Voice Actors- Does it Bother you?

whitecrow

morrowjen wrote: »

SpiritKitten wrote: »

The one voice-acting scenario I have the most trouble with is one of the two gay brothers in the Leyawiin tavern. The 'fake gay male' voice acting is so cringe I actually wince. It's offensive. I feel sorry for any actual gay males who have to encounter that mocking caricature of a gay human being, and I can't understand how it passed quality control.

I don't think that's supposed to be gay coded. I think it's supposed to be a generalized "bored and wealthy" accent. You hear caricatures like that a lot with wealthy merchants and nobles.

I definitely got the feeling there was something going on between them.

SpiritKitten

whitecrow wrote: »

I definitely got the feeling there was something going on between them.

They're brothers.

whitecrow

SpiritKitten wrote: »

whitecrow wrote: »

I definitely got the feeling there was something going on between them.

They're brothers.

No, something else.

Northwold

HiveMind3006 wrote: »

Rokhza wrote: »

I am curious about what you think of Arana in the Reach. I really like the way she speaks and how she calls me harrier.

I suspect there is an Irish accent in there but not sure.

She -Arana is a hodgepodge of attempted Scottish with some Irish mixed in there by accident I'd assume. I wonder if the Voice actors believe they have nailed it or 'it will do', more than likely couldn't care less. I still haven't turned the sound off as I believe someone said that Billy Boyd plays a part in the Reach and I'd like to hear that.
I have just had my ears assaulted by another atrocious VA attempt with some old shop owner as part of the main questline, find it hard to follow the story as the accent is so off putting. Shame really!

Boyd turns up later on as Brendan or something as part of the main story. He's the sort of right habd guy the main reach woman brings in.

Northwold

SpiritKitten wrote: »

The one voice-acting scenario I have the most trouble with is one of the two gay brothers in the Leyawiin tavern. The 'fake gay male' voice acting is so cringe I actually wince. It's offensive. I feel sorry for any actual gay males who have to encounter that mocking caricature of a gay human being, and I can't understand how it passed quality control.

It actually makes me smile because it makes me feel I'm in the 70s among people who speak "the gay accent" of trash TV past. To be honest ESO has some of the best gay representation out there -- it's just presented as part of life rather than "look they're gay!" so I'm happy with it. I'd be more worried about the fact they're brothers and fairly unambiguously presented as [how do i get that snip thing for profanity]. I mean, that's extremely progressive for an American game.

A few more gay men would be nice, given that there seem to be whole legions of gay women referring to their wives everywhere, but relatively speaking that's a minor complaint (especially given the presence of a male stripper / rent boy lizard in one of the outlaw refuges). And there's always Bastian, with his dreams of good shopping...

DreamyLu

To answer OP's question: no, it doesn't bother me, because I play mostly sound off. I know I'm probably part of a minority, but well, that's how it is...

ZOS_GregoryV

Greetings all!

It would seem the thread is straying from the initial topic of discussion. Please stick to original discussion.

Thank you for your understanding,
-Greg-

BretonMage

A bit late to the thread, but I had no idea the Bosmer were supposed to have a Cockney accent. I thought they were from Valenwood.

The male Bosmer sounds Australian to me, I really enjoy his voice, as I do the female Bosmer voice. I have to say, I really like the voice acting in ESO. It can get a little repetitive since they can't possibly use different actors for every single NPC, but that's fairly normal in games (and especially TES) anyway.

Lalocat

whitecrow wrote: »

Magenpie wrote: »

See, people are going on about how the Bosmer have terrible Cockney accents. *I* thought they were terrible Aussie accents. Which sort of shows how terrible they are. I'd love it if the Bosmer were given proper Australian voices, it's not an accent you get much in games.

Bosmer are definitely Australian. I think a lot of people just can't tell the difference between English and Australian, and think everything English is Cockney.

I thought they were supposed to be Australian too. But I am one of those people who can't really tell the difference unless they drop hints like throwing a crumpet on the barbie or having a friend round for a spot of tea in the arvo.

WithMyLaserGun

Northwold wrote: »

Yeah I've talked about it before. Most of the time it's OK in the sense that a lot of games are much worse (although the wood elves are often very offputting and there seem to be at least one, maybe several, regular actors who are Australian but regularly get asked to pull off accents that are quite difficult and they simply cannot do, so you get Devon via Brisbane).

But the Scottish accents in the Reach were a whole new level of atrocious and I had to turn the sound off. They were plain excruciating and made me wonder if no one in the voice directing / casting process actually knew what Scottish accents sound like. It didn't help that there was at least one actual Scot in there, just to remind you what it's supposed to sound like (which is not Toronto via St Petersburg via Kilkenny).

The ones that bother me most, though, are roles where the actor sounds like they plain do not care and are reading the script for the first time. I don't think this is the actor's fault, necessarily, rather a failing of giving them context or suitable direction. But the most egregious example I found was the Anchorite in Deadlands. I just could not carry on and doubt I will ever complete the zone. The writing needs to take the lion's share of responsibility for that one, though -- the verbiage she was expected to bring to life was dire.

See https://youtu.be/hQiLMCWX5CA (it's Viva La Dirt League on bad voice acting).

"Devon via Brisbane" - Thank you I cannot listen to Wood Elves at all, including Eveli. Just terrible.

I also had to turn off the sound while doing almost the entire Markarth DLC because the weird mix of Scottish, Irish and Northern English accents was utterly bizarre and very poorly done.

The accents generally are pretty awful, and I do wonder how on Earth the people who cast these voice actors think they're doing a good job. [snip]
[edited for bashing & profanity bypass]

Kiralyn2000

WithMyLaserGun wrote: »

The accents generally are pretty awful, and I do wonder how on Earth the people who cast these voice actors think they're doing a good job.

The casting people, just like those of us who don't notice the problem, aren't personally familiar with the 'real' accents, having only been exposed to them via (American-produced) media?
[snip] Or it's a budget issue - it's easy to get "good enough" accented voice actors where they are, and getting real pros would cost more. Multiple possibilities.


Reading through the thread, it seems like the people having problems with it are those who either live near where those accents come from, and are therefore intimately familiar with them; or people who've done in-depth study of dialects & accents. Meanwhile, those of us who've only run into these accents in other videogames or non-BBC-sourced movies & TV shows... /shrug



I think the last British-produced TV I watched was Tom Baker-era Dr Who. Or in movies, last year's James Bond. Haven't seen anything like Trainspotting, or any of the modern BBC stuff.

On the other hand, I can't give you that same level of "oh, that sounds like an East London accent with a touch of etc, etc, etc" detail about any American accents, so I wonder if it's just a factor of not growing up anywhere that had accents on that level. (was born & raised in central New Jersey. So just generic American, not any of that thick Jersey Shore/Long Island stuff that MTV made known with their reality shows. I know there's probably several accents in New York City, but I couldn't identify them. And it's all just "Southern" to me, whereas someone who grew up there could probably divide between Georgia, Appalachia, and so on. I suspect I'm just bad with accents in general - people keep saying my mother has a German accent, but she just sounds normal to me. I don't hear any particular accent from her at all. /shrug)

[edited for mild bashing]

Northwold

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

WithMyLaserGun wrote: »

The accents generally are pretty awful, and I do wonder how on Earth the people who cast these voice actors think they're doing a good job.

The casting people, just like those of us who don't notice the problem, aren't personally familiar with the 'real' accents, having only been exposed to them via (American-produced) media?
[snip] Or it's a budget issue - it's easy to get "good enough" accented voice actors where they are, and getting real pros would cost more. Multiple possibilities.


Reading through the thread, it seems like the people having problems with it are those who either live near where those accents come from, and are therefore intimately familiar with them; or people who've done in-depth study of dialects & accents. Meanwhile, those of us who've only run into these accents in other videogames or non-BBC-sourced movies & TV shows... /shrug



I think the last British-produced TV I watched was Tom Baker-era Dr Who. Or in movies, last year's James Bond. Haven't seen anything like Trainspotting, or any of the modern BBC stuff.

On the other hand, I can't give you that same level of "oh, that sounds like an East London accent with a touch of etc, etc, etc" detail about any American accents, so I wonder if it's just a factor of not growing up anywhere that had accents on that level. (was born & raised in central New Jersey. So just generic American, not any of that thick Jersey Shore/Long Island stuff that MTV made known with their reality shows. I know there's probably several accents in New York City, but I couldn't identify them. And it's all just "Southern" to me, whereas someone who grew up there could probably divide between Georgia, Appalachia, and so on. I suspect I'm just bad with accents in general - people keep saying my mother has a German accent, but she just sounds normal to me. I don't hear any particular accent from her at all. /shrug)

America (from what I've seen which is far from comprehensive!) has some really, really distinct accents but "average" American English seems a lot more widespread than, say, "average" English English -- there are some very distinct regional variations. Although that's nothing compared to somewhere like Italy where regional accents can vary very wildly indeed mere miles apart among older generations.

But when you get to something like Scottish, it's extremely pronounced and there is no room for confusion -- the sounds are totally different from English English just as they are totally different from any strand of Irish English. But whereas Irish seems relatively easy for actors to do to an "OK" level, Scottish most definitely is not. So perhaps they should have gone for Irish in the Reach (indeed, some of the actors are doing bits of it with an Irish accent by accident anyway!).

[edited to remove quote]