[Feedback] Wuk Lamat's English Voice

[Sayo_]

Game is full of vas putting on fake accents.

Really odd there was no mention of it til now. Absolutely footnoted til now where there's dozens if not hundreds of repeat topics about the one va that's trans.

There's no universe where her performance is the one that needs to be singled out.

Care to name a few of the people putting on a fake accent?

[Fawkes]

Imagine complaining about Wuk Lamat's voice in a game where Erenville has an Icelandic accent and his mother and childhood friends from his hometown all have American accents.

[Sayo_]

Imagine complaining about Wuk Lamat's voice in a game where Erenville has an Icelandic accent and his mother and childhood friends from his hometown all have American accents.

Yeah that's a little silly. It makes you wonder where his accent came from. But that's more of a weird lore thing, not a "this voice actor is doing a poor job" thing. Erenville's voice is good.

[Genoreaper]

I feel like so many people will staunchly defend bad VA if their identity makes them feel good.

I'm sure there's a few who hate wuk for the VA as well. But most at least give fair criticism for it, all to be dismissed because any knock against her effort put forth is sacrilegious.

She was given a terrible script, but she didn't do anything within that to make it enjoyable

[Turnintino]

Right, surely a voice director with experience would know when someone they are directing is just not up to snuff, but since they still have to do their job, they tried their best with a fresh voice actor with little experience (in a triple A game...) Everyone needs to start somewhere and hone their skills, but damn in a massive MMO with millions of players?

The English voice director would've been involved in the casting process. Nothing was thrust upon them.

Care to name a few of the people putting on a fake accent?

Assuming you mean predating Dawntrail, well... the vast majority of the cast uses regional accents different from their own. To some American ears, it's "all British", but the UK is home to more specific than that, the same way Americans have different accents in Los Angeles than they do in Boston. Colin Ryan uses a Received Pronunciation (or simply RP) accent for Alphinaud, which is different from his own; Nicholas Boulton uses a northern Yorkshire accent for Raubahn, but RP for Zephirin; and so on and so forth.

If you do mean to include the Dawntrail cast, then, again, the vast majority lol. Not all are faking it, but many like Luis Bermudez (voice of Koana and many more) are affecting a (Mexican) Spanish-American accent for the Turali characters they play.

[Sayo_]

Assuming you mean predating Dawntrail, well... the vast majority of the cast uses regional accents different from their own. To some American ears, it's "all British", but the UK is home to more specific than that, the same way Americans have different accents in Los Angeles than they do in Boston. Colin Ryan uses a Received Pronunciation (or simply RP) accent for Alphinaud, which is different from his own; Nicholas Boulton uses a northern Yorkshire accent for Raubahn, but RP for Zephirin; and so on and so forth.

If you do mean to include the Dawntrail cast, then, again, the vast majority lol. Not all are faking it, but many like Luis Bermudez (voice of Koana and many more) are affecting a (Mexican) Spanish-American accent for the Turali characters they play.

Oh wow that's pretty cool. I didn't know that stuff.

[Canadane]

As I recommend to everyone, play in Japanese.

[SwadTheFrog]

As I recommend to everyone, play in Japanese.

I just did that, and I'm intensely glad I did, as I just got to a scene that involved a lot of yelling from Wuk which, uh, to put it bluntly, clearly does not work on english.

Oh wow that's pretty cool. I didn't know that stuff.

Americans tend to think all accents are the same, so it's often not brought up. Not a dig at you, by the by - it's hard to parse different accents if you're not a local, but some are *really* tellling, and the greatest incidence of people thinking they actually know a foreign langauge or accents then they uh - *really* don't is absolutely from the US.

[LittleArrow]

After beating the MSQ in the English voices, I change my opinion about the VA for Wuk Lamat. I do not think the VA did a bad job. Compared to the incredible voice work in the past as well as other languages, yes, it's very clear this VA lacks nuance in reading their lines; however, I can't pin that fault solely on the VA, because I think the VA director should hold a lot of that blame as well. In the end, the VA, imo, isn't the issue with the character. It is the constant "peace," "dawnservant," "the more you know someone the fonder you grow for them," lines constantly being repeated ad nauseum. The other massive issue is the sheer amount of lines given to this character. There was a post in another thread that shows this character is given more than double the top lines of any character in the entire expansion thus far, and well over double the lines Lyse had in Stormblood.

So in conclusion, no the voice actor isn't horrible but lacks nuance imo (I'm no expert, I'm not a VA nor have I worked in that field - this is just from years of listening to dub work in anime and video games). The main issues I've seen is the sheer overwhelming presence the character has in the story that dwarfs any involvement I've seen of any character in the history of this game, though there's only evidence for this in comparison to Stormblood. The writing was so below the standard of what I'm used to in this series, which is a massive contributing factor to my dislike of the character.

In other words, I don't think it matters who voiced Wuk Lamat, she's an awful character due to bad writing and constant unwanted presence.

[Endy_Sinkai]

So I am mixed with this VA performance. On one hand I think there are scenes like at the inn or at the table eating with us. The VA does a fine job.

However there are other times like near the end or the midway point of the story where the VA really is grinding on my nerves.

The character themselves I am going to chalk up to Zenos 2.0, where as I hated Zenos in STB. I loved the development he got into Endwalker.

So If this is Wak's start then hopefully these post on the forums will wake the writers up to make wak into a better written character.

Sorry If my post is super vague its just the game launched yesterday for alot of people and I didn't want to include heavy spoilers to make my point lol