149 réponses à ce sujet

[Brodoteau]

BobSmith101 wrote...

Just out of curiosity does anyone know any good French voice actors who can speak good English too ? The younger versions of Jean Reno and Gerard Depardieu for example.

Not to beat a dead horse here, but there are French Canadians who would fit that bill like Roy Dupuis or Patrick Huard or Remy Girard.  Though, I fully second Audrey Tatou as a celebrity voice:  Maybe as the Orlesian Empress?  

[ColGali]

BobSmith101 wrote...

wsandista wrote...

BobSmith101 wrote...

Best arguement for a silent protagonist ever.

Well aside from that having a silent on a player generated character leads to serious conflicts when the player tries to roleplay....

The thought of having a snooty french caricature forced on my PC is awful.

If you're playing an Orlasian I guess that's the price you pay. Makes you wonder how people from European countries feel about the English accent in DA2.

Any accent is better than french...

[Nerdage]

Tirigon wrote...

Reznore57 wrote...

Why do people hate french accent so much?

Because it sounds bad?

Only the bad ones.

To be honest the only orlesian voice so far that really hacked me off was Kath Soucie's (ie Marjolaine & Erlina). I can handle the foppish noble voices, and none of the others stood out to me as bad, but those two characters were really hard to take as seriously as they deserved to be.

Beyond that Orlais sounds fine to me.

[Tirigon]

nerdage wrote...

Tirigon wrote...

Reznore57 wrote...

Why do people hate french accent so much?

Because it sounds bad?

Only the bad ones.

To be honest the only orlesian voice so far that really hacked me off was Kath Soucie's (ie Marjolaine & Erlina). I can handle the foppish noble voices, and none of the others stood out to me as bad, but those two characters were really hard to take as seriously as they deserved to be.

Beyond that Orlais sounds fine to me.

I didnt like any of the Orlais accents except Leliana. But then, Leliana is cute and sexy and doesnt really sound French to me anyways, so there's that.

[LightningSamus]

I want to play as a Qunari!

[Massakkolia]

Tirigon wrote...

I didnt like any of the Orlais accents except Leliana. But then, Leliana is cute and sexy and doesnt really sound French to me anyways, so there's that.

I know several French people and we usually converse in English. Based on that (admittedly limited) research, I'd say that Leliana is one of the few people in Dragon Age games that sounds genuinely French. I know Bioware aims to use native speakers to do accents but I've noticed that accents get too often exaggerated and comical treatment.  Instead of sounding French, those accents end up sounding someone trying to sound like French. 

It seems that many voice actors feel that they need to accentuate their "Frenchness" because they're cast to the role of an Orlesian (=French) person. I hope the voice director would encourage the actors to step away from the nationality of their role and focus more on emotions of the scene. Especially if we'll have a whole game of Orlais.

Those pompous overblown "noble accents" sound off even when they're delivered by native French. Leliana's voice is perfect because it's just a natural part of her, not a defining attribute. Corinne Kempa simply tried to sound like Leliana, not her nationality, and I think she did a great job. 

[Tirigon]

Ria wrote...

I know several French people and we usually converse in English. Based on that (admittedly limited) research, I'd say that Leliana is one of the few people in Dragon Age games that sounds genuinely French.

Yea but the irony is... real French accents are not really like French in games and movies.
I live no 100 km away of the French border, and as such we have quite some contact with them, and practically NOONE sounds anything like the Orlaisians. The people in the Alsace (closest to where I live) even sound like native Germans, for the most part (well many of them are, admittedly^^), but even the French from further away dont sound stereotypically "French".


But then, most prejudices about French happen to be wrong, just take their legendary cowardice and likeness to surrender, when in reality, France WON most wars they have ever been in.......

It explains a lot, to be honest.

Modifié par Tirigon, 11 mai 2012 - 01:07 .

[Reznore57]

Hey i live not very far away from Alsace , in Lorraine .
I knew a french guy who lives on the border of Germany , speak german very well , he was learning english with me and had almost O accent.
I always been told it's easier for German to learn english , don't know if it's true though.^^

But they are a lot of French with bad accent , i'm part of them (well even when i was trying to learn italian , my accent was awful :s)

I don't mind people not liking the orlesians (or french ) accent , some People from the french BSN (those who play in english version) complain about it too.

[Aloren]

Atakuma wrote...

Aloren wrote...

I'd be curious to see if some people would react the same way if it were a German or Spanish accent... sometimes is sure sounds like racism.

French isn't a race, it's a nationality, the word you're looking for is xenophobia.

Well, actually, French is a race (at least it is according to any dictionary definition of race), and  picking xenophobia instead doesn't change much to the original question.
Xenophobia is fear or hatred of foreigners or their culture, while racism is hatred or intolerance of another race, which is any people united by common history, language, or culture. Now I don't think this is hatred we see here, but it sure sounds more like intolerance than fear (just wait till someone says "who would fear the french anyway"

Not that it matters anyway, I was just wondering about the reaction of some people, I'm not calling everyone racists because they don't want their character to sound like duke prosper (or Monsieur Hood in Shrek 2... or the merovingian in the Matrix... or any extremely "French" character from any movie, really )

Modifié par Aloren, 11 mai 2012 - 04:07 .

[LolaLei]

I think any accent that's done to sound OTT would get irritating after a while, hell the OTT posh British accent does my head in and I'm from England lol.

[Chipaway111]

I adored Leliana's accent because it was so soft and natural, and had a good laugh at Baron Arlange but I think the Orlesian accent is meant to sound like exaggerated French (IMO). Though back to a VA with the Orlesian accent, I honestly do want a VA and the accent would be cool, but only if it was like Leliana's... anything more and I'd have to mute them.

[Dave of Canada]

I want to see a ballroom scene with my Orlesian protagonist.

/frenchiewantstobefrench

[TEWR]

Dave of Canada wrote...

I want to see a ballroom scene with my Orlesian protagonist.

/frenchiewantstobefrench

Yes.

A masquerade ball needs to happen, where I can dance with my LI to a waltz akin to the Waltz of the Damned.

Hell, if Bioware goes the route of allowing us to play as a former protagonist in DAIII for a brief amount of time just so we can retain control in those instances, I'd welcome both the Warden or Hawke being among them. I realize DAIII will not have the protagonist be Hawke or the Warden, but that doesn't mean that even brief options to play through as them can't be in the game. Even if they were just restricted to dialogue sequences.

Not that I really need it there. But it'd certainly be neat if they went the Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn path, sort of.

But Hawke would have to be able to show his political capability and intellectual capacity, if he even has any. And I'd have to have an awesome moment with Merrill. Either in the dancing scene with her or sometime afterwards. And it could show off Merrill's intellectual side in matters outside the arcane as well!

And the masquerade ball has to have political intrigue.

And optionally, Loghain. Perhaps as a prelude to his awesome table-flipping, Chevalier-punching, riding a horse in the midnight rain sequence.

SO.... MANY.... POSSIBILITIES.

Modifié par The Ethereal Writer Redux, 11 mai 2012 - 08:52 .

[Das Tentakel]

There are three separate things at work here, I think.

First: The actual voice itself. Does it sound friendly, sexy, childish/petulant, arrogant, charming, manly?
I am one of those who thinks Corinne Kempa’s voice as Leliana sounds childish, even infantile, rather than sexy. I got a bad case of ‘Imoen Syndrome’ with her…
But your mileage may vary.

Second: The heaviness of the accent. The ‘heavier’, the more tiresome it becomes to listen to, even if the voice itself is pleasant. It’s a combination of actual irritation at hearing a language being raped and simple mental exhaustion trying to understand what they’re saying.

Third: The believability of the accent: does it sound fake, exaggerated etc.

I’m not French (though as with many Dutch, I have a French surname somewhere in my ancestry. Hey, we have a long history of French invasions and we’re practically next door. Ask our Belgian cousins, who are even closer, how they feel: www.youtube.com/watch  ) .

However, I’ve had plenty of contact with French and Walloons (Francophone Belgians) and many of the DA ‘Orlesian’ accents conform to the ‘Allo ‘allo / Inspector Clouseau School of Moronic Linguistics. Great for comedy, not so for movies, TV series and…videogames with more serious themes.
I haven’t played MotA (Origin is not welcome on my PC, sorry EA), but I did watch some ‘Let’s Play’ videos and…it’s a very schizophrenic piece of work. Half of it is ‘serious’, with blood, intrigue and yes, a bit of humour, the other half appears to be slapstick. Especially the accents and, by all the Gods and Goddesses of all real and fantasy pantheons, NPC’s called Babette and Fifi ?. That’s so incredibly cheesy…Even a Dutch cheese factory isn’t that cheesy (and yes, this attempt at humour is as lame as some of MotA’s).

Anyway, back to the accents. I am fairly sure the French actors among them – Philippe Smolikowski (Duke Prosper), Corinne Kempa (Leliana) and Stéphane Cornicard (Riordan) – probably don’t really speak English with those accents. In the case of Cornicard, I found a spontaneous little interview and he speaks a decent Queen’s English with occasionally a slight accent, one that you can only identify as French with some difficulty.
They’re all professional actors who live or who have lived in Anglophone countries (not sure how long, but I suspect for years).
In general, my experience is that, the better you are in a foreign language, the more difficult it becomes to identify the accent – that is, if you still have one.
And I think this is where most people who feel that the accents sound fake – even in the case of actors of French origin like Kempa, Smolikowski and Cornicard – get that feeling from.
There is a sense of ‘wrongness’ that comes from the fact that their English is too good for them to have that accent. The accents sound deliberate and thus artificial.

Which they probably are. Kempa and Smolikowski, for instance, seem to do a lot of commercials, in which they have to provide a quintessentially, yet pleasant and easily understandable ‘French’ voice. So that is what they do, in those commercials and in Dragon Age.

Now, question is, is that a problem?
Probably not in the case of the ‘light’ accents. Artificial they may be, but they help in ‘cultural identification’. People consider such light accents even charming, with the proper voice; Maurice Chevalier and Marlene Dietrich kept a recognisable accent in their movies as a kind of ‘trademark’.
(though I am not sure they even had one, or an easily identifiable one, when speaking English in private. Again, professional actors…Dietrich lived most of her adult life in the States…).

The OTT ones? Throw them out, Bioware. They’re annoying and insulting. To your players’ intelligence and to your Francophone fans.

There’s also the point of the ‘French’ accent really being the only thing (apart from some French or French-sounding names) propping up the ‘Frenchness’ of Orlais so far, but that would be a subject for another thread.

Modifié par Das Tentakel, 11 mai 2012 - 08:46 .

[Dave of Canada]

The Ethereal Writer Redux wrote...

Yes.

A masquerade ball needs to happen, where I can dance with my LI to a waltz akin to the Waltz of the Damned.

*snip*

Hawke being involved in the ball could work, even as non-protagonist. Include them, write a few lines based on the dominant personality and possibly involve the love interest from before in a masquerade gown (including Anders and Fenris because why not).

And I'd love to see the masquerade ball as a prelude to the civil war, possibly meet Celene and Gaspard supporters before everything gets nasty. Imagine if Loghain had a fancy masquerade ball before Ostagar? Clearly everybody would've loved how fabulous he was.

Modifié par Dave of Canada, 11 mai 2012 - 08:57 .

[slashthedragon]

Just recently a group of French tourists asked me for directions to NY. The girl who spoke English and French had a really lovely accent. Why not hire VAs who naturally have a French accent?

[Dave of Canada]

slashthedragon wrote...

Just recently a group of French tourists asked me for directions to NY. The girl who spoke English and French had a really lovely accent. Why not hire VAs who naturally have a French accent?

They do.

[slashthedragon]

Dave of Canada wrote...

slashthedragon wrote...

Just recently a group of French tourists asked me for directions to NY. The girl who spoke English and French had a really lovely accent. Why not hire VAs who naturally have a French accent?

They do.

So...people are complaining that real French VAs are annoying and/or over the top for some characters?
Or...what?

[TEWR]

Dave of Canada wrote...

Hawke being involved in the ball could work, even as non-protagonist. Include them, write a few lines based on the dominant personality and possibly involve the love interest from before in a masquerade gown (including Anders and Fenris because why not).

Oh the lulz that would create for the Anders and Fenris romancers.

Anders: But Hawke, shouldn't you be the one to wear the dress?
FemHawke: Shut up and put it on Anders.

Dave of Canada wrote...
And I'd love to see the masquerade ball as a prelude to the civil war, possibly meet Celene and Gaspard supporters before everything gets nasty. Imagine if Loghain had a fancy masquerade ball before Ostagar? Clearly everybody would've loved how fabulous he was.

Hmmm... if it were to happen as a prelude to the Orlesian Civil War, it would be decent cause for Varric to return to narrate. I imagine that the remainder of Hawke's tale post-DAII's main campaign will be finished in a framed narrative again in DAIII.

Assuming that's what Bioware has in mind.

But barring that, perhaps Gaspard could be the one hosting it, where he's holding Celene hostage. And perhaps -- as it's often been in my experience playing games -- he wants Celene to be his unwilling bride. And so we see him dancing with her, remarking about the Orlesian Civil War and how it's going on.

We could rescue the Empress!

And I support fabulous Loghain.

Modifié par The Ethereal Writer Redux, 11 mai 2012 - 09:18 .

[Dave of Canada]

The Ethereal Writer Redux wrote...

We could rescue the Empress!

Assuming my protagonist is a non-mage Orlesian, he'd never consider such monsterous acts! Celene is a stain on Emperor Florian's name, Gaspard can return those Ferelden mongrels to our fold and we'd all be better for it!

[Das Tentakel]

slashthedragon wrote...

Dave of Canada wrote...

slashthedragon wrote...
Just recently a group of French tourists asked me for directions to NY. The girl who spoke English and French had a really lovely accent. Why not hire VAs who naturally have a French accent?

They do.

So...people are complaining that real French VAs are annoying and/or over the top for some characters?
Or...what?

Some of the VA is not French. Some dislike the voice of the French VA (Leliana). Some feel that the accents of some of the French VA sound fake or perhaps more precise, artificial and deliberately exaggerated, which quite likely they are, at least to some extent.

Europeans and native English speakers who know native French-speakers seem to be the most critical. Including meB).

[Sutekh]

sjpelkessjpeler wrote...

There is a big difference between a native french speaking person that wants to speak 'correct' english and a person that fakes a french accent. I for one do not like the last.

Exaggeration to the extend can be heared in this link:

 

Although I laugh my head of with them .

Sorry, the French argument was lost on me at "three big boobies" 

On a totally unrelated note, I did some research and found out that the same actor does Riordan (the good accent) and Hubert (the bad accent). Considering that Riordan is a good guy and Hubert is absolutely obnoxious, is it possible that the thickness and fakeness of the accent is directly proportional to the vileness of the Orlesian using it?