None of the male voices do it for me when it comes to dwarves, or any rugged character for that matter. Obviously I'm a sucker for the stereotypical Scottish accent, but just something more gruff/harsh sounding would go a long way for me.
Yep, agreed. And I don't have any objection to Scottish accents for dwarves or indeed any character in principle, it's just that having lived in Scotland for nearly 20 years I'm sensitive to bad ones!
Good point about the PC voices for dwarves. Both two male and female voices are so similar to begin with I'm having difficulty telling them apart.
Interesting. I don't have any difficulty distinguishing female voice 4 (posher, more "refined", suitable for noble types, high elves and some drow) from voice 2 (less posh and suitable for more roguish and "lower class" characters), but then I'm English myself so I'm going to pick up on subtler distinctions between accents and have have different associations for them, and you shouldn't need that in order to be able to tell the difference so I take your feedback that they're too similar. And even I struggle to distinguish between the two custom male voices. Voice 3 is *maybe* a bit deeper and less prissy than voice 1 but they're both still what I would code as posh southern. For the full game, I say bring on the different accents. We already have some Scottish (e.g. Edowin's male disciple), Irish (e.g. Nettie ... I think) and Welsh (e.g. Benryn) in the setting, so different accents from Britain/Ireland are already established as suitable for the setting. And any English-language accent could be appropriate for a character who isn't originally from the area, or for someone who understandably doesn't care about consistency of accents with ones from a whole other world!
The future voices need much more persona to set them apart. Like gruff, lighthearted, stoic, soft spoken...
On the subject of voices, we really should bring back the high-strung evangelist from NWN just for its comedic value.
I'd cautiously agree we need voices with different moods, but with the caveat that I am still desperately hoping for more voiced lines from our custom protagonists in the final game, and would opt for that and fewer/more generic voice choices over more choice/more specific characterisation and fewer spoken lines. But I do agree that, especially with fewer choices, they need to be more distinct and that gaps especially for tougher and more evil characters need to be plugged.
I think I usually pick head 3 for female dwarves, because I think it's the prettiest one, but what I'd like to see is maybe the same heads with like an age picker like in Elden Ring for young/mature/aged. For male dwarves I like head 4. Has a not too young/not too old appearance.
Yeah, pretty isn't usually what I'm going for with either my male or female dwarves, but all choices are valid! And saying that, I actually thought my dwarven barbarian was pretty hot, even though - or maybe because - I'm a straight female.
But seriously, yes the ability to have two or three different ages available for each head and perhaps different scars (I'd be happy if these were added as "tattoo" options) would really help realise different characters without having to add a bunch more heads.