Guild Wars 2

Since GW2 now has way more experience with voice acting compared to the original GW series back then, I always expected to finally hear some interesting accents that would add a nice touch to the game. Sadly, neither the Charr nor the Asura had a special way to talk (except for using the word bookah), they talk exactly like everyone else.

They all have a different origin compared to humans so I always found it weird that they talked exactly like them, without having the slightest accent ( – think of Khajiit for example). Yes, they all live together in cities like Lion’s Arch now but they still have their own culture, meaning that they don’t necessarily had to lose the way how they talk, at least not all of them.

Now that we’ve already seen a part of the new story in PoF, we know that the people of Elona we encountered do also talk just like us (except for adding the word Ahai). We’re now playing in foreign lands and still there’s not the slightest hint on an accent. To me it just felt weird that they talked exactly like our characters, it took the immersion away for me. It may be harder to find voice actors but I think it would have been worth it.

If I remember correctly, some dwarf characters and the Lich in GW had some sort of accent, but there was no concept overall I think. I would have liked to see a more elaborated concept in GW2

I asked about this in https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lore/Linguistic-Drift/first#post6703295 — didn’t get much discussion, so I’m glad someone else felt the same as me.

Like with the Drift thread, I"m not sure what there is to say. The Elonian ‘accent’ is lackluster compared to, say, Nightfall’s cinematics. It may have to do with shear volume, nearly every bit of in game dialog comes with audio and its plausible that Anet used some lesser talent amongst the VAs to mitigate costs. In regards to the Drift thread in the Lore section, again I don’t know of anyway to explain away the lack of accents among Elonians.

There’s two ways to address the lack of accent in lore:

• In Tyria, everyone talks much the same regardless of being cut off from each other for hundreds of years.
• The TARDIS translation solution, in which the listener hears everyone speaking in their own language (and even sees the corresponding lip movements).

Both have long literary precedent — there would be just too many stories that don’t get told, if we had to worry about language & dialect & accent too much.

Harder to explain is ANet’s decision not to hire and direct/instruct voice actors with a distinct flair. Part of it might be that there are quite a lot of accents to cover: North African, Middle Eastern, Persian, and perhaps even other parts of Africa.

Then again, we haven’t seen all of Elona yet, so maybe…

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Harder to explain is ANet’s decision not to hire and direct/instruct voice actors with a distinct flair. Part of it might be that there are quite a lot of accents to cover: North African, Middle Eastern, Persian, and perhaps even other parts of Africa.

I don’t think we need a large variety of different accents but just a hint that we’re in a foreign country now, meet people from another culture that we didn’t see for 250 years now.

People would probably understand that Anet isn’t able to provide that much of a variety but it still would help to immerse. I wouldn’t mind if I couldn’t tell the difference between someone who grew up in Kamadan and someone who grew up In Vabbi only by hearing them talk..

After all it’s just a fantasy world that doesn’t have to be a 100% accurate. But sadly we didn’t even see 1% since there are no accents at all.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Then again, we haven’t seen all of Elona yet, so maybe…

I know, there’s much more to see. But if that was really the start of the expansion it’s weird that they didn’t take the chance to introduce the culture with all of its facets to us. We could alread see how different the architecture e.g. is and I don’t really see how and why the point of accents could change during the expansion..

White washing in video games too!

Ramoth.9064:

White washing in video games too!

No. No. NO. You stop that kitten right now. I know you’re joking but too many loud and easily offended people will turn this into an actual kitten show. And I’ll blame you.

You need to clean out your ears. Char have different accents than asura or any other race. All the races have distinct voices.

Arent the elonians human? Shouldnt they have human voices?

?

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

• In Tyria, everyone talks much the same regardless of being cut off from each other for hundreds of years.

And lately, all player characters as well as their companions mostly talk like modern day 16-year old American teenagers.

Anyway, I wouldn’t mind some local accents to be added to the flavor of the game. Actually, I’d love that.

ElectricGoat.8253:

You need to clean out your ears. Char have different accents than asura or any other race. All the races have distinct voices.

Arent the elonians human? Shouldnt they have human voices?

?

So the fact that these people have been separate from TYRIAN humans for multiple generations, and did have a different accent from Tyrian humans 250 years earlier, is utterly meaningless?

I don’t think you know how accents work.

The Greyhawk.9107:

Ramoth.9064:

White washing in video games too!

No. No. NO. You stop that kitten right now. I know you’re joking but too many loud and easily offended people will turn this into an actual kitten show. And I’ll blame you.

:D

Let me just say that if Elonians had accents in GW1, they should still have them now. However, “this area is Middle Eastern, so the people there should have Middle Eastern accents” is a pretty lazy line of reasoning.

Accents happen when someone speaks a language different than the one they’ve been speaking since birth, or when a strong local dialect has saturated their speech. In either case, you’d have to ask why an Elonian would sound like an African or Middle Eastern person. Do they speak Arabic in Elona? If not, then what does the Elonian language sound like? Is it similar enough to “common speech” that someone speaking the common tongue wouldn’t have much of an accent? What kind of dialect exists in Elona so that they should sound like Arabic people? These are questions that are probably too complex and unnecessary for an MMO: “desert = desert people!” works just fine. However, they’re interesting to think about if you want to go for a deep dive into fantasy world creation.

Is it “Elonian” or “Elonan”? Bah.

Pretty sure its Elonian. Whatever accent used in Nightfall was a subtle one, I’m not sure I could ID it but I don’t think it was arabic based. Whatever it was it worked.