Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Only British Accents

Okay so I already included this in the master suggestion, and I know it's probably one of the biggest 'asks' in terms of feedback....


But seriously, is *EVERY SINGLE* voice in the game a British accent?

Random Boblin the Goblin guard? British accent.

Tiefling child that I just saved from a goblin attack? Also British accent.

Pissed off Human adventurer? Hellllloo Rob Stark levels of British accent.

Old swamp hag? As British as the queen herself.

Hobgoblin War Boss? Supes British.

My gruff Dwarven Ranger, toughened from a life living on the lands....only 2 voices available and both British.

Even the narrator is literally just Malady aka British supreme herself from DoS 2.

In fact the only voiced character I've found that doesn't seem to be that way is Gale. That's it. Maybe one other NPC from the Druid grove.

Now compare that to the first 1 minute of BG II gameplay. You have Irenicus, Minsc, and Jaheira. All crazy different accents. A few seconds later we have a genie with another new accent. Then a wretched creature trapped in a vat, another totally new accent. Imoen with her mid-western style. Lilarcor the sword that won't shut up with the mocking gruffness.

Am I the only one bothered by this? It completely destroys whatever immersion I have at the time when every single creature has the same mannerisms of speech. The same contractions, shortened words, etc. For a AAA game studio it literally sounds like they just had the same 2-3 voice actors doing all of the work for literally every voice line. Someone like Matt Mercer has more range of accents displayed in a single game of D&D than the entirety of what Larian Studios can afford? Is this something we could please, please address? It's not like Corona stops people from recording high quality voice work remotely.

I thought that was weird too. It seems like every goblin, elf, ogre, human and the rest grew up on the same block.

Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves!
Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.

When Britain first, at heaven's command,
Arose from out the azure main,
This was the charter of the land,
And Guardian Angels sang this strain:

The nations not so blest as thee
Must, in their turn, to tyrants fall,
While thou shalt flourish great and free:
The dread and envy of them all.

Still more majestic shalt thou rise,
More dreadful from each foreign stroke,
As the loud blast that tears the skies
Serves but to root thy native oak.

Thee haughty tyrants ne'er shall tame;
All their attempts to bend thee down
Will but arouse thy generous flame,
But work their woe and thy renown.

To thee belongs the rural reign;
Thy cities shall with commerce shine;
All thine shall be the subject main,
And every shore it circles, thine.

The Muses, still with freedom found,
Shall to thy happy coasts repair.
Blest isle! with matchless beauty crowned,
And manly hearts to guard the fair.

Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves!
Britons never, never, never shall be slaves!

What do you mean, "accent"? It is English, actual English language. What would you prefer, American accent? Yeah, nah. And what accent would you prefer for goblin? Does skin colour important with choosing of the accent? Does race affects the accent? What else do you want, CEO of forced diversity? Stop pushing your political dirt in the world that has no relation to this world.

What's wrong with british accent exactly?

I absolutely loved it this way, I think it suits a DnD universe much better and hope it will stay this way.

Absolutely nothing wrong with some characters having a British accent/stylized speech.

Absolutely everything wrong with every single race, from every single location in the entire world and other planes of existence, sounding almost exactly the same. Visual differences are paramount, but audible is not to be lazily forgotten.

Anyone who's played BG, when they read "GO FOR THE EYES BOO" has their brain automatically impart the voice and tenor used by Minsc. Voices are as integral to the BG cRPG experience as nearly anything else. Having every voice almost entirely the same breaks immersion, feels unrealistic given the massive diversity of visual differences and backgrounds for the characters and races, and ultimately, is just boring.


To turn the question, why do people want there to only be 1 accent in a game that literally has dozens of different races and physical locations represented?

It is well known that, like the ancient Romans, all people of Faerûn spoke English with a British accent.

Have you seen the location of Belgium on the map? have you seen the location of Ireland on the map? Are you aware of the fact that corona virus limited international travel in 2020. Are you aware that as of sept 2 larian said they finally finished recording all the voiced lines for EA? Given the state of the world is it really unreasonable that the access to English speakers was limited to those with a "British" accent?

20 years ago, absolutely that would be an excuse and I wouldn't even have brought it up.

In a world where high quality recording devices can readily be shipped around the world, even in Corona virus impacted areas, and the internet exists....yeah, not a valid excuse. All the more so because there isn't even an Irish accent in the game. Nor Belgian.

It is a British accent. UK English and US English are factually both English. You just sound like pompous twit with your entire comment, but that's to be expected of a pom.



Did they say there was a problem with the british accent? No. Wonder why you were so quick to leap to being offended then?

Why though? Can you even give a reason beyond 'just because'?

I'm sure one of them even had a Welsh accent :o

I don't feel british accent in any of main character voice.

Yet...

Maybe let’s revisit this again later into EA. Not saying the OP shouldn’t bring it up, I am British and even I don't just want the same accent, but on the flip side you do want similarity for regions, but yeah aren’t the Githyanki from a different plane (fuzzy memory), shouldn’t their accent be different?

You do have to be cautious that you don’t fall into stereotypes though, dwarves with Scottish accents, characters with certain skin color having voices matching real world locations for example.

In addition to the equipment, you need a treated room, or at least a booth.

Can Belgians even hear the difference between an American and British accent? I mean, I've been told there are all sorts of regional accents in Germany, but Germans speaking German just sound like Germans to me.

What are you smoking? What tech do you imagine that you can turn someone's apartment/house in to a recording studio? You do know that professional voice acting isn't recording over the phone right? You can't use zoom or skype. Voice acting is recorded in a recording studio.

Ireland is the studio they do motion capture so it may very well be the same studio that they also do the sound recording maybe not, it could be done in Belgium their main studio. I wasn't pointing to Ireland because they speak English but because it is a studio that is close to a huge talent pool of voice actors in Britain just like how Belgium is close to Britain and I wasn't sure which of these two studios would likely be the one which did the voice acting recording, so pointed to both.

look you seem woefully uniformed and are responding on emotion. You can't do what you think they can without a recoding studio and if they don't own the studio they have to rent one they have limited time to record and It is a lot easier to move people around in Europe during the covid crisis than flying in an actor over the ocean during 2020. If you can't accept that covid has forced some compromise with development then you are being unreasonable.

That's my worry though, is that Voice Over work is probably the greatest investment of time and effort besides the actual programming of the game. What we are seeing is all of Act 1, as the voice over work exists right now. Delaying until later makes it that much less likely that Larian will invest the time and effort to record new voices, because it takes time.

We know they are willing to redo voice over work, just look at how they removed the passive voice for the narrator.

Voice over work artists are talented people. While I hate to reference it, just look at Critical Role and all the different accents that are capable from just 1 artist. You don't even have to have characters/races be stereotyped to one accent (Dwarves being Scottish as you noted), just give them instructions to not use the exact same shortened phrases, tones, enunciation, etc. (all the factors that are typically defined as an 'accent') for each voice like there is now.

You insult and then accuse of responding on emotion. Pick one or the other bud, can't have both.

Corona causes compromises? Correct, voice over work was absolutely one of them especially back in March/April.

However, where you are wrong, is that yes, you can setup high quality recording studios in your home, if you are so inclined. Many voice over artists have literally done exactly that (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/n...g-remote-set-ups-working-at-home-1289235). That article is from April 10th, around 5 months of work time before voice recording finished. I'm kind of surprised you didn't know that, given how quick you are to insult my knowledge on the subject.

Alternatively, and hear me out on this since you seem to want to get all emotional on us, Larian could have them record the lines as a studio near the voice actor and transmit the data via the internet. You know, like they did even before Corona virus? Recording studios in Los Angeles reopened all the way back in May/June, months of lead time to record lines.

Trying to argue that technical limitations is why every single voiced line is a British accent is just wrong.

*edit*

Forgot to add. The biggest reason you're wrong (that British accents had to be used due to technical limitations imposed by Corona) is that the voice over artists they used are incredibly talented people. If Larian had instructed Neil Newbon (the voice of the nearly painfully British Astarion) to give him a French accent instead, I am 100% confident he could have done it. Or hell, make it a Russian accent like he got paid to do for Resident Evil 3 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYwN1yDKvYE). You are insulting the voice over artist by implying they couldn't have done other accents.

look to get the game to early access they had to start recording this summer. That limited their talent pool based on location and the fact that covid hurts travel. And moving someone from the USA to ireland or belgium might require a 14 day quarantine period to do recording. That is what it takes to move US actors to start shooting here in BC, Canada. (So not talking out of my ass here) That is a huge expense for a company to bring in talent. It is likely that moving someone from the UK is a lot easier. So they had to commit to the talent pool they have not the talent pool they likely would have used without covid. This talent pool is now mostly fixed, so we have to accept it. EA is for roughly a year so they will be recording later acts soonish as well and given that they looks to be no lift of covid restriction we can expect that most of the English speaking talent is going to be from Europe so you can guess the accent. is it ideal? No but how about being a little understanding as to the why. if larian was an Australian developer you would have to get use to a lot of Ausie accents luckily its not. (sorry not sorry Ausies)