Accents and non-english languages in games

[Snieeke]

Im a longtime battlefield player, have played every game so far extensively. I find it interesting that Dice have allways used the different teams native tounges for battlefield cues like when your controlpoint is under attack you will hear your commander shout at you in russian when playing as the soviets in bf1942 for example. It seems to be more and more common these days, CoD4 also use each factions languages and though I havent played Crysis I´ve read that the korean soldiers actually speak korean (though only on the hardest setting).

Ok, so my question goes out to those who speak russian, arabic or any other non-english language spoken in todays games:

1. Are the voiceactors any good in lets say CoD4, bad company or 1942? I think they sound awesome but to you they might sound like a kindergarten teacher and say really silly lines?

2. Im pretty sure this has been covered but i couldnt find a topic - does Niko from GTA4 have a believable accent? And does he speak russian or is it serbian? He drops some slavic lines from time to time. And yes I know that at one point he claims not to be russian but he could still be speaking it.

 

[HuCast]

I think It might depend on the developers budget?

 

[slowpoke219]

Well I don't know about those, but RE 4 had genuine Spanish speakers with the European accent and dialect well done. I'm assuming RE 5 will do the same thing for it's African zombies. Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow never bothered to have native speakers, not even accents on their enemies. I just found it annoying that they made some dude from Burma sounds like he's from California.

 

[Stammer]

I find that voice acting can really make or break a game. If you can't find perfect characters for such scenarios, it's really best just to not have voice acting.

The wide variety of European accents in Final Fantasy XII really weirded me out and made it lose a lot of its immersive properties.

 

[HombreMan]

a fun fact is that the spanish speakers from RE4 were actually mexican voice actors (instead of spaniard voice actors)

 

[shatnershaman]

Well COD3 had good canuck accents as long as you accept one is from quebec and the rest are from Ontario.

 

[Lazy Lemon]

It really annoyed me that everyone in Metal Gear Solid 3 & 4 spoke with American acents. Nearly everyone on snake eater should have been Russian. Naomi was posh and English in MGS1, and I'm pretty sure Mei Ling had a Japanese accent.

 

[SteinFaust]

True Crime NYC was the best! i couldn't blaze down a patch of asphalt in my Lambo without hearing curses in like 5 different languages from the sidewalk XD

 

[Alex_P]

Quickest way to figure out for Russian: if it sounds like a James Bond movie, it's really just horrid gibberish (Goldeneye, which featured a girl shouting "Bliotch!" a lot, was the worst). If you want to hear some mostly-authentic Russian, you may be surprised to find it in the recent Get Smart movie. They even throw in some slang that the subtitles don't really fully translate (one guy says the idiomatic equivalent of "And then I'd be, like, rat-tat-tat, yo!" and it gets translated as just "shooting"). Needless to say, this means the Red Alert series had super-fake accents. (Anyone surprised? Thought not.)
I can't remember a game that does them well off the top of my head, but I'm sure there were some.
 

Just to get the really simple ones out of the way right now:

Pretty much every foreign accent in Deus Ex is absolute crap.

KOTOR uses pretty fake British accents, but they're genre-appropriate Star-Wars-style British accents, so I actually consider that good voice acting.

-- Alex

 

[zirnitra]

well I'm English and in Battlefield 2 modern combat I remember when playing as a British troop online when you called in a mortar strike you got "This is Tango one..." can't remember the rest. but it was in a 1940's WWII film spitfire pilot's accent that even the royal family don't talk like anymore. I mean I admit to having a posh accent (privately schooled for ten years, can't ditch it no matter how hard I try) but that was just ridiculous I was surprised that command didn't respond "right o bombs away old chap. See you on cricket green Sunday what what!"

PS does it annoy anyone else that whenever their is someone British in an American Production they make them say Da-ta and Sta-tus rather than the proper way we say it day-ta and stay-tus?

 

[SteinFaust]

TANGO, SUCKA!!!
YOUR MOTHER!!
TACTICAL HEADER!!

-OpFor, MW2

 

[Rauten]

a fun fact is that the spanish speakers from RE4 were actually mexican voice actors (instead of spaniard voice actors)

Isn't Mexican Spanish kinda like Quebec French. Same words, same language, but almost entirely different sounding?

Same base language, different words, COMPLETELY different sounding.
It pisses me off to no end when some TV Show, movie or whatever wants to include a "spanish" character and they put in someone that blatantly speaks mexican.

WE DO NOT SOUND LIKE THAT. STOP USING MEXICANS TO PORTRAY SPANISH PEOPLE. WE ARE NOT MEXICANS!