I’D VERY MUCH LIKE TO GET AN EARFUL FROM A VARIETY OF VOICES FROM AROUND THE WORLD – NOT JUST BRITS OR AMERICANS.

Why do games still overwhelmingly go for American actors?

Final Fantasy XII’s weapons master is memorable for more than the fact she is a six-foot-tall bunny lady. Australian voice actor Nicole Fantl marks Fran out from her comrades with more than just her accent, turning in a subtle performance that, for me, is the most memorable of the lot. Fran and Balthier (played by British actor Gideon Emery) make quite the pair. The American talent – doing no less of a good job, mind – filling out the rest of the cast’s performances end up somewhere decidedly transatlantic-masquerading-asreceived-pronunciation. It’s a directorial choice that makes sense for the high fantasy setting of Ivalice, one that leaves me wondering why so many games still go for general American voices across the board.

The most obvious answer is practicality. It is American performers who are already known to the voice directors and producers, who can attend auditions, and who can show up for the work in the studio that’s most likely in LA. My experience of recording voice lines under a Snuggy in my bedroom is far outside of the done thing when it comes to professional videogame projects.

Furthermore, imitating accents or patterns of speech that differ from your own is a singular and unique challenge. (Trust me, you do not want to hear my attempt at a cockney accent.) If American voices are what you’ve got to work with, your performers’ natural accent is often the safest option as few sound as natural as the lovely Gideon Emery switching between accents.

But that said, if you’re not American talent, chances are you’d still be asked to do a general American accent for the majority of major game voice work. Why?

VOICING CONCERNS

Are alternate accents deemed too distracting for audiences? Does it all come down to time and money? Are VO producers simply ‘not seeking new talent right now’? Is it all of the above? I can’t profess to know for sure but I can argue my case.

First, let me be clear: I’m not trying to argue exclusively for more British voice talent in videogame VO – nor am I not-so-subtly bemoaning my own lack of voice work. While I personally enjoy the audio aesthetic of JRPG protagonists sounding like RADA dropouts, that approach may lead us to a differently flavoured aural uniformity. What I’m arguing for, as with all things in videogames, is more diverse voices – though I mean it a smidge more literally this time. With JRPG characters hailing from different corners of a fantasy world, it doesn’t make sense for your entire cast to sound like they just got done talking to their California-based agent.

This brings me to Final Fantasy XIII’s frozen-in-time duo, Oerba Yun Fang and Oerba Dia Vanille. Popping out of crystal stasis after a long nap, things haved moved on a bit in their home of Gran Pulse. The pair’s Aussie accents set them apart from the rest of the cast as a directorial shorthand to communicate their displacement in time. Because for one, accents and language shift over the course of a century and, two, going for an accent already familiar to listeners sounds a lot more natural than having the pair spout Ye Olde English. It’s also better than Greedfall’s awkward solution of mashing various accent elements together in order to create a new one that none of the cast in that game can perform consistently between them.

Voiceover producers, please broaden your horizons, and accents.