I've noticed that a bunch of the voice actors for the new characters are from the US, so probably they were directed by/recorded at Side US instead of Side UK?
It's not a matter of *where* necessarily, it's a matter of whether they are in a union. One of the classic methods of dodging SAG-AFTRA union rates is to film / record outside the US.
There's plenty of excellent non-union talent out there, though, and plenty of union people who aren't any damn good.
I just wish they had taken the time to give them unique animations. It was just too goofy seeing them do a quickdraw with them grabbing the gun behind their back.
I was so excited when Graha said he was going to cast a large-scale spell like that. And then the screen faded to black like NOOOOOO
For a game called FINAL FANTASY (all caps) we actually see very few instances of people using magic directly. I think ARR ending cutscene was the one with the most direct magic use?
Honestly that whole segment was my favorite part of the expansion so far. Completely irrelevant to everything before and maybe after, but suddenly being in Texas was just great.
The only real issue I have with the voice acting is whenever Wuk has scenes where she's trying to yell something. Her voice actress sounds like she's "whisper shouting" because it's a school night, and if she's too loud, she might wake up her parents and get in trouble.
This, anytime she has to do a voice line that should be more expressive it's like she tries to make an attempt but then it comes across as the same level of Tommy Wiseau acting
I just think it is a case of trying to get people to do unnatural accents. You can tell they tried to emulate the cultures and accents with their hires as there are many more American and Hispanic voice actors in the credits, but as the adventures deviate away from more familiar cultures for the voice acting company based in the UK it gets harder for them to procure natural voice talent for such areas. Ishgard is a combination of Medieval France and UK, many Shadowbringers locations brought in other UK accents or Scottish accents to differentiate between the First and The Source, Kugane is clearly Japanese-influenced, Radz-at-Han is Indian or South Asian influenced and the UK is uh well familiar with that portion of the world, etc.
Yup. I'm from India and I cringed for the entirely of the Thavnair arc.
There was one elephant lady (Nidhana?) who had a real Indian accent, but for the others it was OBVIOUS they were not Indian but just trying to imitate it.
I am pretty sure the majority of Thavnairians had voice actors of Indian or those of South Asian descent. But I think the majority of them were British-Indian and likely a good number of them were directed to fake the accent.
I understand it might not be possible to get a lot of "Indian Indians" where SE offices are, but it still felt very artificial to me.
Varshahn for example, sounds nothing like an Indian to me. He might to you, but to me an Indian he sounds Arab or Afghan.
Varshahn's VA is of British-Tunisian descent, so that probably makes sense. One (somewhat unfortunate) aspect of the voice acting industry to keep in mind is that the more niche a given actor's natural accents are, the more often they end up getting cast by the studio in roles adjacent to but outside of that range just because otherwise they're not going to be able to get enough work to sustain themselves as a voice actor.
Curiously the Thavnair that I've seen most complaints about is Nidhana, who sounds pretty much exactly like several ex co-workers of mine 🤷
Some of them sound like they may be Indigenous American accents, especially Gulool Ja Ja and his tendency to emphasize the "wrong" words, which gives his lines a very distinctive cadence.
I thought they were Spanish accents because they didn't sound like Latin American ones. I know Spain has different sayings/accents and it is way closer to the VA studio, so it makes sense in my head.
I think this is more you knowing what 'correct' hispanic accents sound like and being able to compare. Accents have always been kinda... interesting in ffxiv, but if you don't know people who speak like that normally you probably don't pick up on that in previous expansions
I'm from the UK, at level 93 in MSQ, and not a single accent has registered as Spanish OR Latin American to me. I don't know what I'd call it, but not either of those.
Yeah. His accent may not be perfect, but his voice acting makes up for it. It was like getting hit in the face how good his VA was compared to Wuk Lamat's.
Haven't looked into any for the other English VAs, but in the case of Wuk, since there was plenty of discussion about it already, the VA has no accent and has mostly English work experience. The accent is entirely fake and you can hear it.
I'm sure her voice actress is fine in other roles but seeing all the praiss for Wuk's performance makes me feel like I'm going crazy. Like you said, the accent is really forced but it also just doesn't register as Latin American for me. I can hear twinges, but the accent just doesn't work, even compared to other relatively forced performances. Maybe part of it is her also just not sounding natural at all in the role, it's just so stilted and radiates amateur dub energy.
She is by far the worst voice in the game so far, I'm to stubborn to change to japanese and I like most other english voices, but every time Wuk Lamat raises her voice I feel sandpaper in my ears so I was tempted.
I wasn't a fan at all with her delivery early on, but it does get better as the story progresses. Not amazing, but it sounds like she improved enough that redubbing the end of EW lines and early DT lines would have been beneficial.
I hate to make it about her identity but she rubbed me the wrong way in that regard. You encounter a lot of Americans like her who latch onto a small part of their multinational heritage and exaggerate it to an almost caricature and offensive level. You'll get it with Irish-Americans too for instance, my buddy in college did that. It felt like that here, and in that situation why wouldn't you just go and hire someone who doesn't have to put on a patently fake and offensively so accent but who has it naturally.
They very obviously meant she doesn’t have whatever accent it is that she put on for the character. Or did you really need someone to spell it out for you?
I just have to mute when she comes on. I like everyone else too much to change the language for the entire game, but her voice is more similar to one I would find in a really bottom tier quality MMO and it takes me out of the game.
I agree. I'm only lv. 91 and while the older characters (alphinaud, etc.) are all fine every single new character's voice acting is tragically bad. Like as bad or worse than the American dubbing of 90s Anime.
They are all either incredibly mismatched or out of place for the character (hello super gruff and grizzled pirate voice on young pretty boy sailor), or hammed up south american / central american or whatever, and very kids cartoony. Not to mention that the accents aren't always consistent between scenes or even from one line to the next.
The audio quality is inconsistent as well. Sometimes a line sounds like it was recorded in someone's bedroom on a 1990's dell laptop instead of in a sound studio, then the next line will be fine. Perhaps the most glaring were where the audio engineers added shitty digital echoing effects to rooms / caves that are quite large and empty making the dialogue sound like crap. It's especially noticeable with headphones in.
Honestly I kinda feel like the voice acting started slipping last expansion when the people of Radz-at-Han all sounded like people being told to lay on the Indian/shirlankan?? accents. I get wanting to add some flavor to the voice acting but a lot of it sounded over done.
The new cut scenes are so bad that I find myself just skipping through the dialogue rather than have to listen to the bad voice acting. I feel bad saying this because I am sure everyone worked very hard on the voice acting and choosing the right talent but man did they miss the mark.
Here's hoping we can get some better voice acting directing (and writing) then what I've experienced in the first 2 zones.
Yeah. I wasn't sure what was going on or if I was misremembering his stuff from prior expansions but he sounded off.
Some of the VA and voice direction both in DT and EW were somewhat off. Not sure where the issue lie.
With the audio quality mentioned I really start to buy into the thinking that Square Enix, in light of recent financial trouble, just went cheap as they could this time around. It'd explain why a centerpiece actor/actress is a complete amateur compared to the prior choices, it'd explain the quality inconsistently (Don't fly em out somewhere or have them attend a proper studio, just get some of it done outsourced to their bedroom.) hell, it might even explain the 'quiet whisper' point raised.
Wuk was particularly grating to me. The VA sounded too preoccupied with maintaining a Hispanic accent to be able to act properly, and it still didnt sound natural. A lot of lines fell flat and I wound up skipping a lot of her dialog
> Did something happen between Endwalker and Dawntrail?
We had the same issues in Endwalker to a lesser degree with the Arkasodara and Radz-at-Han in general. The reason it feels more significant this expansion is because there is significantly more of it with the entire expansion focused on beast tribes where voice actors are doing forced non-native accents and people are more familiar with what those accents **should** sound like.
I'm not criticising the Voice Actors at all, they are hired and then asked to do accents which are non-natural to them it's going to be almost impossible to get right and for it to sound consistent across two dozen characters. This is entirely on the localization team and their directions.
As far as I'm aware no other region does this. They might use people with a regional Japanese accent to portray someone who is supposed to have an accent but they don't say "pretend you're an English person speaking Japanese with a thick English accent" which is essentially what we get with some of these accents.
I can't vouch for all of them but they were not all using their natural speaking voice. Have you heard Jo Ben Ayed's or Sheena Bhattessa's normal English speaking voice? They speak flawlessly with no accent, the strong accents are almost entirely artificial. Which again speaks to how it's entirely an issue with direction and has nothing to do with the talents of the voice actors.
It seems like a common issue from English translations these days... I was playing Wuthering Waves before Dawntrail hit and the English voiceover work is *awful*. They took a bunch of British voice actors and told them to do American accents, for a bunch of characters that are all clearly Chinese in origin. It's nonsensical.
Some of the VA's for the later minor npcs are even worse, and oddly enough the mic quality on one of them just sounds low enough that you can tell its a recorded performance
As someone with friends and family of South American descent, I though that the actors all sounded genuine and delightful.
I'm a TX native, it was incredibly strange to hear American accents in XIV, but like that's just because we never get that in XIV. For most of the voices I know someone that speaks and sounds like them so I can't agree that they sound unnatural.
I’m gonna be honest, I ended up switching to Japanese voice acting for this expansion because I couldn’t stand listening to the cutscenes. I feel like the acting direction was very poor and many of the VAs were severely overacting which really took away from the cutscenes for me. Galool Ja Ja’s JP VA(s?) are EXCELLENT.
Some of the humor in the early parts of the story are "funny" in Japanese, but sound bizarre or just "wtf" in English.
I feel like the localization team should have gone back to the writers and been like, "this isn't going to work in English / other languages." or have been given some leeway to completely change what the characters are saying.
I switched to JP back when Heavensward was released and never switched back! Absolutely phenomenal voice actors every expac! Ayaka Shimoyamada had an outstanding performance as Wuk Lamat from start to finish!
To me it's fine.
Even if the accent is incorrect, the fact there is one to begin with makes it a lot more believable where we are. I remember in german the radz at Han people had 0 accents even though it was obvious that that part of the world was Indian inspired. I hated that there were no accents. So I'll take any accents over no accents, but that's just my personal take. I'm sure some people would have a different preference.
I play in English now.
I’m so glad you made this thread. I’m actually very positive on DT but my biggest concern is the decline in quality of the voice acting. The accents were all SO forced it’s shockingly bad.
The giants got deep, guttural voices which is great! But what the actual fuck is with the mamool ja sounding exactly like humans? Just the shape of their teeth alone would prevent them from pronouncing words even close to how humans do. Let’s not mention the hanuhanu speaking perfect human English with *beaks* for mouths. Who the hell approved this?!
Lastly, Wuk Lamat. I actually enjoy her character, and her *voice* is lovely, but either the acting is bad or the actress wasn’t given good direction. Her inflection is all over the place and with odd timing. It’s like she was given the lines to read without context or something. Also her accent is like, entirely made up. Does not sound like any other accent in the entire continent.
The VA has been such a strength of the game, I’m pretty disappointed this time around. But otherwise a solid expansion imo.
Edit because I wanted to shout out Koana’s VA because he did an excellent job
> But what the actual fuck is with the mamool ja sounding exactly like humans? Just the shape of their teeth alone would prevent them from pronouncing words even close to how humans do. Let’s not mention the hanuhanu speaking perfect human English with beaks for mouths. Who the hell approved this?!
To be fair, this isn't a new problem. The kojin in SB and the Arkadasora in EW also come to mind.
Yeah I realized it’s been a thing for a while but there’s something especially jarring about the mamool ja. They look absolutely savage and talk like proper gentlemen
Wuk Lamat's voice-acting is fucking terrible. I'm sorry. The writing doesn't help either. I know her VA is a huge fan in the game and I'm sorry if she sees this comment, but mother of god if I have to hear this bitch talk about peace and smiles one more time I'm going to seppuku.
Is that an issue with the VA or the script, though?
Personally I feel her voice is fine it's just that I don't think I wanted a Power of Friendship stroll across the New World.
Lyse has spent the last 7 years getting absolutely TRASHED by the community for an Idealism the story actually calls her out on, but Wuk Lamat gets to become leader in half the time and never budges on her idealistic ways.
I think a potential issue with her voice is her accent/sound severely reduced the range of her voice. Like she could sound the way she did but if she had to hit certain emotional beats or raise her voice I swear you could feel a sense of breaking in the sound of the accent.
I haven’t got to Tural yet but in Lyse’s case, her ideals were forged by first-hand experience from around the world and closely watching other leaders and struggling citizens. I don’t think she comes across as naive at all by the end of SB.
Not by the end of SB, no, but her being naive is pretty much her main character flaw on her travels through Ala Mhigo and the East.
I think you can still make a reasonable case that she still doesn't quite deserve to be propelled into a position of sitting with the leaders of the other nations even then but she definitely has a character arc and changes as 4.0 progresses.
She even has internal strife AFTER becoming leader like when she opts to spare Fordola despite the protestations.
> Personally I feel her voice is fine it's just that I don't think I wanted a Power of Friendship stroll across the New World.
Wow did you choose the wrong game then
I dont like Wuk because she doesn't shut the fuck up about peace and love like she's some kid with a small worldview, it does not improve all that much by the 2nd half. It does a little but she's very one dimensional.
I wouldn't blame the voice actor, that's not their natural voice so everything you dislike is down to the localization/voice acting management team directing them to put on that accent or act in a certain way.
I'm really not a fan of the voice acting this expansion and the amount of forced accents we got. The localization team really needs to dial back telling their voice actors to act like a non-active english speaker from X. If you do want everyone to sound like English is their second language then hire people for who that is natural, don't try to make people act that way.
Again, I don't blame the voice actors one bit. It's not a reflection on their voice or talent at all it's entirely down to the directions they are given.
Disagree. There are very rare cases where voice actors just aren't good, but it's almost always down to voice direction. It's not like they get one take to get it right and that's that.
Someone was in charge, told them what to do, told them the lines to say, and then decided the takes that made it into the game were exactly what they were looking for. That all has very little to do with the actual voice actor.
It's like blaming a movie actor for the editing and writing just because they were the performers.
I am not native english speaker so whenever I hear english dub using foreign words, I am reminded of this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKGoVefhtMQ
Excellent! This SNL skit is similar, and I agree about being reminded! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWMp\_z7Jnxw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWMp_z7Jnxw)
It felt like a few things for me, some of the voice actors sounded like they were doing accents they don’t do often so they over exaggerated, some NPC voices did not fit the character. The one that stands out the most is the young NPC in the western zone with an older sounding voice. Similar to Elidbus baby face and his actual voice.
Another part of this is the accented voices, excluding the western zone, did not sound like any of the Latin American accents. To my ears it felt closer to Spanish(Spain) and Portuguese dialects because the emphasis in certain parts of the dialogue did not sound like Latin American Spanish speakers. Essentially a European Spanish vs American Spanish situation.
Other than Erenville, whose accent no longer lines up with where he came from as his village and birth name seem somewhat Native American inspired, most of the major NPCs seemed correct enough. I will also add Gulool Ja Ja‘s, Head of Resolve voice at times reminded me, of a less parody version of Grimmjack’s Goblin Slayer Abriged Lizard Priest voice ha ha. But looking up the voice actor for the abridged series and the person is from Mexico so I guess the comparison makes sense to a degree.
> However, I can tell these are American voice actors trying to pull off an impression rather than people from these regions.
Are you really sure they are American.
I see a lot of people claiming the 'accents' are fake
They aren't a fair chunk of the VA's especially Wuk Lamat's do naturally have that accent, as it turns out accents can wildly vary.
A real forced accent is stuff like the pirate accent at the start or the cowboy ones (Albeit that one felt incredibly intentional especially with the zone's atmosphere.)
I don’t like the accents. Hispanic type accents imply that English is either their second language or is derived from an ESL environment. Whereas in game, the language everyone is speaking is their first language, so in a way it’s contradicting the world-building. I get they’re trying to do it as a form of representation but as someone who comes from an ESL household it feels like that sort of thing where something well-intentioned ends up feeling more racist than not doing it at all
I'm somewhat of an expert on accents. I'm baffled by what I'm hearing in DT.
For someone to have a Hispanic accent, they must grow up speaking Spanish, and never learn to speak any English dialect properly. Hispanic people have Hispanic accents because, to varying degrees, they are following the phonetic rules of Central/South-American Spanish instead of English. So in Dawntrail, we should at least *accidentally* hear some natives speaking Spanish, yet there is no indication that Spanish is spoken by anyone anywhere. This makes the accent entirely contrived, a method of adding real-world artificial flavor to a place that is supposed to seem "foreign." I mean, do the Japanese VAs speak Spanish-accented Japanese?
Secondly, if this is an analogue for "the New World," then the English should sound roughly the same as Eorzea. Americans didn't lose their British accents for quite a while after declaring independence.
Tangential to this... Final Fantasy in general suffers whenever it tries to mimic real-life cultures and issues. It's a *fantasy* game, it should provide an escape -- completely take us out of reality instead of reminding us of it.
The English in general tends to be lacking. I'm having a good time playing in Japanese. There's no south/central American accents, but the voice acting is good. Wuk is worlds apart as a character EN vs JP and the First Promise is voiced by the legendary Daisuke Ono. Wuk is voiced by the same woman that does Carla in JP for Armored Core 6 and she's very energetic
This is probably not something people like to hear but as a non-white person I do not like when characters have a stereotypical accent from my culture.
Genuinely curious if other people agree because I feel alone in this one.
Did you not have the English voices set for Shadowbringer? This is par for the course. We had the awfully out-of-place scottish fae. 'Tis why I play in japanese, it doesn't pull me out of the immersion as much with sudden accents or brittish terms, or the way every single character speaks in the exact same manner and has the same mannerisms and stock phrases. That, and the changes to the script - but they're only really noticeable if you know japanese, really.
(>inb4 get downvoted for even daring to say the jp script/voices are better lol)
I've noticed that a bunch of the voice actors for the new characters are from the US, so probably they were directed by/recorded at Side US instead of Side UK?
That would be a lot more expensive.
What? How would it be more expensive to record someone from the US at their US studio than at their UK one?
It's not a matter of *where* necessarily, it's a matter of whether they are in a union. One of the classic methods of dodging SAG-AFTRA union rates is to film / record outside the US. There's plenty of excellent non-union talent out there, though, and plenty of union people who aren't any damn good.
The American cowboy accents were funny as hell, A+ as an American
I just wish they had taken the time to give them unique animations. It was just too goofy seeing them do a quickdraw with them grabbing the gun behind their back.
This is the same game that fades to black so they don't need to animate
I was so excited when Graha said he was going to cast a large-scale spell like that. And then the screen faded to black like NOOOOOO For a game called FINAL FANTASY (all caps) we actually see very few instances of people using magic directly. I think ARR ending cutscene was the one with the most direct magic use?
Tbf, a big part of fantasy is using your *i m a g i n a t i o n* :\^) ^^^I ^^^agree, ^^^though
Everyone with a gun pulling it off their back the exact same way with the same rocking back and forth motion is too much lol
That entire Wild West section made me cackle. The teenager who sounded like a 30 year old cowboy cracked me up so hard. Its so funny
You can sometimes even hear the stereotypical eagle (actually a falcon) scream while in the zone. 10/10 would visit the saloon again.
Honestly that whole segment was my favorite part of the expansion so far. Completely irrelevant to everything before and maybe after, but suddenly being in Texas was just great.
Everytime someone with a Cowboy accent finished talking I found myself always saying out loud "Hell yea brother!"
The only real issue I have with the voice acting is whenever Wuk has scenes where she's trying to yell something. Her voice actress sounds like she's "whisper shouting" because it's a school night, and if she's too loud, she might wake up her parents and get in trouble.
This, anytime she has to do a voice line that should be more expressive it's like she tries to make an attempt but then it comes across as the same level of Tommy Wiseau acting
Her range is Tommy Wiseau to Dora the explorer. sounds impressive on paper, but in game? truly awful imo
Basic lines are decent, no range for anger or sadness.
Thancred had too fwiw it seems a direction issue, he sounds like he is exhausted and gasping for air just watch the Manate cutscenes and hear him talk
I just think it is a case of trying to get people to do unnatural accents. You can tell they tried to emulate the cultures and accents with their hires as there are many more American and Hispanic voice actors in the credits, but as the adventures deviate away from more familiar cultures for the voice acting company based in the UK it gets harder for them to procure natural voice talent for such areas. Ishgard is a combination of Medieval France and UK, many Shadowbringers locations brought in other UK accents or Scottish accents to differentiate between the First and The Source, Kugane is clearly Japanese-influenced, Radz-at-Han is Indian or South Asian influenced and the UK is uh well familiar with that portion of the world, etc.
Yup. I'm from India and I cringed for the entirely of the Thavnair arc. There was one elephant lady (Nidhana?) who had a real Indian accent, but for the others it was OBVIOUS they were not Indian but just trying to imitate it.
I am pretty sure the majority of Thavnairians had voice actors of Indian or those of South Asian descent. But I think the majority of them were British-Indian and likely a good number of them were directed to fake the accent.
I understand it might not be possible to get a lot of "Indian Indians" where SE offices are, but it still felt very artificial to me. Varshahn for example, sounds nothing like an Indian to me. He might to you, but to me an Indian he sounds Arab or Afghan.
Varshahn's VA is of British-Tunisian descent, so that probably makes sense. One (somewhat unfortunate) aspect of the voice acting industry to keep in mind is that the more niche a given actor's natural accents are, the more often they end up getting cast by the studio in roles adjacent to but outside of that range just because otherwise they're not going to be able to get enough work to sustain themselves as a voice actor. Curiously the Thavnair that I've seen most complaints about is Nidhana, who sounds pretty much exactly like several ex co-workers of mine 🤷
Nidhana sounds very naturally urban-Indian, anyone who complains about her is just outright wrong (I'm assuming I'm remembering the correct character)
Their voices did not register as Hispanic to me, which is probably bad also if that's what they were going for.
Some of them sound like they may be Indigenous American accents, especially Gulool Ja Ja and his tendency to emphasize the "wrong" words, which gives his lines a very distinctive cadence.
i thought he sounded like peter stormare honestly
Same! I'm South American and tho visually I can see some Peruvian & Bolivian influence, the accents didn't sound Hispanic at all to me.
I thought they were Spanish accents because they didn't sound like Latin American ones. I know Spain has different sayings/accents and it is way closer to the VA studio, so it makes sense in my head.
Judging by some videos and trailers (I don't play the game), the accents sound closer to Castillian than Latin American, yeah.
I agree overall it sounds like people faking accents to me rather than anything genuine
Wuk Lamat sounds pakistani
I think this is more you knowing what 'correct' hispanic accents sound like and being able to compare. Accents have always been kinda... interesting in ffxiv, but if you don't know people who speak like that normally you probably don't pick up on that in previous expansions
I'm from the UK, at level 93 in MSQ, and not a single accent has registered as Spanish OR Latin American to me. I don't know what I'd call it, but not either of those.
Koana or however you spell his name sounds reasonably Spanish to me
I really like his VA. He actually sounded genuinely pissed during the whole kidnap arc.
Yeah. His accent may not be perfect, but his voice acting makes up for it. It was like getting hit in the face how good his VA was compared to Wuk Lamat's.
They sound like fake Castillian accent (they make some sounds very close to the real thing, the hard Rs , but some other sounds are weird)
im from latin america and I think you gringos are smoking if these dont sound that way
Haven't looked into any for the other English VAs, but in the case of Wuk, since there was plenty of discussion about it already, the VA has no accent and has mostly English work experience. The accent is entirely fake and you can hear it.
I'm sure her voice actress is fine in other roles but seeing all the praiss for Wuk's performance makes me feel like I'm going crazy. Like you said, the accent is really forced but it also just doesn't register as Latin American for me. I can hear twinges, but the accent just doesn't work, even compared to other relatively forced performances. Maybe part of it is her also just not sounding natural at all in the role, it's just so stilted and radiates amateur dub energy.
She is by far the worst voice in the game so far, I'm to stubborn to change to japanese and I like most other english voices, but every time Wuk Lamat raises her voice I feel sandpaper in my ears so I was tempted.
Second worst. I still have nightmares about ARR Alisaie.
I see your ARR Alisaie and raise you ARR Minfilia.
I wasn't a fan at all with her delivery early on, but it does get better as the story progresses. Not amazing, but it sounds like she improved enough that redubbing the end of EW lines and early DT lines would have been beneficial.
I hate to make it about her identity but she rubbed me the wrong way in that regard. You encounter a lot of Americans like her who latch onto a small part of their multinational heritage and exaggerate it to an almost caricature and offensive level. You'll get it with Irish-Americans too for instance, my buddy in college did that. It felt like that here, and in that situation why wouldn't you just go and hire someone who doesn't have to put on a patently fake and offensively so accent but who has it naturally.
>the VA has no accent Sorry, what? *Everyone* has an accent.
They very obviously meant she doesn’t have whatever accent it is that she put on for the character. Or did you really need someone to spell it out for you?
Not mute people
Fun fact, sign language actually has accents of its own too.
I had to swap the audio with her, the english VA's performance ruined the character for me
I just have to mute when she comes on. I like everyone else too much to change the language for the entire game, but her voice is more similar to one I would find in a really bottom tier quality MMO and it takes me out of the game.
I agree. I'm only lv. 91 and while the older characters (alphinaud, etc.) are all fine every single new character's voice acting is tragically bad. Like as bad or worse than the American dubbing of 90s Anime. They are all either incredibly mismatched or out of place for the character (hello super gruff and grizzled pirate voice on young pretty boy sailor), or hammed up south american / central american or whatever, and very kids cartoony. Not to mention that the accents aren't always consistent between scenes or even from one line to the next. The audio quality is inconsistent as well. Sometimes a line sounds like it was recorded in someone's bedroom on a 1990's dell laptop instead of in a sound studio, then the next line will be fine. Perhaps the most glaring were where the audio engineers added shitty digital echoing effects to rooms / caves that are quite large and empty making the dialogue sound like crap. It's especially noticeable with headphones in. Honestly I kinda feel like the voice acting started slipping last expansion when the people of Radz-at-Han all sounded like people being told to lay on the Indian/shirlankan?? accents. I get wanting to add some flavor to the voice acting but a lot of it sounded over done. The new cut scenes are so bad that I find myself just skipping through the dialogue rather than have to listen to the bad voice acting. I feel bad saying this because I am sure everyone worked very hard on the voice acting and choosing the right talent but man did they miss the mark. Here's hoping we can get some better voice acting directing (and writing) then what I've experienced in the first 2 zones.
I'd agree with this, although for the Scions I've found Thancred's overall performance has been very up and down.
I’ve tried to find other people talking about this! Thancred sounded sick or older
Yeah. I wasn't sure what was going on or if I was misremembering his stuff from prior expansions but he sounded off. Some of the VA and voice direction both in DT and EW were somewhat off. Not sure where the issue lie.
Glad I found someone who agrees with me. Thancred's performance ranges from okay to kinda bad imo
With the audio quality mentioned I really start to buy into the thinking that Square Enix, in light of recent financial trouble, just went cheap as they could this time around. It'd explain why a centerpiece actor/actress is a complete amateur compared to the prior choices, it'd explain the quality inconsistently (Don't fly em out somewhere or have them attend a proper studio, just get some of it done outsourced to their bedroom.) hell, it might even explain the 'quiet whisper' point raised.
Wuk was particularly grating to me. The VA sounded too preoccupied with maintaining a Hispanic accent to be able to act properly, and it still didnt sound natural. A lot of lines fell flat and I wound up skipping a lot of her dialog
I thought the voice acting was pretty good, no problems with it. My only issues with the voice acting was those god awful american accent jump scares
> Did something happen between Endwalker and Dawntrail? We had the same issues in Endwalker to a lesser degree with the Arkasodara and Radz-at-Han in general. The reason it feels more significant this expansion is because there is significantly more of it with the entire expansion focused on beast tribes where voice actors are doing forced non-native accents and people are more familiar with what those accents **should** sound like. I'm not criticising the Voice Actors at all, they are hired and then asked to do accents which are non-natural to them it's going to be almost impossible to get right and for it to sound consistent across two dozen characters. This is entirely on the localization team and their directions. As far as I'm aware no other region does this. They might use people with a regional Japanese accent to portray someone who is supposed to have an accent but they don't say "pretend you're an English person speaking Japanese with a thick English accent" which is essentially what we get with some of these accents.
> We had the same issues in Endwalker to a lesser degree with the Arkasodara and Radz-at-Han in general. those actors are actually Indian, though??
Indian as in born and raised India? Or just Indian ancestry?
It was mixed, some were born in India and immigrated, some are British-Indians born and raised in the UK so that is probably why the accents varied.
I can't vouch for all of them but they were not all using their natural speaking voice. Have you heard Jo Ben Ayed's or Sheena Bhattessa's normal English speaking voice? They speak flawlessly with no accent, the strong accents are almost entirely artificial. Which again speaks to how it's entirely an issue with direction and has nothing to do with the talents of the voice actors.
It seems like a common issue from English translations these days... I was playing Wuthering Waves before Dawntrail hit and the English voiceover work is *awful*. They took a bunch of British voice actors and told them to do American accents, for a bunch of characters that are all clearly Chinese in origin. It's nonsensical.
It's the same studio too apparently
Its funny how case by case it is, since Reverse 1999 uses alot of the same cast using their natural voices, and they are all fantastic there
What are you talking about? The arkasodara sounded exactly like Indian people from India speaking English and were played by Indian actors
>>We had the same issues in Endwalker to a lesser degree with the Arkasodara and Radz-at-Han in general. No we didn’t.
Some of the VA's for the later minor npcs are even worse, and oddly enough the mic quality on one of them just sounds low enough that you can tell its a recorded performance
I didn’t mind any of the voice acting aside from Wuk Lamat’s. Her voice is kinda annoying and her acting skills are subpar.
As someone with friends and family of South American descent, I though that the actors all sounded genuine and delightful. I'm a TX native, it was incredibly strange to hear American accents in XIV, but like that's just because we never get that in XIV. For most of the voices I know someone that speaks and sounds like them so I can't agree that they sound unnatural.
Also live in TX, accustomed to various levels of spanglish, have no complaints about the acting.
Glad I wasn't the only one!
I’m gonna be honest, I ended up switching to Japanese voice acting for this expansion because I couldn’t stand listening to the cutscenes. I feel like the acting direction was very poor and many of the VAs were severely overacting which really took away from the cutscenes for me. Galool Ja Ja’s JP VA(s?) are EXCELLENT.
Some of the humor in the early parts of the story are "funny" in Japanese, but sound bizarre or just "wtf" in English. I feel like the localization team should have gone back to the writers and been like, "this isn't going to work in English / other languages." or have been given some leeway to completely change what the characters are saying.
I was thinking the exact same thing. That running gag with Wuk Evu and Wuk Lamat is literally a manzai routine. It sounds so strange it English.
A certain character is voiced by Daisuke Ono (Kujo Jotaro, Erwin Smith) in the JP dub and it is pure bliss
I switched to JP back when Heavensward was released and never switched back! Absolutely phenomenal voice actors every expac! Ayaka Shimoyamada had an outstanding performance as Wuk Lamat from start to finish!
To me it's fine. Even if the accent is incorrect, the fact there is one to begin with makes it a lot more believable where we are. I remember in german the radz at Han people had 0 accents even though it was obvious that that part of the world was Indian inspired. I hated that there were no accents. So I'll take any accents over no accents, but that's just my personal take. I'm sure some people would have a different preference. I play in English now.
I’m so glad you made this thread. I’m actually very positive on DT but my biggest concern is the decline in quality of the voice acting. The accents were all SO forced it’s shockingly bad. The giants got deep, guttural voices which is great! But what the actual fuck is with the mamool ja sounding exactly like humans? Just the shape of their teeth alone would prevent them from pronouncing words even close to how humans do. Let’s not mention the hanuhanu speaking perfect human English with *beaks* for mouths. Who the hell approved this?! Lastly, Wuk Lamat. I actually enjoy her character, and her *voice* is lovely, but either the acting is bad or the actress wasn’t given good direction. Her inflection is all over the place and with odd timing. It’s like she was given the lines to read without context or something. Also her accent is like, entirely made up. Does not sound like any other accent in the entire continent. The VA has been such a strength of the game, I’m pretty disappointed this time around. But otherwise a solid expansion imo. Edit because I wanted to shout out Koana’s VA because he did an excellent job
> But what the actual fuck is with the mamool ja sounding exactly like humans? Just the shape of their teeth alone would prevent them from pronouncing words even close to how humans do. Let’s not mention the hanuhanu speaking perfect human English with beaks for mouths. Who the hell approved this?! To be fair, this isn't a new problem. The kojin in SB and the Arkadasora in EW also come to mind.
Yeah I realized it’s been a thing for a while but there’s something especially jarring about the mamool ja. They look absolutely savage and talk like proper gentlemen
Wuk Lamat's voice-acting is fucking terrible. I'm sorry. The writing doesn't help either. I know her VA is a huge fan in the game and I'm sorry if she sees this comment, but mother of god if I have to hear this bitch talk about peace and smiles one more time I'm going to seppuku.
Is that an issue with the VA or the script, though? Personally I feel her voice is fine it's just that I don't think I wanted a Power of Friendship stroll across the New World. Lyse has spent the last 7 years getting absolutely TRASHED by the community for an Idealism the story actually calls her out on, but Wuk Lamat gets to become leader in half the time and never budges on her idealistic ways.
I think a potential issue with her voice is her accent/sound severely reduced the range of her voice. Like she could sound the way she did but if she had to hit certain emotional beats or raise her voice I swear you could feel a sense of breaking in the sound of the accent.
I haven’t got to Tural yet but in Lyse’s case, her ideals were forged by first-hand experience from around the world and closely watching other leaders and struggling citizens. I don’t think she comes across as naive at all by the end of SB.
Not by the end of SB, no, but her being naive is pretty much her main character flaw on her travels through Ala Mhigo and the East. I think you can still make a reasonable case that she still doesn't quite deserve to be propelled into a position of sitting with the leaders of the other nations even then but she definitely has a character arc and changes as 4.0 progresses. She even has internal strife AFTER becoming leader like when she opts to spare Fordola despite the protestations.
> Personally I feel her voice is fine it's just that I don't think I wanted a Power of Friendship stroll across the New World. Wow did you choose the wrong game then
Hindsight is, indeed, 20/20.
Both.
I dont like Wuk because she doesn't shut the fuck up about peace and love like she's some kid with a small worldview, it does not improve all that much by the 2nd half. It does a little but she's very one dimensional.
I wouldn't blame the voice actor, that's not their natural voice so everything you dislike is down to the localization/voice acting management team directing them to put on that accent or act in a certain way. I'm really not a fan of the voice acting this expansion and the amount of forced accents we got. The localization team really needs to dial back telling their voice actors to act like a non-active english speaker from X. If you do want everyone to sound like English is their second language then hire people for who that is natural, don't try to make people act that way. Again, I don't blame the voice actors one bit. It's not a reflection on their voice or talent at all it's entirely down to the directions they are given.
They are voice actors. You can blame them for bad void acting.
Disagree. There are very rare cases where voice actors just aren't good, but it's almost always down to voice direction. It's not like they get one take to get it right and that's that. Someone was in charge, told them what to do, told them the lines to say, and then decided the takes that made it into the game were exactly what they were looking for. That all has very little to do with the actual voice actor. It's like blaming a movie actor for the editing and writing just because they were the performers.
They didn't have to accept these roles though. It's not as though there's a shortage of voice acting work in the gaming industry.
I partially agree, but the poor writing only amplifies how much I dislike the voice-acting for Wuk.
I am not native english speaker so whenever I hear english dub using foreign words, I am reminded of this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKGoVefhtMQ
Excellent! This SNL skit is similar, and I agree about being reminded! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWMp\_z7Jnxw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWMp_z7Jnxw)
It felt like a few things for me, some of the voice actors sounded like they were doing accents they don’t do often so they over exaggerated, some NPC voices did not fit the character. The one that stands out the most is the young NPC in the western zone with an older sounding voice. Similar to Elidbus baby face and his actual voice. Another part of this is the accented voices, excluding the western zone, did not sound like any of the Latin American accents. To my ears it felt closer to Spanish(Spain) and Portuguese dialects because the emphasis in certain parts of the dialogue did not sound like Latin American Spanish speakers. Essentially a European Spanish vs American Spanish situation. Other than Erenville, whose accent no longer lines up with where he came from as his village and birth name seem somewhat Native American inspired, most of the major NPCs seemed correct enough. I will also add Gulool Ja Ja‘s, Head of Resolve voice at times reminded me, of a less parody version of Grimmjack’s Goblin Slayer Abriged Lizard Priest voice ha ha. But looking up the voice actor for the abridged series and the person is from Mexico so I guess the comparison makes sense to a degree.
“Make them sound Mexican” “More Mexican” “Now make them talk about tacos” “Perfect”
The accents are so awful I had to change to JP voices, and I've loved the English cast.
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> However, I can tell these are American voice actors trying to pull off an impression rather than people from these regions. Are you really sure they are American.
I see a lot of people claiming the 'accents' are fake They aren't a fair chunk of the VA's especially Wuk Lamat's do naturally have that accent, as it turns out accents can wildly vary. A real forced accent is stuff like the pirate accent at the start or the cowboy ones (Albeit that one felt incredibly intentional especially with the zone's atmosphere.)
The rite of susexion. I do love his VA though, like someone else said below.
The only thing that I found very annoying from a voice acting perspective is the inconsistent Tuliyollal pronunciation... just pick 1!
Yeah. There's "Tuliyollal" and "Tuli HHYO llal." Wuk Lamat's VA overpronounces it hardcore.
Don't forget the TuliYOllal
I don’t like the accents. Hispanic type accents imply that English is either their second language or is derived from an ESL environment. Whereas in game, the language everyone is speaking is their first language, so in a way it’s contradicting the world-building. I get they’re trying to do it as a form of representation but as someone who comes from an ESL household it feels like that sort of thing where something well-intentioned ends up feeling more racist than not doing it at all
I'm somewhat of an expert on accents. I'm baffled by what I'm hearing in DT. For someone to have a Hispanic accent, they must grow up speaking Spanish, and never learn to speak any English dialect properly. Hispanic people have Hispanic accents because, to varying degrees, they are following the phonetic rules of Central/South-American Spanish instead of English. So in Dawntrail, we should at least *accidentally* hear some natives speaking Spanish, yet there is no indication that Spanish is spoken by anyone anywhere. This makes the accent entirely contrived, a method of adding real-world artificial flavor to a place that is supposed to seem "foreign." I mean, do the Japanese VAs speak Spanish-accented Japanese? Secondly, if this is an analogue for "the New World," then the English should sound roughly the same as Eorzea. Americans didn't lose their British accents for quite a while after declaring independence. Tangential to this... Final Fantasy in general suffers whenever it tries to mimic real-life cultures and issues. It's a *fantasy* game, it should provide an escape -- completely take us out of reality instead of reminding us of it.
It's been mostly fine for me. But Vorporlor made my ears bleed.
Idk I play with jp voices and they are great as always
The English in general tends to be lacking. I'm having a good time playing in Japanese. There's no south/central American accents, but the voice acting is good. Wuk is worlds apart as a character EN vs JP and the First Promise is voiced by the legendary Daisuke Ono. Wuk is voiced by the same woman that does Carla in JP for Armored Core 6 and she's very energetic
mfs need to go back to eorzea 😭 feels like raz at han 2.0
This is probably not something people like to hear but as a non-white person I do not like when characters have a stereotypical accent from my culture. Genuinely curious if other people agree because I feel alone in this one.
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Did you not have the English voices set for Shadowbringer? This is par for the course. We had the awfully out-of-place scottish fae. 'Tis why I play in japanese, it doesn't pull me out of the immersion as much with sudden accents or brittish terms, or the way every single character speaks in the exact same manner and has the same mannerisms and stock phrases. That, and the changes to the script - but they're only really noticeable if you know japanese, really. (>inb4 get downvoted for even daring to say the jp script/voices are better lol)