[Feedback] Wuk Lamat's English Voice

[Hurlstone]

Alphinaud and Alisae in ARR sounded like Christmas elves.

Its been fascinating replaying ARR on an alt recently... the voices for some of these character feel so strange and stiff in comparison to what the expansions have given us, with the twins being the primal example (Not that they did a bad job per-say) However there are some from that time in the games history that I really adore, and still think of as the ‘canon’ voices in my head during the non-speaking cutscenes such as Merlwyb, Raubahn ect. Shame so many did not crossover with the expansion change, though at least we get to hear Raubahn's OG VA in the songs! Thats cool.

[Karious]

No.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. Wuk Lamat's VA is great and, while yeah her accent does seem a bit forced, it is also explained in-universe that her skill in talking in "Eorzean Common" isn't the greatest. I imagine as we progress through Dawntrail, she will get better and more confident. Or we start learning Turali to make it easier for her.

If you genuinely can't see any other way beyond "Fire them, they aren't good enough for ME." then go to JPN voice and never leave. Because thankfully the VAs don't have to be checked with the playerbase. A playerbase that is often at its own throat for the dumbest of reasons..

Okay, well you're welcome to disagree. Telling me to "Just go play in Japanese" is not too different than people telling others to quit the game if they're not happy. Not constructive. They should've hired a quality voice actor in the first place.

[caffe_macchiato]

Why use the actor as a scapegoat? Final Fantasy XIV doesn't exactly have the highest budget or quality, and there are plenty of other things wrong with the cutscenes besides just the acting. Why are the NPCs so slow? Why is the writing so godawful? Why does every cutscene have nothing but talking, nodding, and the occasional walking back and forth? Final Fantasy X has better-animated cutscenes despite being on the PS2.

The reason: Final Fantasy XIV is just treated as a side game like one of Square Enix's many mobile titles that are just there to churn money. The current CEO has run the company into the ground by insisting that everything has high profit margins with the least amount of effort put in. It's no longer good enough to make profit, you need to make an increasing rate of profit every quarter. It is the same syndrome that is causing every other gaming and tech company to fail. You can't make quality games with that mindset. Square Enix will fail in ten years and be bought out and Final Fantasy will become a legacy franchise.

FYI - most of the Scions are voiced by stage and screen actors. Social media has made a "new movement" of amateur voice actors without much screen or stage experience, and you can find them easily on Twitter/YouTube/Twitch (such as Wuk). They are more affordable, as cost of living means that professional actors have to ask for a living wage that greedy companies "can't afford".

[Zsolen]

Okay, let's think this through. You're SE. You've casted a trans woman as the voice of a main character. You hear some complaining about the voice. Some obviously transphobic, some don't like Americans, some just don't like the voice. What do you do?

A: Drop the voice actress, please the angry people and bring an unknown amount of controversy on an entire expansion because you just fired a trans woman.

B: Support the voice actress, anger the angry people and avoid the controversy for the expansion.

Is there really any controversy in firing a bad voice actor? It should not matter if they are transgender or not, American or not (Puerto Rican technically is). I'm happy when the voice matches what I see on a screen. It doesn't matter what nationality or gender or whatever they are. It just needs to work.

I switched languages for this patch, after trying a cutscene in English. The ARR voice actors sounded better.

The voice actor announced the role, prior to the patch. I'm not sure if it is actually a rule of SE, but some have indicated that it is.

[Burmecia]

I am weird in way that I almost never listen to ig voices/music. Nothing wrong in either, my ADHD brain just liked music or audiobooks or radio news while I play videogames. If I wanna go through cutscene with fine comb later, so to speak, I try to find it from any random video hosting site where people upload those.

So I had to go to YT to actually hear her voice. I watched the cutscenes when my roommate played though story. She usually plays with voice but today was unusual for her and she didn't.

I agree that the actor's performance was little bit flatter than I though character's voice to be. Since my initial impression came to me through her bodylaguage and expressions, I imagined bit more lively and high pitched voice. But I'm not disappointed, I guess I don't really care.

Something something, naturally, I have faith that the casting director did the choice based on miss Bryer's skill and talent, and not much else.

[Kenky]

Okay, well you're welcome to disagree. Telling me to "Just go play in Japanese" is not too different than people telling others to quit the game if they're not happy. Not constructive. They should've hired a quality voice actor in the first place.

Your previous statement specifically points out that you would move to Japanese voices to get away from the voice actor you dislike.

You cannot change one and leave the others. It is everyone or no-one.

I am not telling you "Just quit playing". I'm saying "Use the alternative you yourself said you would". And they did hire a quality voice actor, or do you think Yoshi's team has questionable quality control?

[EliaStormblade]

Is there really any controversy in firing a bad voice actor? It should not matter if they are transgender or not, American or not (Puerto Rican technically is). I'm happy when the voice matches what I see on a screen. It doesn't matter what nationality or gender or whatever they are. It just needs to work.

I switched languages for this patch, after trying a cutscene in English. The ARR voice actors sounded better.

The voice actor announced the role, prior to the patch. I'm not sure if it is actually a rule of SE, but some have indicated that it is.

This. If you can fire any regular bad VA for whatever reason— low-quality and jarring voice work, external misconduct, etc. Then there should be no exceptions.

Sorry, but if this is the voice I'm going to have to deal with for a majority chunk of Dawntrail, I'm going to switch languages.

[Karious]

Your previous statement specifically points out that you would move to Japanese voices to get away from the voice actor you dislike.

You cannot change one and leave the others. It is everyone or no-one.

I am not telling you "Just quit playing". I'm saying "Use the alternative you yourself said you would". And they did hire a quality voice actor, or do you think Yoshi's team has questionable quality control?

They should let me change one and none of the others. I think the team has questionable quality control. Any other questions?

[Kenky]

They should let me change one and none of the others.

You know that's not going to happen. No matter how much people want it to, because that comes with a whole cavalcade of problems. Some VAs are more expressive, (Notice the difference in length between a cut-scene in English VS a cut-scene in Japanese) or have longer moments due to saying more words to convey the same information. That would make them have to put in even more work with cut-scenes and conversation to ensure people don't talk over each other and that the main throughput is undamaged.

All of that work, to appeal to.. What. 10 people? 100 at most? (that are vocal about it, mind)

[SwadTheFrog]

And they did hire a quality voice actor

I could point out and say simply, without ellaboration "If that's the case, then why are so many people disliking it?" - but that's basically Ad Populum, so I'm not even going to do that.

Instead, I'm going to point out that, as a South American and as a native spanish and portuguese speaker - both languages that are clearly aimed to be "represented" and their accents emulated in Dawntrail, the character literally sounds like a racist caricature. And every single other South American I've spoken to has agreed. I don't think a "Quality Voice Actor" would do that.