changes and youth slang. It's extremely unlikely that English would drift and develop a Spanish accent without actual influence from Spanish, which doesn't seem to exist on Etheirys at all. If people in Tuliyollal just speak Eorzean and didn't have contact with the East for some reason, they'd sound like the difference between New Yorkers and Californians or between Brits and Americans, not suddenly sound like they'd been speaking Spanish up until recently (but for some reason all the Spanish speakers vanished).

But yeah, I agree. It's jarring that the peoples of the Azim Steppe are all just British, the Garleans are also British, and everyone in Eorzea's multiple regions are British, but Thavnair, Tuliyollal, and Hingashi (to a limited degree) are the only people who get accents, while the Dragons and Ancients-in-Amarout-but-not-Elpis are the only ones who get a language.

[DiaDeem]

It's extremely unlikely that English would drift and develop a Spanish accent without actual influence from Spanish, which doesn't seem to exist on Etheirys at all.

True, and fully agree.

[Raven2014]

English changes from country to country, and even region to region within the US.

What doesn't make sense is to give accents in the game correlating to zones in the real world, and it's actually only a thing with Radz-at-Han and Southern Tuliyolal for some reason. Hien and company don't have a Chinese accent, Magnai and Sadu don't have a Mongolian accent, Garleans don't have a Siberian or Norse accent, Horse the Fount and company don't have a French accent etc. Once we get to Shaaloani, we get no more IRL region-corelating accents, not even some really bad Native-American one, thankfully.

Overall, It doesn't bother me as much in general, but yes: It doesn't really make sense to have Spanish (or any other language) give region-corelating accents in XIV. I have no idea why they did this for Radz and Southern Tuliyolal.

I've been saying this for a while now, but I think the main reason why Japanese VAs are usually better it's because they have a much simple job: they just have to match the personality of the characters themselves and that's it. I believe it's the same for other dubs as well. But for some reason whoever directing the English seem to insist to bring in geography accent ever since Heaven Ward. This mean the English VAs not only have to worry about the personality of their characters, they also have to carry the extra baggage as well. This is a fantasy world, why they heck do we need IRL correlation?

[ViaDesperare]

I can confirm I've heard Sena's real voice, about five minutes ago, and the accent is totally fake. As someone who thinks the performance itself is on par with most VA in XIV, I still find it a bit upsetting they hired someone to fake an accent. I understand the VA is Hispanic and were probably inspired by family or something, so it's not the absolute worst case, but it's still kinda cringe.

Didn't the team like..pledge not to do this exact thing??

I think it was Kate who said they wanted to avoid the Apu situation, but I don't know the source of that. Makes you think what's up with the lore, because the fake accent that's like Apu's and then the South American culture being about tacos... Maybe by trying not to be racist, Kate ended up being racist... Doesn't help that she hired a southern-accent white woman who is now Latina, and also once a man, to play Wuk and thus the poor accent and difficulty reaching the tones and pitch needed for the role. Kate really filling in that stereotypical Karen role...

Some quotes:

As a South American, I sure did love having my culture reduced to "MEZCAL AND TACOS". Oh, and funny very colorful clothes - literally goddamn everyone in this supposedly "diverse" city dresses in one way - that being traditional Andean wear. Really good, really inclusive. Absolutely not COMICALLY insulting at all.

As a man of hispanic origin living in the US I felt offended by Wuk's EN voice, she doesn't even sound like a ESL Spanish person trying to speak English it sounds more like an offensive stereotype! I don't like how the VA was some white lady doing the voicework out of "social justice" or whatnot if they were serious they would've hired a Latina VA with actual credentials to do the work, not some lady who had maybe a taco from a Mexican restaurant and that was her entire resume for getting the job.