Please give English Speakers more respect. Dawntrail terrible English voice acting

[iRanOverYourMom]

i feel like the voice acting from wuk lamat is due to the forced accent, rather than her being inherently bad. During one particular emotional scene, she was really good. But it does seem she does seem flat is a good amount of cutscenes, almost as if being held back by the direction that the story wants to force accents for consistency sake.

[CosmoBabylonia]

Did Y'shtola's VA record her voice lines on her phone? Sounded off compared to the usual we get.

[Plushy]

Turns out someone named Kate and Danny are the reason the voice director was so terrible. Koji not being in charge really did lower the standard it seems...
https://x.com/LuisBermudezVO/status/...EZFqu06xg&s=19 proof.

He also hinted at them having trouble casting which is probably why they hired such weak voice actors though still no excuse as to why the main stays sounded terrible as well.

[MAJRIS]

Did Y'shtola's VA record her voice lines on her phone? Sounded off compared to the usual we get.

in that specific cutscene, y'shtola sounded like that windows XP accessibility tool where you put any text and it used one of four voices to spell it, back in 2000's

[Reimmi]

She can't do any voice that isn't neutral
When wuk yells, she's flat
when wuk is sarcastic, she's flat
when wuk is sad, she's flat

I hope we don't see much of her in the future because she may be the worst voice actor i've heard since ARR

[aeroz]

I was also disappointed with Erenville’s mother not having an Icelandic accent like him. It seemed like such a strange oversight, especially with how consistent Viera voices were in Shadowbringers.

[Ratikal]

Turns out someone named Kate and Danny are the reason the voice director was so terrible. Koji not being in charge really did lower the standard it seems...
https://x.com/LuisBermudezVO/status/...EZFqu06xg&s=19 proof.

He also hinted at them having trouble casting which is probably why they hired such weak voice actors though still no excuse as to why the main stays sounded terrible as well.

Not sure of Danny, I can't find a reasonable credit to him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HkVgIkPTvw
Kate is the English Localization Lead. https://youtu.be/YozopuVW8Mo?t=24651

Also, that message made me sad. Luis commented how he is only casted for Latino roles. Unfortunately, that seems like the path of the industry now. You must be the ethnicity of the character you want voice act. You no longer have the agency of talent to mask and mimic other voices. I remember ProZD whining about this recently about how now he is only cast for Asian roles. It really feels like these localizers in an effort to not appear racist just end up being more racist.

I'm not going to steal your thread, but they played it so safe with the Native American tribe in Zone 4 to the point it's misrepresentative.

[Souljacker]

Eh, she's not the worst VA to be cast. Some of the lalafell males who don't physically have the vocal chord length to elicit some of the tones they do fall into the 'really bad casting' category, yet they keep casting em.

No, her VA is fine, the problem is the writing is absolutely abysmal and the director could have worked with her a little more to craft a proper identity for the character. The writing being so bad just makes everything else about it that much worse, so that's why I think she's getting more flack than some of the other awful VAs we have. None of them are top tier Jennifer Hale\Nolan North levels of delivery.

So I guess in short, I agree that in general, we deserve better VAs. But I disagree that Wuk Lamat is the only or even the worst of the problems.

[Fawkes]

She can't do any voice that isn't neutral
When wuk yells, she's flat
when wuk is sarcastic, she's flat
when wuk is sad, she's flat

That's true for Erenville, but he has an accent so people apparently don't notice.

[Loggos]

I'm really surprised about the lack of care too. Games like Genshin or Honkai Star Rail have really shown how prolific voice acting can be in ongoing video games. They get VAs from FF15, Nier Automata, Fire Emblem, Demon Slayer, etc. At this point it's almost a badge of honour if you get to voice a Genshin character in English. In DT it felt more like a necessity that had to be dealt with, even though getting to voice a character in FF14 should be seen as an exciting and prestigious success. It kind of feels like their standalone titles like FF7 or FF16 get more care (which is particularly frustrating because FF16 was also produced by Yoshida).
I know Genshin is a gacha game so I don't know how much more money they make but SE is still one of the biggest and most recognised gaming studios so I would assume they should have the budget for good voice actors.

That's true for Erenville, but he has an accent so people apparently don't notice.

I don't want to hate on Erenville's English VA but I was quite surprised by their casting decision (in Endwalker already) because his voice/characterisation of Erenville is so different from the Japanese one. They almost feel like different characters in a sense?
I agree that some deliveries are definitely sub-optimal though.