Non-American voice acting should be done by non-american voice actors.

empresslesbian

after playing star trek online since its first release i find it hard to believe they havent gotten past this hurdle yet, personally the amount of supposedly british voices that are horribly mangled into oblivion over the years is insane, and im sure any other people from other contries are probably thinking the same, the most recent case of admiral kensington were i couldnt tell if she was supposed to be Queen's english, australian or south african shows this point to a tee, it wasnt until she said jammed (that was pronounced entirely wrong for the accent used) that i found out she was supposed to be the first! there are an excess of small time voice actors who are from the countriesthese accents come from who are trying to find a break, and are good! hire them so i dont have to hear the accents of the world be demolished.

nolgroth1972

I do terrible accents and I cringed at Kensington's butchery. I just get over it by pretending that languages (and accents) evolve over time. Four hundred years is a long time. As I recall, Earth had some pretty tumultuous times in those intervening years as well. I can picture accents morphing due to different language groups getting shoved together.

Doesn't invalidate your point about expanding voice actor assets.

empresslesbian

that would make sense however all other accents in the age of discovery stuff is a modern common accent, as well as in the tv series' cast are a wide veriety of modern accents based after the discovery stuff. also im pretty sure that there was an ensign or cadet you speak to for one sentence who im pretty sure is an english voice actor, or a very good american one, who has the accent that the admiral is supposed to have but its better? maybe its because we only speak to her for a sentence so any flaws are non apparent. would be interesting to see evolved accents like in the expanse.

andromeda981

I grew up all over England as a side effect of being an Army child. And I'd never actually heard an accent like hers. Only on TV have I.
Heard one or in ganes. My accent is fairly neutral and closer to RP English than.my native Liverpudlian. But with twangs and pings pongs and splatters of Welsh, Yorkshire and other accents that sort of come flying out of nowhere.

So to hear Kensington supposedly be British but actually just be what Americans think Brits sound like (E.g. Londoner.) was a bit jarring. There are British voice actors they could of used. Or at least found someone without a stereotyped accent.

British is more than London. There is another 99% of a nation to use for accents. Liverpudlian. Mancunian. Cestrian. Yorkshire. Edinburgh. Glaswegian. West Country.

Think of Fable. Those games were made by a studio based outside of Manchester in England and actors had accents from Liverpool. Manchester. Chester. York. London. Etc. Here a city or town can be 5 to 10 miles apart and the accent can be completely different.

garaks31

they need to be u.s. voice actors guild members do. bloody borders ... ^^

divvydend

The voice of Kensington is a mish-mash of several accents ranging from the Queen giving her Christmas speech to Essex and Home Counties. I particularly picked up on the way she pronounced the word "Jammed" to make it sound like "jarmed" and made it stick out like the proverbial "sore thumb".
Please get someone who is English to do a proper job so that we do not have to suffer such a false accent that no one can relate to.

marty123

As an Englishman I found Kensigtons voice cringeworthy. And I couldn’t tell if Schafer was supposed to be Australian or New Zealandic (and yes there is an obvious difference to any non-American)

angrytarg

> @andromeda981 said:
There are British voice actors they could of used.

First, it's "could have used". 'Of' is a preposition and has no reason to follow 'could'.

Second, it's as @garaks31 said, their actors are required to be members of an American, maybe even local voice actor's guild or union. They probably can't pick and choose who does the part. But be glad they at least speak English. For many non-English languages in English media it's still not too uncommon to just speak complete gibberish and pretend it's a real language. And now I have to put a blitzen in my flachmantuche.

spiritborn

angrytarg wrote: »

> @andromeda981 said:
There are British voice actors they could of used.

First, it's "could have used". 'Of' is a preposition and has no reason to follow 'could'.

Second, it's as @garaks31 said, their actors are required to be members of an American, maybe even local voice actor's guild or union. They probably can't pick and choose who does the part. But be glad they at least speak English. For many non-English languages in English media it's still not too uncommon to just speak complete gibberish and pretend it's a real language. And now I have to put a blitzen in my flachmantuche.

IIRC it's the "screen actor's guild" that's responsible for voice actors as well.

Also I seem to remember that it was said somewhere that as a rule of thumb currently Cryptic can only afford voice actor's who
are members of the actor's guild and live in California.

zaichal

First time I heard Kensington, I thought it was a bad attempt at an Aussie accent. I usually have sto sounds switched off, unless I'm doing a mission for the first time though.

Unfortunately they have to hire voice actors who are also members of the screen actors guild now, so it's limited mostly to cheap US based/Californian voice acting so they can spend more cash hiring Star Trek actors to voice their tv characters.

So voice actors like the British guy who voiced the romulan liberated borg Gaius Selan are out; Americans putting on dodgy accents are in.

marty123

Because there are no British actors who live in California... or Americans who actually can do an accurate accent?

roguealltrek

Why would we compare fable's accents to this game? Fable was as pointed out not made in the USA it had the local accents available to it. This game is made in america california to be more to the point why would you not expect them to make use of local voice actors? Butchered accent's aside to expect the studio to search the world over for authentic accent's is not that logical.

captmack68

UK based productions run into the same, in reverse. Seems like they only do 3 accents no matter where the always-loud American is supposed to be from. It all goes back to what's been stated: local productions are subject to local rule and talent pools. At least at the levels being discussed here. Sci-fi fans have traditionally been presented much bigger challenges to our suspension of disbelief than voice actors who are bad at accents.

spiritborn

marty123#3757 wrote: »

Because there are no British actors who live in California... or Americans who actually can do an accurate accent?

Well the problem isn't finding actor's who can do the accent per se, it's finding actors who are 1)SAG members 2)can do the accent 3)are cheap enough 4)are good enough, you generally have to make compromise there when not running a high budget production.

zaichal

marty123#3757 wrote: »

Because there are no British actors who live in California... or Americans who actually can do an accurate accent?

A non-US actor is hardly going to travel all the way to California, pay to join the SAG, then do voice work for an mmo with a player population on the decline. A non-US actor typically builds up an acting resume in their home country first before aiming for Hollywood and this would not be on their radar.

spiritborn wrote: »

Well the problem isn't finding actor's who can do the accent per se, it's finding actors who are 1)SAG members 2)can do the accent 3)are cheap enough 4)are good enough, you generally have to make compromise there when not running a high budget production.

This too. Since Cryptic are now limited to SAG members only, quality doesn't come cheap.

starshine

New Zealand voice actors are cheap, they get hired to play other accents in games because of that.
Yet, Whetu speaks and.. what even is that accent supposed to be? It's certainly not Māori.
A person who has never heard an australian impression of australians maybe?

spiritborn

starshine#7408 wrote: »

New Zealand voice actors are cheap, they get hired to play other accents in games because of that.
Yet, Whetu speaks and.. what even is that accent supposed to be? It's certainly not Māori.
A person who has never heard an australian impression of australians maybe?

The thing is that it doesn't just that actor's have to be cheap, they have to be SAG members as well and there's few Kiwi actor's that are cheap, SAG members and willing to do game voice acting.

foxspirit13

I turned off voices... I read faster than they talk so it got tedious to listen to them.