Blame it on the dumbing down of American education, thanks to all of the "progressive education" kicks that American educators get onto -- and abandon for something else about every five years. Plenty of students nowadays probably couldn't even find the US on a map of the world.

re: Accents and all in Freelancers, consistency would be sort of nice. I mean ... why are a few Bretonians outright Sloans, while all the rest sound like they come from Iowa? And why do a few Kusari (e.g. Mr Sulu) pronounce Japanese correctly, while the vast majority (including Juni) don't? Plus is it too much to ask of Rheinlanders that they pronounce German names correctly??? Or at least that they all mispronounce them the same way?

But what the aitch. It's a fun game, so play it and enjoy it. Too bad Billy Gee's people just didn't pay a bit more attention to the little things that would have made it almost perfect.

like not firing the chris roberts

chortle chortle i love these sort of threads.

1. for those of you who haven't clocked yer cards on yet, John Rhys Davies is Gimle/Professor Arturo/Paladin/standard British sci-fi & fantasy actor. I find it hard to believe anyone hasn't figured that out yet.

2. The Rheinland is the area of Germany between the River Rhine and France. It was occupied by Allied troops after WW1 and Hitler wanted it back for Germany.

3. All the accents particularly out of the SP campaign are awful, but especially the Bretonian ones, I still expect someone in the New London bar to break out into "it's a jolly 'olliday wiv Mar-eeeeeeee..." I also wanted Sulu to say "Warp Factor 7, Mr. Trent...."

4. Hakerra or Akira? When it's spelt Akira, I expect his body to be dismembered and kept in bottles.

5. Even allowing for changes in language over the centuries, culturally the Rheinlanders are still archetypal nationalistic xenophobic goose-steppers. All that's missing from their eagle symbols is the swastika below it. Cute...

6. And I'm sad to have to say it again because I admire the bloke, but left to Chris Roberts the game would never have got out the door, and WCrophecy was pretty much the same story.

..you think you're done with the past; but the past isn't done with you..

The minute we started recording the spoken voice is the minute we started cementing accents into the future.

Whilever there is those recordings, very little will change about the posken language, regardless of it being german, english, dutch, whatever.

The accents we hear from whatever source of entertainment we use, is the accent we will ourselves begin using.

So maybe, after another 1200 years of hollywood saturation, the planet will be speaking with american accents.
Personally i hope not, they just sound so annoying



Just my $0.02, but it could just be the cardamine talking.
Nil Mortifi Sine Lucre
aka Shaman - gameArena Server

Let face facts here. If the games aren't designed for the Japanese by the Japanese, then they are degined for the American audience, mostly by Americans. Given the comments further up this thread, is it any wonder that the only accents done properly are the American ones?

On another note. As a new poster on this site, it's pleasure to see a forum with a good quality of spelling and grammar, (pet hate). With all this txt spk these days, you'd think the stopped teaching the use of vowels in schools these days! [/rant

I must be getting old......

Edited by - Murdoch on 28-06-2003 12:21:35

I don't recall Tobias sounding very Welsh. At least he doesn't sound like my friends from North Wales. (Haven't met that many southerners.)

The puzzling thing is why Tobias sounds as British as he does, yet Trent -- whom he raised after "the disaster" that killed Trent's parents -- sounds so thoroughly American.

p.s. Candidate for the most idiotic statement in the game: Trent is at Tobias's shop and you try to buy some weapons. But you get the message, "You have to be on better terms before you can do that". Huh? Better terms with my own uncle???

I think it was more of a localization/acting issue than "America demands America-only games" issue. Not only do you have to localize the game into your languages, but you would have to find ones who have English/German/Japanese/American accents as well. Localization for games is not cheap, so I imagine it was for simplicity's sake. I can't wait until speech can be synthesized accurately enough to sound natural. Imagine hearing rumors and job offers in normal speech, with decent actors