While I certainly understand most folks would’ve been put off by a game had all of its dialogue in French with subtitles, and I certainly wouldn’t have wanted over-the-top, Monty Python-style ridiculous French accents, it takes me out of the game a tiny bit every time someone opens their mouth and sounds like a cockney. Would it have been so difficult to find, say, French voice actors who also speak English and thus just give everyone a bit of a French accent? Yeesh.
Anyway, not a major complaint–just a mini-rant about a game I’m otherwise enjoying quite a bit (despite being a bit lost, since they decided they didn’t really need to explain the backstory…).
Yup, I’ve been playing it too and yeah, the British accents are weird.
The thing is, the voice acting isn’t bad at all; it’s just out of place for ACU’s setting. It’s strange that Ubisoft went this route for the game, given that they’ve generally been spot-on with voice acting until now.
Historical stuff has to have British accents. You could be in ancient Egypt and you’d have Ben Kingsley doing it. There must at least be a translatic accent.
Yes, it’s silly. But it’s silly stuff that Hollywood does so Ubisoft will do it too.
The thing is, if all of the voices in game were English, spoken with an English accent, it wouldn’t be as jarring. But almost all of the background conversation is in French. So having English accents really stands out against the Gallic background.
Well, maybe that’s it… nobody thinks they have an accent, so the French game designers couldn’t very well put out a casting call for voice actors with French accents.
How pleasant/unpleasant to most people is the French accent in English? Nearly every time I’ve heard it, I’ve found it neutral at best.
To add to Alessan: And when Russians talk among themselves in movies/games, it’s usually in American English, Russian-accented English or Russian with subtitles; no British accent. Same thing for Germans.
ETA:
http://blog.ubi.com/assassins-creed-unity-accents/
“The idea is that the Animus is translating everything into the language you’re playing in,” Amancio explains. “That’s why, since you’re an Anglophone, you’re hearing all the dialogue and cinematics in English. It would really make no sense for there to be a French accent because that would mean that this French character is trying to address you in accented English. Everyone in the game is not trying to speak English for your benefit.”
But that raises the question: Why a British accent? The answer is simple. When trying to figure out what accent would be best-suited to the time period and the location, the development team took a tip from Hollywood. British accents, they determined, just have more of a period feel than an American accent would. It gives the distinct feeling of being set in the past in a foreign place."
So, Ubisoft just did the equivalent of opening a hipster pub/tourist trap in Brooklyn and calling it “Ye Olde Englishe Pube”
Well, credit where it’s due that they took the trouble to come up with some sort of explanation. It’s not one that I find particularly satisfying, and the second part in particular manages to verge on the insulting. But at least it was a conscious decision, I guess.
Briefly resurrecting my own thread, I was grumbling about this again the other night and got to googling around for Ubi’s rather rubbish explanation for it. That led me to the following:
If you don’t care for the English in ACU, and you don’t mind subtitles, you can change the audio to French and use English subs. Not ideal–I’d rather just have non-outrageous French-accented English, overall–but better than hearing “OOY! ID YEW SEE THAT! E STOWL FROM ME!” several times per session.