Accents in games

[Masque]

Just got AC:Odyssey, and have been wondering:

1. Are those actually Greek accents? They sound like old bad Transylvanian Dracula accents, but I don't know any Greek people who speak English, with their original accent.

2. When they localize games like Odyssey into say, French or German or Japanese... do the voice actors sound like Greek-accented French, German, or Japanese speakers?

Like GTA IV, for instance. In Japan or France, does Nico Bellic sound like a Russian speaking heavily-russian-accented French or Japanese? How does that work?

I mean, Americans all know what a French or Russian accent sounds like, speaking English -- to the point where many of us can tell where a person is from by their accent.... I assume the same is true in other nations?

[Electric Cupcake]

Resident Evil 4 is brilliant, and a little silly since the bad guys' accents are all over the place, and frequently closer to Mexican Spanish rather than Spanish Spanish.

The Tekken series zig-zags. Characters speak perfect English in one game, heavily-accented English in the next and then their native language in the one after that. And the animal characters make animal noises that everyone understands.

Civilization has some interesting cases, like French players complaining about Catherine Medici's thick Italian accent like it was a mistake or oversight.

[Kiddiec͕̤̱͋̿͑͠at 🃏]

Originally posted by Boofalo Soja:

Accents in games

If you're asking about modern times, they still have to artificially act it out a bit to be more stereotypical because even a sampled person from a given population might not quite sound like the nationality that they're "supposed to be"; they might not even have the accent of their native people.

The issue with what you're asking about if you're asking about ancient Greece (I haven't actually played or know much about the specific game you're mentioning) is that we didn't have audio recording technology back then nor is anyone alive still who is from ancient Greece.

Oh... I forget if it was an archaeologist or some other explorer but historians did happen to find an ancient device that accurately recorded audio-waves at some point - however, I don't think the inventor had a way to test that the waves were an accurate representation of the audio (to play them back again) and so... his invention never saw wide-spread use or even much further use by him - which is a shame... because it would be really nice to have those audio samples from a variety of ages that came before digital technology.

[Schindler's Lifts]

Originally posted by Miss Ann Thrope:

I could never get used to the English accents in Assassin's Creed Unity, which was supposed to be set in revolutionary France. It's like Ubisoft weren't even trying...

I've heard something along the lines of Ubisoft deliberately not wanting the characters in AC Unity to have stereotypical French accents. It sounds weird, but Ubisoft IS a French company, so....

Come to think of it, the GIGN operators in Siege either have no noticeable accent or have very mild French accents, at least compared to, say the SAS ops and their British accents or the GSG 9 ops and their German accents.

[Biking Potoroo]

Originally posted by Boofalo Soja:

Just got AC:Odyssey, and have been wondering:

1. Are those actually Greek accents? They sound like old bad Transylvanian Dracula accents, but I don't know any Greek people who speak English, with their original accent.

2. When they localize games like Odyssey into say, French or German or Japanese... do the voice actors sound like Greek-accented French, German, or Japanese speakers?

Like GTA IV, for instance. In Japan or France, does Nico Bellic sound like a Russian speaking heavily-russian-accented French or Japanese? How does that work?

I mean, Americans all know what a French or Russian accent sounds like, speaking English -- to the point where many of us can tell where a person is from by their accent.... I assume the same is true in other nations?

This is a very interesting subject. Well interesting, shame moreso really.

1. No, an actual Greek accent sounds much different. A lot of people think that accents were all always "tho" sounds, like "Arthose!", or "Prosthagama", but that's not the only way of pronouncing ancient tongues.

2. That, I have no idea.

Lol not sure what Grand Theft Auto has to do with this, but I doubt it was a Russian actor for Niko's character. Whatever of an embarassment that character was to good Russian culture.

And yes, that is true. But accents have been lost over the ages, and sometimes it sadly resorts to just sifting through some of the rougher tone accents on certain letters from the softer ones.

There are a lot of exceptions though, like being able to actually hear even their normal plain accent-less English and determine where they're from!

[Masque]

"Lol not sure what Grand Theft Auto has to do with this"

What? Why is that funny? Thread is about accents in videogames.

I quickly grew tired of the Russian accents (sorry, I mean Eastern European accents) by Nico Bellic and his crew in GTA IV.

I wonder if the next GTA will have you playing an American. Or a male, for that matter.

[Masque]

Annie (and all):

I never wondered whether the accents were authentically "ancient" Greek. I'm smart enough to realize we don't have pronunciation guides and audio. I just wondered if the accents in Odyssey were even modern Greek accents.

(I also have it on good authority that Moses and the Israelites spoke perfect British English.)

[Kiddiec͕̤̱͋̿͑͠at 🃏]

Originally posted by Ocean Meat:

Originally posted by Miss Ann Thrope:

I could never get used to the English accents in Assassin's Creed Unity, which was supposed to be set in revolutionary France. It's like Ubisoft weren't even trying...

I've heard something along the lines of Ubisoft deliberately not wanting the characters in AC Unity to have stereotypical French accents. It sounds weird, but Ubisoft IS a French company, so....

Come to think of it, the GIGN operators in Siege either have no noticeable accent or have very mild French accents, at least compared to, say the SAS ops and their British accents or the GSG 9 ops and their German accents.

The funny thing is, stereotypical accents are typically offensive to the native speakers of a nation because they're so completely wrong from the actual accent.
I remember Craig Ferguson (at least, I think it was him) jokingly complaining about how it's annoying when tourists come into your country and then hear your normal, not so stereotypical accent, and then tell you how you should do your own accent.

I never realized it but voice lines & accents is a controversial issue - very much so. I knew there'd be complaints from people either way but frankly... this is a controversial issue for people.

[WhispersOfTheWind]

I love accents, usually or well sometimes in games they're messy and somewhat ugly even because real accents would be ugly on by themselves sometimes... euhm...

So accents in games are usually to my knowledge not so well done because they belong to this sort of stereotype more than the real thing, but ultimately personally I really like accents even though I can't stand or fathom some of them I still can take my time and appreciate them but.

In games they are average mostly sometimes they're well done like when they're speaking French. I think that's charming.

But no I don't think anyone goes out of their way to sort of realistically depict nuances of ehm, accents and that they rather go with the cliche than the real thing....

When they're doing translations or 'localizations' I think they also stick to a script that doesn't deviate too much from the dead line or main focus which would be to just do the thing and not worry too much about it, but if you listen carefully.. You can almost sense or notice how bad it is :P

I don't know I played this game Metro Exodus and sort of cringed at those accents but the thing is they're always the same or similar but this wasn't always the case, I think due to some as I said guidelines or scripts they have to keep it 'clean' or something (so it doesn't offend?) and you can sort of hear that back in NPC dialogue because they sure don't bother to give the PC some dialogue neither but then again.... It's probably got to do with something one or the other.

Averages, generalizations... Stereotypes things of this nature.

[Masque]

Originally posted by Kiddiec͕̤̱͋̿͑͠at:

The funny thing is, stereotypical accents are typically offensive to the native speakers of a nation because they're so completely wrong from the actual accent.

I got that all the time with people trying, and failing completely, to mimic a Boston accent.

"Oh, you mean Baaahstin?"

:facepalm: "No, dummy, that would be how they pronounce Barston. Give up. Just stop."