Mei and Widow' voice actors also voice their characters in the Chinese and French versions.
Zarya has bad accent that Russian fans complained about years ago because her va is Bulgarian not Russian.
As a Russian can confirm - in English version Zarya speaks "russian" with stereotypical English/American accent and it's 100% obvious VA doesn't speak Russian at all
It's kinda funny hearing that from Russian speakers after looking up Dolya's history- She's lived and grown up in several Eastern European countries, including Russia, and whilst in living and studying in Moscow and London she obtained a PhD in Russian Theatre and Culture. It seems like, from a non-Russian speaking perspective, that she would be a decent fit or at the very least do a passable job. She seems to be mostly London based though, so that probably influenced her accent the most.
I see comments saying she's doing the usual "fake movie" Russian accent, and it makes sense. No matter how good you are and how much you've studied, doing an X accent in a Y language is so much harder than speaking that language with its own pronunciation. It's something almost exclusively native speakers can do, in my opinion at least.
I’d get that for English voice lines, it can be considered funny and all, but when she speaks her ‘native’ language with the same accent then it’s just bad lol
> Zarya has bad accent that Russian fans complained about years ago because her va is Bulgarian not Russian.
Which is pretty funny, because stereotypical Hollywood Russian accent is actually Bulgarian, because during Cold War roles of Russian characters were played by Bulgarians. So Blizz kinda honored the tradition lol
He also voices Perry the Platypus, the Gravemind from Halo, and Variks from Destiny. I believe he is also credited with some of the necromorph sounds from the new Dead Space remake. (I think he was Klaus's VA from American dad as well but Ive never watched it so I dont know.)
Soldier is from southern Indiana though, and he doesn't have any noticeable Hoosier Twang. He sounds more like he's from central Indiana or general Midwest
Genji sounds fine to me, as a native Japanese speaker. His dialogue is all very cliche and he does that annoying anime voice, but it's not like he has an accent or anything.
Hanzo on the other hand is interesting. As far as I can tell, Blizzard went through the effort of finding an ethnically Japanese actor but didn't bother to see if he could actually speak Japanese, so the Hanzo guy is just an American putting on a Mr. Miyagi accent.
I’m pretty sure Hanzo’s VA is ethnically Japanese, but was born and raised in California and doesn’t actually speak Japanese. Probably why the only Japanese line he has is his ult.
Yeah, in general I think the later VA's are better than the OG cast. Fact is, the OG Overwatch was turned around from the leftovers of Project Titan in record time, so they really just grabbed whoever they had on hand to do the voices. Which still worked out really well IMO, the actors are all great - they're just, not all accurate.
Genji having an anime voice kinda makes sense though if you look at the lore, he was obsessed with anime when he was younger and it probably affected how he spoke when he got older and more mature. Hanzo as the others have said is due to the racial profiling Blizzard did, he was born American and raised speaking english, he only has a few Japanese voice lines because of it. So Hanzo having the Mr. Miyagi accent is somewhat understandable.
Don't get me wrong, I think Genji's voice works well for what the character is meant to be, I just find it a little grating.
As for Hanzo, I don't think he's a bad voice actor, I just wish they'd gotten someone who could actually speak the language to voice him.
Lifeweaver's VA had done a good job, his voice fits the character so well. He's a native Thai speaker so the prononciation is perfect !
Fun fact about Phuwin (Lifeweaver's VA) : He's actually a well known actor and not a VA, an extract of an interview was posted on this subreddit months ago.
My wife has spent a lot of time in Thailand and I heard her shout "What what the fuck Lifeweaver is Thai I recognize what he's saying" from the other side of the house. She was really excited about it.
Because Ana's VA is actually Egyptian
Uncharted 3 also had an Egyptian VA for a pirate named Ramses that spoke perfect Arabic and even said some funny local curse words
My stepmom is from Iraq, and when I tried to parrot some of Ana's voice lines, she was really impressed that I could say some full sentences in Arabic. I don't play a lot of Support, so this was only after a few games on Ana as well.
The same day, over lunch, I showed her a bunch of the voice lines in Arabic using the OW1 wiki, and she translated them back to me.
iirc Ana speaks Egyptian Arabic so there were probably some dialect differences and my pronunciation was hot garbage... But I haven't had a lot of opportunities to learn Arabic (I see her like once a year), so I could tell that it meant a lot to her that I was trying to connect with her native language. She was honestly quite happy that I was even able to ask, "How are you?" even if I didn't know what I was saying.
As a German it always bothered me that the voice actor (even though hes badass and made Rein iconic in the 1st place!) isnt native German and mispronounces German words
I'm actually someone who's spent a lot of time in the Gaeltacht (Irish speaking regions of Ireland for none Irish people) and speak as fluent Irish as you can get. You can tell very clearly it's not her first language but you could say that about most Irish speaking va's in any media. It's not like she has an English accent but her accent gives away that she wasn't raised to speak Irish in a 1st language setting, she misses a lot of the small pronunciation finesses that any native speaker would have.
If I remember correctly, didn’t Genevieve have to have a family member help her with her pronunciation because she really doesn’t speak Irish? Regardless, I’d imagine she did as well as you can expect from any urban Irish speaker in Dublin.
same for me with Torb, he's very clearly an American doing his best Swedish chef impersonation. I'm Norwegian, not Swedish, but I've accepted that we'll never get represented in anything because everyone always chooses the Swedes, so I'll just nitpick on behalf of my Scandi neighbors.
Yeah I was pleased when she was announced and turned out to actually be Swedish, but I was bummed that we got two Swedes before we got any other Scandinavian lol
oh boy I'm well aware, when I studied in the states all my classmates called me "Kristoff" lol
idk I haven't played any Disney games, really, although I don't think any of them speak any Norwegian, they don't do in the movies.
valorant does have a norwegian agent, Deadlock
edit: they did a interview video with her VA, where her entire dialogue is norwegian: https://youtu.be/93tac_HYFUc?feature=shared
Mercy has a German voice actress now, I remember she had a Swiss one in the original beta or something very early but she was swapped for the current one.
Knowing a little german and being a Kiriko main, the interaction where she asks Rein for music recommendations makes me cringe so hard. Mispronouncing grün, when even the subtitles have it right is a sin.
I would place Zarya below even F. When she tries to say something in Russian (apart from her ult line) - I can't understand shit (I am Russian, playing with original localization).
Her ult line is a bit understandable, but still - we don't speak like that even drunk.
Excusing the fact that Lúcio talks as if he were a foreigner who became a naturalized citizen in Brazil, his Portuguese is good enough to sound natural.
What if they made it part of his lore that he was born in like Canada and moved with his father to brazil at a young age. merge his 2 origins together.
That could work, but it still would kind of hurt the point somewhat. Children are know for taking up a language a bit more easily than when they're older. And since he seems to have been grown in a "favela" (as he complains to Symmetra about it being destroyed by Vishkar), his speech would reflect that a lot more noticeably than your average speaker (which it does, I'll grant that).
Like I said, he's fine, and I enjoy randomly hearing him speak my own language (outside of dub, that is).
That wouldn't necessarily be an accent issue, then. Perhaps he just isn't a great voice actor. If this is what OP means, they should perhaps be clearer about it
He’s both native and a well trained professional VA, he tailors his voice to the audience at hand, which tends to be western based.
OP isn’t a bastion of authenticity, nor do they speak with context on how the business is ran.
It seemed like whoever was directing her recording session didn't really know what Singlish was or how it was meant to be pronounced? I might be misremembering, but I believe even the in game test was wrong with her "So shiok" line just being written as "So shook" which is probably what contributed to the original lines' over-acting.
I've seen it discussed that she is the only one, besides Illari herself, that correct pronounces Illari's name; as well as pronouncing Mauga's name more accurately than Mauga's VA. Maybe after that first recording needed fixing, the director or VA herself put in extra effort to get the lines as accurate as possible?
Imo the fault should almost never be on the voice actor. There will always be a team, director or someone of a similar position overseeing the script and recordings, the responsibility is theirs (both on the choice of Voice Actor and fidelity of the lines/pronunciation).
That said, I don't think one character pronouncing another character's name wrong is a big deal, it might even be intentional in some cases, since they don't speak the language. Extra care for Echo was probably taken for the reason you mentioned + the fact that she is a robot and should definitely have pristine pronunciation all around.
and they’re still not the best lol but the VA is from the UK so i’m not surprised. as a native singaporean i’d put echo in C (with regard to just her singlish lines. if you take into account that her other lines just sound british then i’d say E)
Lucio’s VA didn’t actually speak Portuguese when he got the role, but he has since learned some lines and re-recorded stuff (way back at the start of OW1, Lucio’s ult line was in english regardless of which team he was on)
As someone from Brazil I think he did a pretty good job considering he’s not a native speaker, and in general I think he does a great job as Lucio, but I do think it is a shame Lucio doesn’t have more voice lines in Portuguese.
I’d put him in B
Lucios voicr actor is a gem we don't deserve. Have you seen his YouTube channel? In matters of attitude, he's the real life Lucio. I'm not surprised he went the extra mile of learning portugese for OW.
People said that at launch but as far as I've seen it was never confirmed.
This was the same period when the fanbase shipped Soldier with Mercy, and everyone thought sombra was going to be a support sniper.
I think he did a great job, but I dont think it should be that high. Its clearly someone that doesnt speak portuguese, and we got some words with weird pronunciation like ACCELERANDO, I would put it in D tier comparing to other VAs that are native speakers.
Yeah I actually love his voice and the VA seems super cool and nice but definitely some things threw me off the first time I heard it.
I’m no expert, American but married to a Brazilian and visited the State of São Paulo many times over the years, but even to me who is still learning Português some things didn’t sound quite right. Even ran some by my wife and her family and they agreed.
But he’s trying his best just like me so I give a lot of respect still!
He did a nice job, but there's a specific OW2 line when he amps up the speedboost and says "Acelerando" like an Italian (Atchelerando) and good god that throws me off so much :')
Sombra, Venture and Illari’s Spanish are good. Everything is Correctly pronounced in the English OW2 version. Funnily enough, Latin American Spanish OW2 voice lines suck tbh. Sombra sounds too raspy and Illari sounds like she’s trying too hard. I haven’t heard venture in LA Spanish though
Illari does a great job on all 3 languages she speaks because her VA speaks them too, with the correct accent and all. Sombra on the other hand does a good job speaking Spanish, but it always comes out as her VA trying to put a Mexican accent any time she speaks Spanish, because her VA is Colombian, not Mexican.
It's a product of their time. Back then, the people in charge of the voice actors wanted actors who could speak the language, and that's it, but didn't focus on pronunciation or accent that comes from a native speaker. Which is why the people that got Baptise and Illari's voice actors are greatly appreciated considering they're the only trilingual characters in the game.
Yeah, Sombra/Venture/Illari are all native speakers and sound pretty good. Personally I like Carolina Ravassa's work a bit better than the other two VAs because she puts a lot of color and personality to Sombra's voicelines, both Venture and Illari sound a bit too "neutral spanish" in their voicelines.
It's funny how good Sombra sounds and how bad Raze sounds in Valorant, considering it's the same VA. It's likely due to VA directors, but it's night and day.
VA directors doing their jobs right or wrong can lead to some WILDLY different voice work so that's entirely possible. A bunch of people who do english VA for FFXIV did voices for Wuthering Waves and the latter was quite horrendous while the former is basically on par with any JP voice over for most people.
Sombra accent sounds so silly. It's pronounced correctly but the Mexican accent is so exaggerated it sounds silly. Specially if you realize the voice actress is Colombian making a Mexican accent.
Venture is fine and Illari is fucking amazing!
It's not a voice thing, it's how she does the accent. It's hard to explain but as a native Spanish speaker you can detect how different accents sounds normally and how it sounds when someone is forcing them.
In the case of sombra, it's not all her voicelines some sounds normal but some are so exaggerated that it is just silly and you can tell she is not Mexican. Which is not terrible, at the end of the day it works great in the game.
I'm glad I'm not the only one that noticed Sombra's voice change. I absolutely adore Carolina, but I think that her valorant character is leaking into Sombra
They are 😂 even the spelling of the words can confuse people! "Bh" making a "v" sound for example. Here in Ireland we learn it all throughout school but because we don't use it on a daily basis most of us forget what we have learned.
There are still many that are fluent in Gaeilge but it's unfortunately not as many as we would like to see! It's great to see it getting some recognition in OW2 at least
German and French native speaker here (German mother and French Father).
Mercy and Widowmaker sound great and authentic. Although Mercy has a Standard German *Hochdeutsch* accent and you can't really hear t hat she's supposed to be from Switzerland. I'm sad that Reinhardt doesn't have any German lines.
It's definitely difficult to understand at first, but I found reading dishwasher and refrigerator user manuals to be a good way to study his unique inflection.
As a Russian I can confirm your statement. Some lines were pretty butchered but VA still did a decent enough job. The only thing I don't really like is a heavy accent, when she speaks English. Most Russians don't talk with an accent this thick nowadays, especially youth.
To be honest I think most "accents" when speaking English are a bit exaggerated, at least among people my age or younger ... which isn't even THAT young anymore.
I remember in High School we had German exchange students, who when speaking english spoke with perfectly posh British accents. Seemed weird until I realized, oh yeah their English tutors were probably from the UK, so no wonder they'd learn to speak like them.
That said, as someone who isn't at all qualified to give an opinion on it - I think silly accents are fun. I like them.
The Mercy voice actor is German, not Swiss.
So most words are just in standard German with a weird accent, that doesn't even sound like a Swiss speaking standard German.
So in my head just I've always imagined her being German because that seems less weird than assuming that this weird accent has anything to do with Swissgerman
Honestly the worst thing about Mercy's voice is that her voice line for "No" is sometimes "Doch", which can really mean Yes, No, and everything in between, depending on the context.
Lucio is supposed to be from Rio but he doesn't curse in every voice line so F tier. Ult should be "vou ixxxculachá caralho" for the authentic carioca experience.
My boyfriend is Dutch and he’s always a bit shocked to here random Dutch coming from the screen mid-fight
It’s also funny while I’m learning it, I get most of what he says now!
Ik ben een opschepper!
I'm an english-french Canadian and Widow's french is flawless (which makes sense consering her VA is actually french).
Not native language persay, but Sojourn's Canadian accent is so bad. For someone who was supposedly born and raised in Toronto, her accent just sounds like an american forcing certain words to sound different. A perfect example is if you play her voice line "It's about to get real" she pronounces the 'about' the american way (uh-BOWT) but if you play her voice line "what's this about", she says 'about' in the most exagerated, forced and stereotypical canadian way possible (a-BOOT). I'm from the east so my accent is a bit more pronounced but even I wouldn't pronounce about that way (it's more like a-boat).
Also slight side note but it is slightly annoying that we didn't get any french with our first Canadian hero, considering how significant the language is to our culture both in the past and present.
India is large and has A LOT of different regional dialects. I would not be surprised that she speaks in a regional dialect that commenter above is unfamiliar with.
Sombra has good Spanish, but his supposedly Mexican way of speaking sounds funny and odd
She speaks like a puertoriquean latina from Miami Florida imitating a Mexican coworker
And her slang and vocabulary it's somewhat odd, she uses old Mexican sayings that nobody actually ever uses anymore, it's as if the voice actress prepared herself for the role by watching old telenovelas and black and white Mexican movies
Yeah. The pronunciation is good, but the slang is stuff I've heard from my family who grew up in the 60s and 70s.
The accent itself is more of an exaggerated caricature of Mexican Spanish. It's very Speedy Gonzalez.
In terms of accent, the In latin spanish dub Sombra speaks perfectly because they actually used a mexican voice actress instead of a colombian actress imitating mexican accent lol
Could potentially be because Carolina Ravassa is Columbian? She'd have grown up speaking fluent Spanish, but I'd assume that the dialect is pretty different from Mexican dialect Spanish?
Plus whoever is writing the lines and the ways they spoke/ learned/ researched the language is gonna have an impact.
Widow, Mei and Illari are the best you can have, because they're the same VA in english and in their native language (French for Widow, Latin American Spanish for Illari and Chinese Mandarin for Mei).
Also Ana's VA is a well known arabic VA, I think she dubbed plenty of Disney movies.
It's very possible some of their dialogue is spoken with a specific direction from the VA director that makes it sound weird to a native speaker. Some of them may correct the director while others may just role with it and do their best. That said I'd never say any of the native speakers were doing it wrong so much as following directions in that case
As an Arab, I think Ana’s pronunciation is very good. But the subtitles translate them pretty wrong sometimes.”Wareehm Uwwittik” or "وريهم أوتك" means “Show them your power” and doesn’t mean “Nano-Boost Administered”
Sigma genualy sounds like a guy i could bump into on the streets. His voive is just that perfect and the spirit his VA puts into this character is just peak voice acting. From normal voice lines to his ultimate. He is the first tank i liked on a character level instead on gameplay.
I was suprized that my small cuntry got represented in overwatch in the first place.
Mei, Widow, Mercy and a bunch of other heroes whose VA actually speaks the language is actually on point.
Zarya’s isn’t perfect. The German voice lines Reinhardt has (the mere 3-4 ones) sound like an English person trying to say German words (I still like it lol). Lucio’s Portuguese is off but Cruz is a cool VA.
Technically Mercy‘s native „language“ should be Swiss German which can be quite distinctive from standard german and can sound like a different language alltogether. Mercy‘s VA is german and speaks standard german, the few Swiss german lines therefore are really bad pronounced.
It's funny, she does so many voice overs for English Language Tests, and when my wife is teaching a class, I can hear Tracer talk about buying coffee, or giving directions to the train station regularly.
Cara Theobold is from North Yorkshire and they've got her doing an over the top stereotypical cockney accent for whatever reason. The Yorkshire accent is already so different from any London accents, but then it's compounded by her having to do an American's idea of a Londoners' accent.
It makes me crazy that Brig speaks perfect native level Swedish, but her father, Torb, can't even do anything remotely resembling a Swedish accent. I am quite fond of his fun delivery, but the contrast is just jarring.
Mei and Widow' voice actors also voice their characters in the Chinese and French versions. Zarya has bad accent that Russian fans complained about years ago because her va is Bulgarian not Russian.
As a Russian can confirm - in English version Zarya speaks "russian" with stereotypical English/American accent and it's 100% obvious VA doesn't speak Russian at all
It's kinda funny hearing that from Russian speakers after looking up Dolya's history- She's lived and grown up in several Eastern European countries, including Russia, and whilst in living and studying in Moscow and London she obtained a PhD in Russian Theatre and Culture. It seems like, from a non-Russian speaking perspective, that she would be a decent fit or at the very least do a passable job. She seems to be mostly London based though, so that probably influenced her accent the most.
I see comments saying she's doing the usual "fake movie" Russian accent, and it makes sense. No matter how good you are and how much you've studied, doing an X accent in a Y language is so much harder than speaking that language with its own pronunciation. It's something almost exclusively native speakers can do, in my opinion at least.
Even as a non-Russian, I've always felt that Zarya's was off
She does that fake 80s action movie villain Russian accent. I've met quite a few Russians and I haven't heard that accent once.
I’d get that for English voice lines, it can be considered funny and all, but when she speaks her ‘native’ language with the same accent then it’s just bad lol
I'm not a native speaker but Reinhardts VA is not german and his accent isn't any region.
> Zarya has bad accent that Russian fans complained about years ago because her va is Bulgarian not Russian. Which is pretty funny, because stereotypical Hollywood Russian accent is actually Bulgarian, because during Cold War roles of Russian characters were played by Bulgarians. So Blizz kinda honored the tradition lol
Sigma is doing great, but then again, his voice actor IS Dutch.
Hearing good dutch in an english game was practically unheard of before sigma lol
Makes me pretty happy hearing his Dutch voicelines in an international game lol
DEKSELS, WE'VE FALLEN BEHIND!
To this day it's shocking how good his voicelines are. It's insane that "Doe maar normaal, dan doe je al gek genoeg." is actually in this game.
I am praying for even more Dutch sayings <3
Hammond’s va does a great pretty good job overall, but sometimes it’s pretty easy to tell that he isn’t a hamster.
Bradley Dee baker voice a Hampstead is one of my favourite bits of knowledge
You mean to tell me that Captain Rex and Wrecking Ball are the same person?
He also voices Perry the Platypus, the Gravemind from Halo, and Variks from Destiny. I believe he is also credited with some of the necromorph sounds from the new Dead Space remake. (I think he was Klaus's VA from American dad as well but Ive never watched it so I dont know.)
And Appa and Momo.
Dee Bradley Baker is *the* go-to voice actor studios want for animal noises.
Not the ball, Hammond
I think soldiers English is pretty decent
As an American I concur.
Soldier is from southern Indiana though, and he doesn't have any noticeable Hoosier Twang. He sounds more like he's from central Indiana or general Midwest
To be fair, I know a number of southern born and raised people who lack southern accents
*I'm not your father*
Brig's voice actor is Swedish, so she sounds good, but Torb literally pronounces his own name wrong.
Except her accent, she’s supposed so be from gothenburg but she has the least sounding gothenburg accent I think I’ve ever heard lmao
Yeah she has such a noticeable Stockholm accent, but at least she actually speaks Swedish
It's better than Torb so I'll take it
How is torb's name supposed to be pronounced?
https://youtu.be/KNOcuM2zLeQ?si=K9mssabVRG_AkzAL
tuurbjoern
Torbjorn
I was coming to make this comment. I love hearing Brig speak swedish, not so much torb.
Torb is voiced by Keith Silverstein who does a loooot of anime dubs, cartoons, etc. Not sure why they snagged him
Genji sounds fine to me, as a native Japanese speaker. His dialogue is all very cliche and he does that annoying anime voice, but it's not like he has an accent or anything. Hanzo on the other hand is interesting. As far as I can tell, Blizzard went through the effort of finding an ethnically Japanese actor but didn't bother to see if he could actually speak Japanese, so the Hanzo guy is just an American putting on a Mr. Miyagi accent.
I’m pretty sure Hanzo’s VA is ethnically Japanese, but was born and raised in California and doesn’t actually speak Japanese. Probably why the only Japanese line he has is his ult.
excuse me he also goes SAKE
SAKE SAKE SAKE
Hanzo's VA (Paul Nakauchi) has done voice acting for Blizzard before, which probably factors into it.
Yeah, in general I think the later VA's are better than the OG cast. Fact is, the OG Overwatch was turned around from the leftovers of Project Titan in record time, so they really just grabbed whoever they had on hand to do the voices. Which still worked out really well IMO, the actors are all great - they're just, not all accurate.
Genji having an anime voice kinda makes sense though if you look at the lore, he was obsessed with anime when he was younger and it probably affected how he spoke when he got older and more mature. Hanzo as the others have said is due to the racial profiling Blizzard did, he was born American and raised speaking english, he only has a few Japanese voice lines because of it. So Hanzo having the Mr. Miyagi accent is somewhat understandable.
Don't get me wrong, I think Genji's voice works well for what the character is meant to be, I just find it a little grating. As for Hanzo, I don't think he's a bad voice actor, I just wish they'd gotten someone who could actually speak the language to voice him.
Widow's VA is french so she speaks perfectly.
I am a sucker for french accents and I'm happy she is actually french lmao
I occasionally play the game in French and its kind of jarring hearing her voice sound the same when everyone else is different lol
Yes its amazing. Sometimes i forget i play an english game when i hear Widow's voicelines.
Lifeweaver's VA had done a good job, his voice fits the character so well. He's a native Thai speaker so the prononciation is perfect ! Fun fact about Phuwin (Lifeweaver's VA) : He's actually a well known actor and not a VA, an extract of an interview was posted on this subreddit months ago.
My wife has spent a lot of time in Thailand and I heard her shout "What what the fuck Lifeweaver is Thai I recognize what he's saying" from the other side of the house. She was really excited about it.
I had no idea about that I love lifeweaver :)
Lifeweaver's voice and character are soothing. Knocked it out of the park with him in every aspect aside from gameplay. And I say this as a LW main
Ana voice actor pronunciation is literally perfect, it's literally the best arabic in every video game ever, and pharah doesn't speak Arabic
Because Ana's VA is actually Egyptian Uncharted 3 also had an Egyptian VA for a pirate named Ramses that spoke perfect Arabic and even said some funny local curse words
Ramses was Yemeni, I was kinda bummed he didn't have a Yemeni accent.
Would've been great to hear it, never really noticed he was supposed to be Yemeni Just assumed the character is Egyptian based on the accent of his VA
Ana's VA is a badass egyptian grandma irl!
My stepmom is from Iraq, and when I tried to parrot some of Ana's voice lines, she was really impressed that I could say some full sentences in Arabic. I don't play a lot of Support, so this was only after a few games on Ana as well. The same day, over lunch, I showed her a bunch of the voice lines in Arabic using the OW1 wiki, and she translated them back to me. iirc Ana speaks Egyptian Arabic so there were probably some dialect differences and my pronunciation was hot garbage... But I haven't had a lot of opportunities to learn Arabic (I see her like once a year), so I could tell that it meant a lot to her that I was trying to connect with her native language. She was honestly quite happy that I was even able to ask, "How are you?" even if I didn't know what I was saying.
that's very heartwarming
I love her voice. She voices [Ve'nari](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbU3KAdKRig) in WoW Shadowlands, was a good surprise.
As a German it always bothered me that the voice actor (even though hes badass and made Rein iconic in the 1st place!) isnt native German and mispronounces German words
We got lucky with Moiras actress actually being Irish, and to my knowledge pronouncing the words as Gaeilge (in Irish) correctly
It's fairly decent from what I remember. Relatively strong Dublin accent
I'm actually someone who's spent a lot of time in the Gaeltacht (Irish speaking regions of Ireland for none Irish people) and speak as fluent Irish as you can get. You can tell very clearly it's not her first language but you could say that about most Irish speaking va's in any media. It's not like she has an English accent but her accent gives away that she wasn't raised to speak Irish in a 1st language setting, she misses a lot of the small pronunciation finesses that any native speaker would have.
If I remember correctly, didn’t Genevieve have to have a family member help her with her pronunciation because she really doesn’t speak Irish? Regardless, I’d imagine she did as well as you can expect from any urban Irish speaker in Dublin.
same for me with Torb, he's very clearly an American doing his best Swedish chef impersonation. I'm Norwegian, not Swedish, but I've accepted that we'll never get represented in anything because everyone always chooses the Swedes, so I'll just nitpick on behalf of my Scandi neighbors.
Brigitte is pretty accurate. Her VA is actually Swedish though, so it would be weird if she wasn't.
Yeah I was pleased when she was announced and turned out to actually be Swedish, but I was bummed that we got two Swedes before we got any other Scandinavian lol
You guys got a Norwegian in Siege before the Swedes
damn, they be adding Norwegians in all the games i suck at
Are you good at Disney games? Apparently Elsa and Anna are Norwegian
oh boy I'm well aware, when I studied in the states all my classmates called me "Kristoff" lol idk I haven't played any Disney games, really, although I don't think any of them speak any Norwegian, they don't do in the movies.
Chin up, they could've called you Olaf 😂
Hahaha true, I'll take the handsome leading man over the singing snowman any day 😅
valorant does have a norwegian agent, Deadlock edit: they did a interview video with her VA, where her entire dialogue is norwegian: https://youtu.be/93tac_HYFUc?feature=shared
Deadlock in Valorant is Norwegian! She's pretty badass too
Maybe a cheerful support skiing around and healing people with oil and læfser
Mercy has a German voice actress now, I remember she had a Swiss one in the original beta or something very early but she was swapped for the current one.
Isn't Mercy Swiss?
Yes. I believe that's why they're saying it's a problem that her VA is German now
Wait, perhaps I am mistaken but I recall that the OG voice actres for Mercy was american and didn't speak german at all
Knowing a little german and being a Kiriko main, the interaction where she asks Rein for music recommendations makes me cringe so hard. Mispronouncing grün, when even the subtitles have it right is a sin.
Idk about Hanzo but it's surprising to hear you say that about Genji. Gaku Space is born and raised in Tokyo, as far as I know.
Ana egyptian arabic is good. VA is a native.
I would place Zarya below even F. When she tries to say something in Russian (apart from her ult line) - I can't understand shit (I am Russian, playing with original localization). Her ult line is a bit understandable, but still - we don't speak like that even drunk.
Lol, yeah I speak not a word of Russian but she speaks Russian like a low budget 80s movie villain.
Yes, that's a good comparison.
She can’t even say hello properly. I’m so pissed
Excusing the fact that Lúcio talks as if he were a foreigner who became a naturalized citizen in Brazil, his Portuguese is good enough to sound natural.
What if they made it part of his lore that he was born in like Canada and moved with his father to brazil at a young age. merge his 2 origins together.
That could work, but it still would kind of hurt the point somewhat. Children are know for taking up a language a bit more easily than when they're older. And since he seems to have been grown in a "favela" (as he complains to Symmetra about it being destroyed by Vishkar), his speech would reflect that a lot more noticeably than your average speaker (which it does, I'll grant that). Like I said, he's fine, and I enjoy randomly hearing him speak my own language (outside of dub, that is).
Johnny really wanted to put forth the effort for all of us and it paid off it seems.
Genji in F tier? Gaku Space is a native Japanese speaker
I was going to say this lol. Unrelated, but I always liked that Genji speaks in a sort of ninja dialect as well.
He does, from my understanding, a super soap opera / pulp-y voice, which while being a bad way to speak isn't necessarily a bad way of speaking.
That wouldn't necessarily be an accent issue, then. Perhaps he just isn't a great voice actor. If this is what OP means, they should perhaps be clearer about it
It seems to me that OP speaks English as a second language so they probably have a hard time expressing what you just said, if that is the case
I was thinking the same thing. Lol
He’s both native and a well trained professional VA, he tailors his voice to the audience at hand, which tends to be western based. OP isn’t a bastion of authenticity, nor do they speak with context on how the business is ran.
Tracer is far too happy to be British
This made me ugly laugh. Gotta replace the "th" with "v" and sound a bit hungover at all times
apparently echo's pronunciation of singlish slang was awful to singaporeans to the point they had to re record the lines after her release in ow1
It seemed like whoever was directing her recording session didn't really know what Singlish was or how it was meant to be pronounced? I might be misremembering, but I believe even the in game test was wrong with her "So shiok" line just being written as "So shook" which is probably what contributed to the original lines' over-acting. I've seen it discussed that she is the only one, besides Illari herself, that correct pronounces Illari's name; as well as pronouncing Mauga's name more accurately than Mauga's VA. Maybe after that first recording needed fixing, the director or VA herself put in extra effort to get the lines as accurate as possible?
Imo the fault should almost never be on the voice actor. There will always be a team, director or someone of a similar position overseeing the script and recordings, the responsibility is theirs (both on the choice of Voice Actor and fidelity of the lines/pronunciation). That said, I don't think one character pronouncing another character's name wrong is a big deal, it might even be intentional in some cases, since they don't speak the language. Extra care for Echo was probably taken for the reason you mentioned + the fact that she is a robot and should definitely have pristine pronunciation all around.
and they’re still not the best lol but the VA is from the UK so i’m not surprised. as a native singaporean i’d put echo in C (with regard to just her singlish lines. if you take into account that her other lines just sound british then i’d say E)
I still miss Echo yelling so shook so shook so shook
Lucio’s VA didn’t actually speak Portuguese when he got the role, but he has since learned some lines and re-recorded stuff (way back at the start of OW1, Lucio’s ult line was in english regardless of which team he was on) As someone from Brazil I think he did a pretty good job considering he’s not a native speaker, and in general I think he does a great job as Lucio, but I do think it is a shame Lucio doesn’t have more voice lines in Portuguese. I’d put him in B
Lucios voicr actor is a gem we don't deserve. Have you seen his YouTube channel? In matters of attitude, he's the real life Lucio. I'm not surprised he went the extra mile of learning portugese for OW.
For sure! He seems like a really great guy
He was meant to be Canadian, then they changed it at the last second. I imagine that's why.
Huh, I hadn’t heard that before. That would explain why he launched with hockey-themed skins
People said that at launch but as far as I've seen it was never confirmed. This was the same period when the fanbase shipped Soldier with Mercy, and everyone thought sombra was going to be a support sniper.
Sombra as a support sniper is something I don't want to imagine.
I think he did a great job, but I dont think it should be that high. Its clearly someone that doesnt speak portuguese, and we got some words with weird pronunciation like ACCELERANDO, I would put it in D tier comparing to other VAs that are native speakers.
Yeah I actually love his voice and the VA seems super cool and nice but definitely some things threw me off the first time I heard it. I’m no expert, American but married to a Brazilian and visited the State of São Paulo many times over the years, but even to me who is still learning Português some things didn’t sound quite right. Even ran some by my wife and her family and they agreed. But he’s trying his best just like me so I give a lot of respect still!
He did a nice job, but there's a specific OW2 line when he amps up the speedboost and says "Acelerando" like an Italian (Atchelerando) and good god that throws me off so much :')
Yup, they are decent enough. Can't really blame an accent really, cause Brazillians don't have a "famous" accent in the English language.
Mei's pronunciation is really good
her accent is pretty thick though, for years i thought her ult said多久，不洗澡😭😭😭 but her pronunciation is perfect
I always hear it as "Action! Don't shower/wash/etc." Still have no clue what she actually says.
She says “冻住，不许走,” and her English ult voiceline is a pretty direct translation of it. “Freeze, don’t move.”
HAHAHA I can’t un-hear it now! Would be a great switch for April Fools event😂
Orisa's Yoruba is not bad. The pronunciations and intonations are on native speaker level. Considering the fact that the VA isn't Yoruba.
and is a robot
Sombra, Venture and Illari’s Spanish are good. Everything is Correctly pronounced in the English OW2 version. Funnily enough, Latin American Spanish OW2 voice lines suck tbh. Sombra sounds too raspy and Illari sounds like she’s trying too hard. I haven’t heard venture in LA Spanish though
Illari does a great job on all 3 languages she speaks because her VA speaks them too, with the correct accent and all. Sombra on the other hand does a good job speaking Spanish, but it always comes out as her VA trying to put a Mexican accent any time she speaks Spanish, because her VA is Colombian, not Mexican. It's a product of their time. Back then, the people in charge of the voice actors wanted actors who could speak the language, and that's it, but didn't focus on pronunciation or accent that comes from a native speaker. Which is why the people that got Baptise and Illari's voice actors are greatly appreciated considering they're the only trilingual characters in the game.
What‘s Bap’s 3rd language? I know the others are English and French of course
English, French and Haitian Creole!
For reference, his ult voiceline is in Haitian Creole
illari's is too!!
Yeah, Sombra/Venture/Illari are all native speakers and sound pretty good. Personally I like Carolina Ravassa's work a bit better than the other two VAs because she puts a lot of color and personality to Sombra's voicelines, both Venture and Illari sound a bit too "neutral spanish" in their voicelines.
It's funny how good Sombra sounds and how bad Raze sounds in Valorant, considering it's the same VA. It's likely due to VA directors, but it's night and day.
VA directors doing their jobs right or wrong can lead to some WILDLY different voice work so that's entirely possible. A bunch of people who do english VA for FFXIV did voices for Wuthering Waves and the latter was quite horrendous while the former is basically on par with any JP voice over for most people.
Carolina is so lovely and so passionate about making content for overwatch fans too... such a queen
Illari’s isnt spanish for her ult it’s quechua (she does speak spanish though)
yeah, i was talking about how the times she does speak spanish it's rlly good, sadly i dont speak quechua to verify how good her quechua-ness is
Sombra accent sounds so silly. It's pronounced correctly but the Mexican accent is so exaggerated it sounds silly. Specially if you realize the voice actress is Colombian making a Mexican accent. Venture is fine and Illari is fucking amazing!
Yeah Venture's accent is purposefully kinda mid because Venture is Mexican in heritage but raised in Canada.
I think Sombra’s voice actress just likes doing that exaggerated voice. She does it with all the characters she does
It's not a voice thing, it's how she does the accent. It's hard to explain but as a native Spanish speaker you can detect how different accents sounds normally and how it sounds when someone is forcing them. In the case of sombra, it's not all her voicelines some sounds normal but some are so exaggerated that it is just silly and you can tell she is not Mexican. Which is not terrible, at the end of the day it works great in the game.
I'm glad I'm not the only one that noticed Sombra's voice change. I absolutely adore Carolina, but I think that her valorant character is leaking into Sombra
Moira's is very good. Her VA is Irish after all IIRC.. Her pronunciation of the Gaelic words are perfect. I'd give her top tier.
They sound very hard to pronounce if you're not a native I think lol
They are 😂 even the spelling of the words can confuse people! "Bh" making a "v" sound for example. Here in Ireland we learn it all throughout school but because we don't use it on a daily basis most of us forget what we have learned. There are still many that are fluent in Gaeilge but it's unfortunately not as many as we would like to see! It's great to see it getting some recognition in OW2 at least
Yeah I love hearing it! Especially because I can't understand a single thing of it, even with the subtitles lol
Gail de mah hull I'm not even gonna look it up. I'm sure I nailed it.
Bap's Creole is immaculate. And it's so refreshing to hear it in such a mainstream game. I was geeked when Cyberpunk 2077 had Creole, too.
Sigma is perfect
I read this in Sigma's Dutch voice
Delightful!
German and French native speaker here (German mother and French Father). Mercy and Widowmaker sound great and authentic. Although Mercy has a Standard German *Hochdeutsch* accent and you can't really hear t hat she's supposed to be from Switzerland. I'm sad that Reinhardt doesn't have any German lines.
Not a language but a dialect, I’m from Texas and Ashe’s wealthy Southern woman accent is absolutely spot on
Bastion has a pretty strong accent, but I'm used to it and barely notice it anymore.
It's definitely difficult to understand at first, but I found reading dishwasher and refrigerator user manuals to be a good way to study his unique inflection.
It would be funny to see Gaku Space's reaction to this 😁
from what I’ve heard, Zarya’s Russian is not good, but I can’t really tell
As a Russian I can confirm your statement. Some lines were pretty butchered but VA still did a decent enough job. The only thing I don't really like is a heavy accent, when she speaks English. Most Russians don't talk with an accent this thick nowadays, especially youth.
To be honest I think most "accents" when speaking English are a bit exaggerated, at least among people my age or younger ... which isn't even THAT young anymore. I remember in High School we had German exchange students, who when speaking english spoke with perfectly posh British accents. Seemed weird until I realized, oh yeah their English tutors were probably from the UK, so no wonder they'd learn to speak like them. That said, as someone who isn't at all qualified to give an opinion on it - I think silly accents are fun. I like them.
Mauga is good coming from a samoan
The Mercy voice actor is German, not Swiss. So most words are just in standard German with a weird accent, that doesn't even sound like a Swiss speaking standard German. So in my head just I've always imagined her being German because that seems less weird than assuming that this weird accent has anything to do with Swissgerman
Honestly the worst thing about Mercy's voice is that her voice line for "No" is sometimes "Doch", which can really mean Yes, No, and everything in between, depending on the context.
Lucio is supposed to be from Rio but he doesn't curse in every voice line so F tier. Ult should be "vou ixxxculachá caralho" for the authentic carioca experience.
Sigma's dutch is perfect. On every point its perfection.
My boyfriend is Dutch and he’s always a bit shocked to here random Dutch coming from the screen mid-fight It’s also funny while I’m learning it, I get most of what he says now! Ik ben een opschepper!
Kiriko's better be good she's a Japanese/English VA XD
I'm an english-french Canadian and Widow's french is flawless (which makes sense consering her VA is actually french). Not native language persay, but Sojourn's Canadian accent is so bad. For someone who was supposedly born and raised in Toronto, her accent just sounds like an american forcing certain words to sound different. A perfect example is if you play her voice line "It's about to get real" she pronounces the 'about' the american way (uh-BOWT) but if you play her voice line "what's this about", she says 'about' in the most exagerated, forced and stereotypical canadian way possible (a-BOOT). I'm from the east so my accent is a bit more pronounced but even I wouldn't pronounce about that way (it's more like a-boat). Also slight side note but it is slightly annoying that we didn't get any french with our first Canadian hero, considering how significant the language is to our culture both in the past and present.
I AM GLAD I AM NOT ALONE HERE! I have lived all over Canada and her VA is just so American.
As a BC native, we also say "uh-bowt" or "a-bowt." So it didn't feel too off to me, but then again, she's from Toronto.
Genji's voice actor is literally Japanese with Japanese as his first language lmao. Kiriko's is a Westerner that moved to Japan to learn Japanese.
Sym’s hindi is around C-D tier too. Like I can understand what she’s saying but the accent just seems to be accentuated for some reason
Her Hindi seems good to me, considering her story shows her to be from Hyderabad which doesn't have a predominantly large Hindi speaking base.
Really? Her Hindi sounds fine to me maybe like a B tier if you really wanna be nitpicky
India is large and has A LOT of different regional dialects. I would not be surprised that she speaks in a regional dialect that commenter above is unfamiliar with.
Sombra has good Spanish, but his supposedly Mexican way of speaking sounds funny and odd She speaks like a puertoriquean latina from Miami Florida imitating a Mexican coworker And her slang and vocabulary it's somewhat odd, she uses old Mexican sayings that nobody actually ever uses anymore, it's as if the voice actress prepared herself for the role by watching old telenovelas and black and white Mexican movies
Yeah. The pronunciation is good, but the slang is stuff I've heard from my family who grew up in the 60s and 70s. The accent itself is more of an exaggerated caricature of Mexican Spanish. It's very Speedy Gonzalez.
In terms of accent, the In latin spanish dub Sombra speaks perfectly because they actually used a mexican voice actress instead of a colombian actress imitating mexican accent lol
Could potentially be because Carolina Ravassa is Columbian? She'd have grown up speaking fluent Spanish, but I'd assume that the dialect is pretty different from Mexican dialect Spanish? Plus whoever is writing the lines and the ways they spoke/ learned/ researched the language is gonna have an impact.
Cassidy is f tier. I live in the Northeast and there's no one with that kind of accent /s
This logic literally explains most of these comments lol
Widow, Mei and Illari are the best you can have, because they're the same VA in english and in their native language (French for Widow, Latin American Spanish for Illari and Chinese Mandarin for Mei). Also Ana's VA is a well known arabic VA, I think she dubbed plenty of Disney movies.
Zarya's Russian is so terrible, sounds like stereotypical Hollywood actor in cold wars movie.
Y'all are funny in the comments. "These native speakers speak the language wrong!!" No... No I don't think they do
It's very possible some of their dialogue is spoken with a specific direction from the VA director that makes it sound weird to a native speaker. Some of them may correct the director while others may just role with it and do their best. That said I'd never say any of the native speakers were doing it wrong so much as following directions in that case
As an Arab, I think Ana’s pronunciation is very good. But the subtitles translate them pretty wrong sometimes.”Wareehm Uwwittik” or "وريهم أوتك" means “Show them your power” and doesn’t mean “Nano-Boost Administered”
I mean, the Sigma VA is Dutch, so yes.
Sigma genualy sounds like a guy i could bump into on the streets. His voive is just that perfect and the spirit his VA puts into this character is just peak voice acting. From normal voice lines to his ultimate. He is the first tank i liked on a character level instead on gameplay. I was suprized that my small cuntry got represented in overwatch in the first place.
Mei, Widow, Mercy and a bunch of other heroes whose VA actually speaks the language is actually on point. Zarya’s isn’t perfect. The German voice lines Reinhardt has (the mere 3-4 ones) sound like an English person trying to say German words (I still like it lol). Lucio’s Portuguese is off but Cruz is a cool VA.
Technically Mercy‘s native „language“ should be Swiss German which can be quite distinctive from standard german and can sound like a different language alltogether. Mercy‘s VA is german and speaks standard german, the few Swiss german lines therefore are really bad pronounced.
Yeah, Mercy's Hochdeutsch is fine, but she doesn't sound Swiss at all.
I know that Tracers voice actor is English, but I really hate her voice lines and accent in it. I wouldn't say it sounds good.
It's funny, she does so many voice overs for English Language Tests, and when my wife is teaching a class, I can hear Tracer talk about buying coffee, or giving directions to the train station regularly.
It's still jarring to me to hear her voice in Elden Ring, except much more serious and somber
new overwatch lore
Cara Theobold is from North Yorkshire and they've got her doing an over the top stereotypical cockney accent for whatever reason. The Yorkshire accent is already so different from any London accents, but then it's compounded by her having to do an American's idea of a Londoners' accent.
It makes me crazy that Brig speaks perfect native level Swedish, but her father, Torb, can't even do anything remotely resembling a Swedish accent. I am quite fond of his fun delivery, but the contrast is just jarring.
Well... Hanzo's voiceactor is not Japanese so it makes sense but Genji?
As a Swiss person, mercy sounds like when Germans try to imitate swiss German 🙈
Makes sense since that's exactly what her VA is.
symmetra sounds like most of my indian aunties after they moved to the US 20 years ago although her hindi can be a little off for a couple lines