The lack of asian accents bugs me

[Captain Australia]

I mean .. c'mon.

There's a feature to tie the soldier voice to their nationality, so clearly this has been thought about a lot.

I mean .. seriously .. there are ten variants of American, UK, a couple of aussies, OK there's the coalition of Justice for ya. But there are 10 variants of German, Italian and French FFS. Two Aussies, TWO. Four UK variants. FOUR, then 40 ... ****40**** variations for middle European accents .....

So why is there no eastern variation in the voices ?

Personally, I'd like some asian flavour .. No, my japanese ranger does NOT have to yell "Banzai!!" as he jumps in to decapitate a sectoid............ but .. something.

I don't even need to see specific variations - Japanese, Korean, Filipino .. I can live with a generic asian voice.

But I think this is a really weird shortfall, and when you look at the long list of recorded voices .. it just strikes me as a real deficit, and maybe racism by ommission or something ??

Also, one that I'd like to see is variations on Indian accents - it would be great for once to associate that with a Krishna style warrior and positive role model, instead of telemarketing.

[3D Master]

Originally posted by Captain Australia:

?

No, I mean accents. As in english spoken with an accent. UK and Australian are an example, yes, I know Spanish, they're speaking actual spanish, I havent checked out all of them but I'm assuming of the ten ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ german ones, they arent all spoken german but rather characterisations of a german speaking english .. in ... AN ACCENT.

No, they are speaking German, not English. There are no accents. There are no Spanish accents, there are no French accents, there are no German accents, there are no Sweedish accents, nor are there Russian accetns, any African accents, nor South American accents, and thus also no Asian accents.

Australian english, uk english and american enlgish happen to be the main languages spoken in those countries.

[drake_hound]

You mean you want hollywood Voice Acting of the 1980 where everybody spoke English with a accent in the world.

One check on the Spanishe Language if you did so, you would realise those are pure spanishe with local accent based on region. or South America.

So you want somebody speaking Japanese or Japenglish?
Make up your mind :P

[talemore]

If you can't make it, then fake it
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ero4QwW9-Q

[Fornax The Lazy]

...or you know,just have a Asian voicepack instead of some cringy accents?

[Captain Australia]

No offense, but some of you are just making noise without addressing the contention.

It's really simple.

Local, national military forces may speak their own local language, mandarin, tagalog, spanish, whatever.

International military collaborations typically involve soldiers from diverse nationalities, speaking .. you guessed it... accented english.

Take a UN Peacekeeping operation, as an example where there might be US forces in collaboration with UK, italian, local partisan afghani .. if there's a multi-national team, they will pretty much always speak english.

This rule applies in medicine (multidiscipline teams of specialists brought in from around the world), cross-regional business - it's just simple logic: people choose a common language most known by the team members, and communicate in it.

It is .. and I say this without reservation .. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ STUPID .. to have a team of six soldiers, where one communicates in french, one in german, one in spanish and the other 3 in english.

Stupid.

You'd need a translator in operations, or a multi-lingual handler, or a technology solution like a babel fish or something... Stupid.

These voice performances have been under-delivered .. just kind of dropped in almost as language packs. But it's out of context and has some dramatic missing elements .. if you can choose a flag, there should be some kind of corresponding voice characterisation choices relevant to that flag.

In a game where you can tailor the soldiers down to a fine detail, not unlike an MMO, the voicing is a real gap.

Example, I can get a mexican recruit, Juan Rodriguez, I want to train him up as a Ranger and nickname him "Machete" .. great. But in terms of voicing choice, he can either blurt all his remarks in spanish, or speak with a stereotypical american accent.

I want an emotionless little chinese woman as a sniper, I can tailor her down to a fine detail, except I have to make her sound like Reese Witherspoon in "Legally Blonde 2"

It doesn't need to be parody, it doesn't need to sound stupid.

But having diverse national backgrounds represented in this multinational XCOM force .. for me the lack of choice and diversity in accents is a gap.

The way it's been done is quick & easy without thought, and it spoils some of the customisation options available in the game.

(And to declare it as cost-prohibitive is ridiculous - it just hasn't been an area of focus and I think the game suffers for it)

[Fornax The Lazy]

^XCOMEU/EW has it, so is 2, we don't have Germen or Russian(or any Russian voice at all btw) accent,and whoever comes from South America still speaks Spanish,so why do you just want Asians to have it?

[Captain Australia]

Huh ? Sorry mate, I didn't understand any of that.

What I'm asserting is that ideally every flag in the game should have a corresponding set of matching voice options.

I use asian as an example because it's what bugs me the most - it's the most glaring .. there are 40 european options (but they also bug me, because per my earlier post, they should be speaking english for the most part).

India and China alone represent 1/3 of the world's population - if I recruited a soldier from Hong Kong (for example) he could work fine in the team, speak english, I'd just like to hear his national accent to give him further individuality and flavour. (Same for Russian and any other region represented)

Instead of the 50-60 voice options we have now for any given soldier, my preferred logic would be to have something like 3 variations for each national flag (x2 for gender)

You could tailor a team that would feel more diverse and distinct in their regional personalities.

That's all I'm saying - that the logic in how the voicing feature was implemented is half-arsed, and asserting what I'd prefer.

[Zigg Price]

It is not that it was implemented half-assed. It is that they have a finite supply of money, and, ultimately, adding more English speaking voices is not a valued commodity, because it helps a skewed audience. So they unlock the localization voices, because they are already there, so it costs next to nothing to put in the code to do so. But to hire another 3-5 voice actors is an expense. Plus, the community proved more than capable of handling this sort of task in XCOM: EW, via the Long War and the voicepacks that they offered. So, they spent those funds on making the game, and allowed the modding community the tools to add in the exact feature that you requested. For instance, the Long War voicepack has all of the voices from Long War EW (or at least most of them.) I recall seeing an Asian voice pack, a voicepack that contains the character from EU and EW (which would include Zhang,) and then there are a number of voice packs from various movies and games in a wide variety of accents.

TL;DR-The feature you want costs money, and the pay off would be insignificant. The modding community has done what you asked, then, which is why mods were made as a focus of the game's development.

[Captain Australia]

You are capable of understanding, I take it, the glaring contradiction between:

"It's too expensive"
and
"The modding community did it for free"

I've worked with translators and to a lesser extent voice actors, the "costs too much" doesn't wash.

The simple fact of the matter is that the way soldier voices are implemented does not jibe with logic and is counter-immersive. That's my only point.

I don't really understand why every jack-in-a-beanstalk feels a need to challenge that contention, but it still doesnt change the simple logic of it.

As to the payoff being insignificant, not everybody values the same things (clearly) and it can actually be a sequence of quite subtle design choices that differentiate between a classic game and a missed opportunity.

[3D Master]

Originally posted by Captain Australia:

No offense, but some of you are just making noise without addressing the contention.

No, I'm addressing the contention and saying that the contention is nonsense; because there ARE NO FOREIGN LANGUAGE ACCENTS AT ALL! Now, you can then say, well I would like to have ALL those accents; South American accents, African accents, European accents and Asian accents; (and one assumes those accents and North-American and Australian accents for every other bloody language in the game); but to sit there and say "I want to Asian accents, and Asian accents only" when there are no accents at all, is stupid.

[Captain Australia]

I didn't say any of that ...

"THERE ARE NO FOREIGN LANGUAGE ACCENTS AT ALL"

... no ♥♥♥♥, what the ♥♥♥♥ is wrong with you ?

(I already outlined in a clear and cogent way, why the current implementation of languages/accents (you really are a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ BTW) is logically & immersively flawed)

"but to sit there and say "I want to Asian accents, and Asian accents only" when there are no accents at all, is stupid."

... I didn't say that .. what the ♥♥♥♥ is wrong with you ?

(I mention japanese, indian, mexican, african, russian - and remark that the european languages should be re-characterised --- based around a clearly asserted position that in a multinational military team, everyone does and will speak a common language in the field .. ie english)

I've outlined my position really clearly.

Feel free to vocally disagree with it (if you have nothing better to do). But your demented nonsense is just smoke & noise with no value.

Since you're so happy to lavish around the word "stupid" without actually reading any of the persons comments ..... you're a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ idiot. Go away and do something meaningful instead of wasting your time making halfwit comments that have little or nothing to do with a strangers opinion.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

[Nyx]

there arent any accents in the game you know that right?

[Captain Australia]

there arent any accents in the game you know that right?

No kidding. I've described why I think that's a missed opportunity, and how I would prefer it to work. Get a job.

[Nyx]

your orginal post says there are uk and aussey accents so I was just informing you that those arent accents they would be called dilects

[drake_hound]

So you want a bit of Jagged Alliance 2 style, where Asians spleak English. with a L instead of R.

So Lock and Loll... :P
And all the French voices should be, Mon Dieu what is that I am seeing....
And Russians should be like Ivan. I understand (then some Russian curses) commander.