Voice Acting - Discuss Here

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Phasmatis
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Re: Voice Acting - Discuss Here

Post by Phasmatis »

I agree to a certain extent, I'm not a fan of British accents in games unless they are quite generic in tone and dialect, I couldn't imagine a Jordie in Deus Ex for instance "why eye man, we're gonna go catch us some mj12 down the toon" but TNM's premise is a network of forums with users from all over the world contributing so it works (even though my character in TNM is a northerner when I am a southerner).

I think it might be because we are British our selves and can't really imagine a British regional dialect in a cool spy/thriller setting when an American accent seems to fit more.
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Re: Voice Acting - Discuss Here

Post by Jonas »

yokuoh wrote:And frankly I'm not surprised at the response - people don't like being criticised and I would be the same.
What the hell? I have absolutely nothing against being criticized as long as the criticism is reasonable and respectful, and yours was. What exactly was wrong with my response? :-k
Phasmatis wrote:I think it might be because we are British our selves and can't really imagine a British regional dialect in a cool spy/thriller setting when an American accent seems to fit more.
Yep, that's it.

It was important to us to not just fill Forum City with a bunch of Americans, the Internet is international, and we wanted to emphasize that.

So if you don't like British accents in games, I'm sorry to hear that, but I strongly disagree. Nothing like a solid North English accent to put some colour into a game, and Scottish or Irish may well be the most awesome dialects in the English language. Have you ever played Call of Duty 4? :P
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Re: Voice Acting - Discuss Here

Post by chris the cynic »

And here I thought you guys disliked our (American's) accents.

I do agree somewhat with Eddie Izzard's take on your accents (in short, Darth Vader would not have worked if he had an accent from England) but it seems a bit odd to me to say that they don't belong in games. I'm not saying that I only like games with my accent but I wouldn't even consider saying, "I don't want to play a game unless it sounds like I'd have to cross a body of water to meet a real person who talks like the characters."

Also
I think it might be because we are British our selves and can't really imagine a British regional dialect in a cool spy/thriller setting
So would it be ok if the next James Bond had, say, a Downeast accent?

[Added:]
Jonas wrote:So if you don't like British accents in games, I'm sorry to hear that, but I strongly disagree. Nothing like a solid North English accent to put some colour into a game, and Scottish or Irish may well be the most awesome dialects in the English language. Have you ever played Call of Duty 4? :P
The most awesome accent in the English language, is probably that of the Beatles which, unfortunately, I am told doesn't even exist in Liverpool anymore. Then again I am told that by wikipedia (The Scouse accent of the early 21st century is markedly different in certain respects to that of earlier decades.[citation needed].) so its hard be sure.

That said, you might be right about Irish. I spent a summer talking to someone who came from just north of Dublin, it is a truly wondrous accent.
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Re: Voice Acting - Discuss Here

Post by Phasmatis »

Downeast England? That would be London-ish or Cockney and no it wouldn't work imo, Bond's accent (apart from Sean Connery) is a Generic dialect as in he doesn't really have an accent.
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Re: Voice Acting - Discuss Here

Post by chris the cynic »

Phasmatis wrote:Downeast England?
No, the Downeast accent is from the US. I've got a bit of it but not much.

My point was, if you are going to say that an American is better for a spy/thriller setting, imagine an American accent in a such a setting (that of James Bond.) Any American accent will do. I picked the local one.
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Re: Voice Acting - Discuss Here

Post by Phasmatis »

Bond is a different matter, he's British so Bond with an American accent would be wrong. I have no objection to British characters, not at all, it's the regional dialects I'm not a fan of, I realise you were using the Bond setting as an example not Bond itself but I wanted to make it clear.

As for American dialects, I'm not sure what a downeast accent it like so I'll pick another example, er.... new york or new jersey even Alabama... well that might be pushing it :P, I have no problem with a main character with those accents, I'm not sure why.
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Re: Voice Acting - Discuss Here

Post by chris the cynic »

er.... new york or new jersey even Alabama... well that might be pushing it :P, I have no problem with a main character with those accents, I'm not sure why.
One possibility is that since you don't live here you wouldn't have any of the negative stereotypes associated with them. The same could not be said of accents that come from a slightly more than 50 thousand square mile area you happen to live in (or, if we are talking about Great Britain rather than England, slightly more than 80 thousand.)
Phasmatis wrote:As for American dialects, I'm not sure what a downeast accent it like so I'll pick another example,
Wish I had a good example of it, but really the best I can do is Burt and I:
http://www.bertandi.net/listen.html
Not the best examples, but free samples can be expected to be less than perfect.

Or you can just try to picture in your head someone who says, "Ayuh." Here is a New Hampshire resident talking about their accent, which seems to be a Downeast accent. There is supposed to be such an accent in Deus Ex, ayuh and all. Don't remember how good of a job it did, I do know that it said, "Mechanic1 is meant to have a Northeastern/Maine accent," in the ConText file.

Oddly, the best example of it I ever heard was from a potato farmer I met in Italy. He was from upstate Maine somewhere.
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Re: Voice Acting - Discuss Here

Post by JC_Helios »

Jonas wrote:
yokuoh wrote:And frankly I'm not surprised at the response - people don't like being criticised and I would be the same.
What the hell? I have absolutely nothing against being criticized as long as the criticism is reasonable and respectful, and yours was. What exactly was wrong with my response? :-k
I think he somehow confused Illumonic and I as being part of the team, or voice actors. My response was partly because I couldn't determine if he was a troll or not :P . Sharing the fact that he was English didn't seem very troll-y, but those last to comments about "what a shame", and "weakest link"... seemed like something a troll would say.

I also have this odd compulsion of resisting the usual: " ZOMG!11! M0D SO AWESOME Me Sex u!!!" type fandom in favor of mild PR, bug reports, and complaining about little things that I wish were included type fandom :lol: :roll:. As such, critique without clarification annoys me a bit, and it might explain why he thought I was somehow involved.
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Re: Voice Acting - Discuss Here

Post by Jonas »

I've added rank images to the TNM and HDTP ranks now, so hopefully it'll be clear from now on who's on the team and who isn't :)

Should've done that long ago.
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Re: Voice Acting - Discuss Here

Post by Phasmatis »

Cabet Cove in Maine has an accent that I don't like very much, the only reason I've heard that is because of Murder She Wrote. I'm not too keen on one accent in Fallout3 I think it might be a Washington accent but I'm not sure, so there are exceptions.

Jonas, can I have the title "Lead Artist Dude" please?
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Re: Voice Acting - Discuss Here

Post by Jonas »

Phasmatis wrote:Jonas, can I have the title "Lead Artist Dude" please?
Not right now, we're changing things around a bit for the next project so we'll figure something out then ;)
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Re: Voice Acting - Discuss Here

Post by chris the cynic »

To be honest, I've not seen many of the Cabot Cove episodes. I think by the time I was watching the writers realized that Cabot Cove was too small of a town to sustain repeated visits by Jessica Fletcher. They kept her on the move so that no one place would have to endure her population dwindling presence.

As such I cannot say whether the accent they portrayed was at all right.

The only thing I've ever found annoying about the accent is the tendency to put Rs back in. Taking them out sounds fine to my ears, but changing idea to i-deer sounds downright unpleasant to me.
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Re: Voice Acting - Discuss Here

Post by Jetsetlemming »

I've never heard of a "Downeast" accent and I live on the east coast. I've certainly heard of a maine accent but never named like that.
Phas you do not want to hear a Jersey accent for a spy. :P Watch a few clips of The Sopranos and make believe one of those guys cast as the next James Bond.
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Re: Voice Acting - Discuss Here

Post by chris the cynic »

I think Downeast is a Maine only term though I am not sure, it's origins are unknown to me. Down East is a region of Maine, but the accent extends well beyond it, and if the term were based on the region you'd expect the name of the accent would be two words, not one.

I seem to remember something about wind patterns. Or sailing patterns based on wind patterns. Down wind and to the East. Maybe. I could be quite wrong about that.
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Re: Voice Acting - Discuss Here

Post by Jetsetlemming »

About the putting in r's thing- I've actually seen that a lot in central Pennsylvania. The most obvious one is saying "Warsh" instead of "Wash".
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