Thread: Patch 6.55 - Growing Light Part II - Story Discussion

Originally Posted by Iscah

I would say since before then – I'm not sure about accents (I still to this day have not played much of ARR/HW with voices turned on) but the persistence of naming conventions being entirely race-based and not cultural always seemed odd. Some races might be a bit more insular and sticking to particular traditions, but it didn't seem right to have things like Midlanders all having the same types of names from Ul'dah to Ishgard and yet Mid- and Highlander names stay distinct from each other.

Later expansions have been better about this and having culture-based rather than strictly racial names.

It makes enough sense if you consider that in places not governed by one of the three Eorzean Alliance city-states people tend to stick to insular communities of their race; the U miqo'te tribe in Southern Thanalan, f'ex. We just don't see most of them in-game on account of the limited world; Duskwight Elezen, Plainsfolk Lalafell, Roegadyn of both tribes, and Keepers of the Moon Miqo'te have their ancestral homes so far removed from the game world we just don't get to interact with their settlements.

As far as voices go, with only a few notable exceptions everyone speaks with a British accent of some sort from 2.0 onwards. 2.0-2.X had an NA cast, but after 2.X wrapped they shifted the voice studio to London... to be fair it's very good in general (especially compared to the piss poor quality of 2.0; 2.X is much better), but hearing everyone from every corner of the globe and beyond speak with a British accent is just a tiny bit strange. (They do pronounce foreign words correctly, so that's nice.) I chalk it up to Ascian influence from a Watsonian perspective.

The only exceptions are Viera characters (who speak with an Icelandic accent in homage to Fran) and Wuk Lamat. I'm assuming other Turali characters will also not speak with a British accent once we get there; s'ppose they finally listened to my criticism on this point? (Who am I kidding, of course they didn't.)

I didn't forget about Runar (Magnus though I did), I was just a bit on the fence as to whether their accents were British or not. It's a bit hard to tell or remember, given how little dialogue the two have. I'll concede the point, but the fact the lion's share of people from Norvrandt (a separate plane of existence with 12,000 years of differing history) speak with the same accent is just a teensy bit jarring. (I'll forgive the language aspect on account of the Echo.)

Also the voiced Hannish characters do have Near Eastern (Indian)-ish accents. Forgot about them, totes truthsies.

Recently I found out some interesting things. You can go and talk to the three researchers that you helped during Margrat's quests. It um might be some time before we get properly functioning microwaves as on occasion some of those who are working on them have ended up melting them. Then if you go to the last dregs you can interact with the radio. There's three different blurbs you can get. Two are advertisements. The third one has me going "No, how about that creepy jerk stay dead?" as it's a story of a Loporrit who almost got nabbed by a masked Miqo'te while on their way to drop off supplies for the Garlean reconstruction. Which I'm glad that the devs aren't forgetting that is a thing that is supposed to be happening. Yet at the same time I'm a little bummed that it's starting to feel as though we will never get to see it in game or if we do only after a small part has been completed and that it will only have happened off screen. I feel that the cosmos building thing we are going to be getting is going to get a lot of hate. As I'm sure some already hate it and more will end up hating it from the start all due to it not being Garlean restoration. Even if it's not bad content or doesn't end up having a bad story.