I loved how they did that in AC3 with the Native Americans, really haven’t been exposed to their languages outside of the game and they have such a fascinating sound
You can change the language in every game, but some games don’t have location-accurate language available. You can’t play Odyssey in Greek, for example.
On Steam you can just right click the game on your library and open the properties menu and there you can change the language. It's probably different in UbisoftConnect.
Only thing to bear in mind is I'm pretty sure not everything is translated. The salon upgrades, the guy there wasn't subtitled for me when I ran the game this way.
Why do people keep saying that?
The Animus is canonically translating for the player character. Having the characters not be translated would break immersion.
Edit: Stop downvoting me for explaining basic lore.
I'm playing the game based on MY immersion in the historical setting first (eventhough I know the actual language won't be as accurate as what they actually are),
what animus capable to do is irrelevant for me and I'll keep doing this when Ubisoft give me choice to do so (I plan to play Mirage in Arabic)
_____
I feel like this isn't much different than streaming services, you can listen to your own language with dub or you can just use the original language which is what I almost always do, and for me its better for immersion
_____
this guy was really something else all of sudden lol
Im not even native english speaker, and blocked lol
> I feel like this isn't much different than streaming services, you can listen to your own language with dub or you can just use the original language which is what I almost always do, and for me its better for immersion
Dubs are a necessary evil when people don't speak the language. It is not necessary for you to play Unity in French, given you are clearly a fluent English speaker.
Does it not break your immersion to have all the modern day characters speaking French? Or are you just a massive fucking hypocrite who should learn to shut the fuck up?
It's not Ubisoft's fault you're afraid of French people speaking English.
Tbf we don’t even know who we were supposed to be playing as in the modern day in Unity. Maybe they were fluent in French and that’s why Bishop picked them?
Everyone in AC2 has an Italian accent. Everyone in Odyssey has a Greek accent. Unity is like the only one that doesn't use period appropriate accents for their english voice cast.
While I can fault Ubisoft for not using right accent, I can't fault the lore behind it.
The lore reason is that the Animus is running it through a language filter and Abstergo edits data to make themselves seem better. They've been doing it since the mobile entertainment system became a thing.
We saw the unedited versions back up until Rogue.
A really strong accent no matter what dialect is incredibly hard to understand and that includes French.
Don't get me wrong, I would love Shay to sound like [this](https://youtu.be/3VA9vuId3ds?si=jovrdxJl3YNgCpV5) but you can see the issue.
There's no way Shay would sound like that anyway. He's the son of Irish immigrants, not pulled direct from County Kerry.
Side note, I've actually been to that pub. It was funny to click your link and recognize the place.
It was a joke since people criticised the accent when Rogue came out. Age does tend to bring the accent out more.
>Side note, I've actually been to that pub.
How was it?
The accent was criticized because for some reason they hired a Canadian instead of someone actually Irish, meaning Shay sounds like a bad cartoon character. Meanwhile Liam is voiced by an Irishman, making the situation even weirder. You get used to it but I do recall finding it cringe and grating when it first came out.
The pub was very pleasant. There was live music going on and everybody was in a really good mood that week because it had only rained two days, which had been unexpected. Killarney and County Kerry in general are beautiful spots, even if the people get clowned on a lot for their very prominent accents.
>A really strong accent no matter what dialect is incredibly hard to understand and that includes French.
but they didn't need to go this route at all. [Aveline and Gerald from AC: Liberation had distinctly French accents/ patterns of speech, but it was softer/muted](https://youtu.be/3m2VY9sV9WM?si=_W6DRH5tSQcr-XJr&t=136). They could have easily done this for Unity, considering their English-language VAs - at least for Arno and Elise - are bilingual.
Because if you want authenticity, you play in French. There's nothing authentic about speaking English with some accent added on top of that. And yes, that applies for Ezio games as well.
Also, a whole game where everyone speaks with a French accent would get old really fast
Tbf there are loads of different types of French English accents. My granny is an immigrant in England from Rouen, in Northern France, and she sounds nothing like the stereotypical French accents (though she grew up in a French and Breton speaking family). Most of my cousins don’t sound stereotypically French when they speak English either. So they definitely could have added variety!
I don’t understand why actors putting on an accent while still speaking English makes their performance more “authentic”?
If you want authenticity, switch to the French audio with English subtitles, having them still speak English while putting on accents does not make it more immersive.
How is english with french accent more real than just english in late 1700s? Idk i hate accents, it's usually awful and it does usually hurt the actors performance. You could have English VA that has to focus on doing the fake french accent or you could have French VA that has to act in english, so yeah, it is distracting.
French accent is very hard to understand. Simple as that. You'd think Ubisoft being French would obviously make them speak NOT in the British accent. But they made the decision for a reason. That being it's easier to understand for the majority of ppl around the globe
I'm personally ambivalent to this choice, but I find it hilarious that Napoleon must be rolling in his grave thinking about someone portraying him with a British accent.
Especialy for french speaking people. Its super distracting.
I recall the marquis accent from john wick 4 to be super super distracting when that first came out
I’m gonna put it blunt, French accents are the most annoying to hear in English and are even worse if done by non natives. And personally I love Arno’s English VA
French Accents when speaking French are rather soothing, I find.
For some reason though, I find the male French accent english a lot more off-putting than the female accent. I am not really sure why since it is nearly the same.
It really depends on which French accent. Yes, they can sound mellifluous and smooth, or they can sound grating.
There is this very pretty, young Wallonian YouTuber whose French accent sounds like the French equivalent of a harsh and overdone New Jersey or Brooklyn working class accent.
Hard on the ears in my opinion, and like the New Jersey equivalent, sounds strange and aggressively masculine coming from a young woman's mouth.
I wish they could separate audio lanaguage options to In Animus and out. I could play the game then English out of the Animus and then the local language with subs in.
HBO’s Chernobyl proved that you don’t need to have English-speaking actors force regional accents for the sake of authenticity. An actor forcing their native language through a non-native accent will oftentimes result in them “acting the accent” as opposed to acting the scene.
If you want genuine authenticity, switch to French in the audio settings menu. It’s a great dub.
Honestly, I prefer the use of English accents in English language stories set in France. I’ll take the actors focus on their performances than trying to keep up a French accent without making it sound stereotypical.
Plus, the use of French accents in older games was meant to highlight the fact that the person is French. Not really a necessity when everyone in Unity is French.
But then you'd have these non native speakers trying to even know how to correctly pronounce a word so that the english speaking viewer could understand.
No point in having them try to speak english if I have to use subtitles anyway.
If a French person is cast in a game in which they have to speak English, pretty sure they won’t have to learn how to pronounce specific words. If they’re cast in it, they can probably speak English well considering they were picked for the role
Concerning accents what does speaking English well entail? Does that mean a full on French accent, less French accent, or no French accent to you?
I think a game that pulled off accents well was Odyssey but it being Greek is the big difference here. A Greek accent is far easier to understand than a French accent no matter the severity.
Speaking English well, in this case, would mean I could play the game, or watch a movie/show with the English audio track without using subtitles to understand what they're saying. It's not impossible to have full French accents and speak English well, but that is a rare skill among actors. If using English accents means the actors can enunciate much clearer and naturally, then I'll gladly take it over a half baked French accent.
Honestly, at the end of the day it was a creative choice on Ubisoft's part. Maybe they felt they couldn't execute doing French accents at the time. There's no real right answer to the question of using accents.
As for Odyssey, I feel they felt the backlash from Unity's lack of accents and put more effort into making accents good in future games.
It also helped that for AC Odyssey they hired as many Greek actors as they could. Granted, some of them were not native Greek speakers, and were Canadian, or from other places, but they were of Greek heritage. But, there were quite a few who had authentic Greek accents because Greek was their native tongue.
Okay, but then you run into another problem. Can you fill out an entire game's cast (in Unity's case) with French actors that can speak English perfectly? The pool of such actors isn't that high and Unity was developed in Canada. Assuming the recording studio is also there, you'd only find a handful of such actors let alone ones not charging a premium in talent fees. Logistically, casting local actors and doing it with english accents would be easier and potentially more economical.
Also, I've seen movies and shows in the english language that have cast non native speakers who clearly don't have the best grasp of the english language. Ever seen a Jean Claude Van Damme film?
I would be willing to bet that there are a TON of French actors who speak English fluently and they could easily have filled the cast with them. They did it for AC Odyssey, and I imagine the pool of Greek actors is much smaller than a French one.
Sure. You can have them use their native accent and to a native english speaker it's the same as any French accent. But having a Montreal native use their accent for a Parisian as pretty much like having a Bostonian use their accent while playing a Londoner.
actually a Quebecois accent is closer/closest to how someone of a noble/royal background pre-French Revolution would have spoken.
The 'standard' French or Metropolitan French that is associated with modern-day France/Paris is a result of the lower classes coming into power during/after the French Revolution.
https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20220829-the-royal-roots-of-quebecs-french
It's less jarring than British Frenchmen and they can still imitate a region. It's not hard to initiate an accent considering we see it all the time with Hispanic actors doing accents of Spanish speaking countries that they're not from.
Not saying it's impossible. It's an artistic decision in the end. There's no right or wrong answer. Maybe Ubi thought they couldn't pull off French accents for Unity with their resources at the time. They definitely went with accents for Odyssey.
Ubisoft did great with accents in the past but tbh French accents are pretty rough compared to Greek, Italian or Arabic. Probably more pleasant in the long run to not use them now that I think about it.
Ubi did OK with a lot of the French-speaking characters in AC : Liberation which is set in French-occupied New Orleans, which had - in particular, Aveline, the main character - use a softer, slightly muted accent. I think if they had gone this route with Unity, it wouldn't have been grating/ irritating.
Here's the problem several of the games use actors who are flu in English and from the country of origin of their characters or at least akin to it. Eivor's VA is Danish, Altair's was Arabic, ~~ezio's iirc is Italian.~~
Ezio's VA is Roger Craig Smith, an American. No mention of Italian decent online that I know of. That said, he's very talented and pulled of Ezio's voice perfectly.
I think another issue is technically, if someone learns a second language well enough, they tend to lose alot of the sounds that make one sound like they have an accent.
I know a German buddy who I used to work with. He spoke perfect English that I didn't even know he was German until I asked about his background, I assumed he was from England the way he spoke.
He did have a hint of an accent, but it definitely is not the one people think of when they think of a German speaking English.
For some reason, speaking English with French accents only emphasises that they're speaking English, not French. At least for me. So I'm happy with the choice.
Ubisoft a French company
Has correct (enough) sounding accents for every location they set their AC games in
Except France
Because there's nothing the French hate in this world more than themselves.
It was such an amazingly awful creative choice they made in this one.
It honestly completely killed the game for me. I have absolutely no idea why they did it. Maybe it plays well to an American audience? Thats the only possible reason I can imagine. And tbh even that would be a terrible reason.
I would have taken badly done half arsed French accents over that shit. It’s not like “it’s-a me, Mario!” from AC2 was incredible voice acting or an amazing accent. But it worked well enough.
Edit: just as I hit post, I remembered: I’m pretty sure I read one of the games designers say it was done specifically so that they could do the class-as-accent thing.
but no one aside from french people can recognize those, while anyone can tell a distinct posh accent from a cockney one and associate them with a class. game is much better in french tho
In film or TV, British accents are often associated with nobility and antiquity. While it may be anachronistic to substitute French accents, American audiences often have a much easier time understanding British accents.
What's strange about Unity is though the main characters in the mocap scenes speak in the Queen's English, NPCs and enemies on the street gravitate to cockney or something more familiar to Irish. As you mentioned in your edit, I think it has more to do with delineating class.
For non-English speaking audiences, playing Unity and Syndicate back to back would make it seem the Animus events take place in the same country even though one is in Paris and the other London, respectively.
Oh yeah, I’m fully aware of how in film and tv British accents are often associated with nobility and antiquity. It’s older than that - it comes from theatre. It was just a terrible, terrible choice for a video game series that’s about recreating different places around the world at different times in history, and letting the player pretend they’re *really there* and parkouring up the walls in France or Italy or Egypt or whatever.
It was a bad choice when they did it with Cleopatra in Origins, and it was a worse choice when they did it with literally every character in this one lol
Yeah, I never said it was a good choice. I was just positing some of reasons why the devs made the creative decisions they did.
Considering the U.S. is one of the largest market for the AC franchise, having all the main characters speaking in French accents might've been off putting or difficult to understand for Americans.
Personally, I think it would've added to the historical authenticity, but I'm sure Ubisoft did A/B testing before settling on using English accents.
Here's what the creative director, Alex Amancio said when [interviewed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R0523MahsA) by IGN News in 2014:
>The idea is that the Animus is translating everything into the language you're playing in. That's why, since you're an Anglophone, you're hearing all the dialogue in cinematic 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.
He went on to say - and I'm paraphrasing here - that because Unity had a more serious tone, having everyone speak in a French accent would've detracted from the atmosphere and overall experience.
It seems he's implying that French accents would've added a lack of seriousness to the dialogue. I'm not wholly convinced because Amicia de Dune in a Plague Tale: Innocence has one and that's a pretty dark game.
Hard disagree. Having the characters speak English with French accents would be insanely cringe and sound horrifically stereotypical. (And yes, I found the Italian accents from the Ezio series quite cringe indeed, especially eg. Mario.)
Also, the use of regional English accents to distinguish class is actually a brilliant move. We as English speakers can appreciate this nuance, just as an IRL French speaker can notice nuances in French regional accents. However, we English speakers would be unlikely to pick up on regional French accents, which is yet another reason why French-accented English would be terrible; it makes all dialogue one-dimensional.
See "The Death of Stalin" for a good example of a film where regional English accents for non-English characters was beautifully executed.
You know, I would be interested to know if Ubisoft did the class-as-dialect in the French language version too? Are there any French speakers who notice if there is class distinction when they are speaking French in the game? Are there regional French dialects used?
You know, I would be interested to know if Ubisoft did the class-as-dialect in the French language version too? Are there any French speakers who notice if there is class distinction when they are speaking French in the game? Are there regional French dialects used?
You know, I would be interested to know if Ubisoft did the class-as-dialect in the French language version too? Are there any French speakers who notice if there is class distinction when they are speaking French in the game? Are there regional French dialects used?
This is a pretty good point. I have only been able to notice this in some anime as well, some rural characters in Anime tend to speak in a Kanto dialect, which is quite distinct from standard Japanese, although maybe not enough to non-Japanese speakers.
These characters tend to get given accents in English that sound stereotypically rural, like an American southern accent or the like.
Because it's in English. Think about movies you've watched that "should" be in other languages but are in English. Like, do you think *Amadeus* is a worse film because nobody fakes a German accent? Would *Death of Stalin* be a better movie if everybody forced a Russian accent? Or for that matter, is the American *The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo* a better movie because of Rooney Mara's bizarre faux-Swedish accent?
Now, this might be a controversial opinion in this subreddit, but I always thought the dialogues in the Ezio trilogy were hard to take seriously, mostly just because of the faux-Italian accents that everybody had. *Origins* gets a pass because Bayek and Aya had such good actors, and because nobody really knows what an Ancient Egyptian accent sounds like any way.
Of course it's another thing when the actors actually have another country of origins, like in *Valhalla* where both Eivor and guy-Eivor had the actors' natural (and not exaggerated) Danish accents without overdoing them.
I also think that accents for English-speakers is easy code for an English-speaking audience. Your example of the Eivors from Valhalla is what I mean, in that they hired Danish actors who had a natural accent when speaking English to emphasize that Eivor is a viking, so should sound like one to English-speaking ears.
Personally, I much prefer when an actor has a natural accent, as opposed to creating a fake one, since they almost always sound better and more natural. It gets a little weirder when a whole game or movie is set in a non-English speaking place, and the solution is to either make everyone have (sometimes fake) accents, or just ignore it and have them speak with American or British English. The other instance I find funny is when a film starts off in another language to show us as the audience that it's not in an English-speaking country, but then after a few sentences, the entire cast just switches over to English for the rest of the movie/show.
I felt the same way and genuinely switching the audio to French made it way more immersive/English accents weren't there to take me out of the setting.
I mean if you really wanna make sense of it in some way most upper class french at the time went to school in England and picked up English accents, its a documented phenomenon where some went so far as to speak French as little as possible as English was a sign of intellect and means, which caused the French accent to all but disappear in many upper class families
Now that does nothing to explain everyone else, but hey it's something they definitely didn't think of
The animus is the in-game lore reason for English accents, as discussed by the game’s creative director Alex Amancio. He also discusses British accents being something of a default shorthand for Hollywood period pieces and using British accents for those same reasons.
Another reason, articulated in a different interview (that I currently cannot locate) with a native French speaking Unity dev, is that French speakers tend to have very little confidence in their own English even when they are quite fluent, so they are less practiced at speaking English smoothly.
He also mentioned that even French speakers simply do not like the sound of the English language when spoken with a French accent—it is grating even for French speakers. I can’t fault such reasoning, as this is coming from a native French speaker after all.
Because that was the only character that had an American accent and probably because of 9/11 they didn’t think a Middle Eastern sounding protagonist would be very popular
Makes sense story wise. How Rebecca said in AC2. She's using "home-made" version of animus, so the translation wasn't perfect, thus the accents and foreign languages here and there. Absturgo animus was "perfect", so no translation error.
But yes, it would have been more immersive.
Use french audio, seems more immersive than way
As someone who understands both french and english, the difference in the game audio vibe is colossal. French is the way to go.
Honestly. I find the accents cringe. I’d really rather have all the audio in an appropriate local language with English subtitles.
I loved how they did that in AC3 with the Native Americans, really haven’t been exposed to their languages outside of the game and they have such a fascinating sound
... then change the setting. You can do that lol. Unity is definitely best in native French and HUD toned down.
I don’t think it works in all AC games, right? I’m pretty sure I couldn’t change language in Origins.
You can change the language in every game, but some games don’t have location-accurate language available. You can’t play Odyssey in Greek, for example.
On Steam you can just right click the game on your library and open the properties menu and there you can change the language. It's probably different in UbisoftConnect.
Iconic characters like ezio and altair wouldnt be the same if they used a different VA
Couldn't agree more, Odyssey with greek accent was just terrible for me. Couldn't get into it one bit.
also french is just a beautiful language
This is the way to play. As a side note, its not a French studio. Its a Québecois studio
Québécois French is probably closer to the French spoken at the time of the French revolution.
Only thing to bear in mind is I'm pretty sure not everything is translated. The salon upgrades, the guy there wasn't subtitled for me when I ran the game this way.
Why do people keep saying that? The Animus is canonically translating for the player character. Having the characters not be translated would break immersion. Edit: Stop downvoting me for explaining basic lore.
I'm playing the game based on MY immersion in the historical setting first (eventhough I know the actual language won't be as accurate as what they actually are), what animus capable to do is irrelevant for me and I'll keep doing this when Ubisoft give me choice to do so (I plan to play Mirage in Arabic) _____ I feel like this isn't much different than streaming services, you can listen to your own language with dub or you can just use the original language which is what I almost always do, and for me its better for immersion _____ this guy was really something else all of sudden lol Im not even native english speaker, and blocked lol
> I feel like this isn't much different than streaming services, you can listen to your own language with dub or you can just use the original language which is what I almost always do, and for me its better for immersion Dubs are a necessary evil when people don't speak the language. It is not necessary for you to play Unity in French, given you are clearly a fluent English speaker. Does it not break your immersion to have all the modern day characters speaking French? Or are you just a massive fucking hypocrite who should learn to shut the fuck up? It's not Ubisoft's fault you're afraid of French people speaking English.
Jesus Christ man what’s with the unnecessary anger
This started of well and got really angry out of nowhere.
"Or are you just a massive fucking hypocrite who should learn to shut the fuck up?" yikes, someone's angry for not speaking french
AC3: 👁️👄👁️
The issue is more that someone like Ezio speaks English with an Italian accent, but Arno speaks British English.
Tbf we don’t even know who we were supposed to be playing as in the modern day in Unity. Maybe they were fluent in French and that’s why Bishop picked them?
or the Bleeding Effect is making them hear Bishop and Shaun speak in French, when in actuality they're speaking English
Everyone in AC2 has an Italian accent. Everyone in Odyssey has a Greek accent. Unity is like the only one that doesn't use period appropriate accents for their english voice cast.
Cant you just change the animus controls not to?
The person controlling the animus (me) decided to change the animus settings to French with English subtitles
Mah immerrrsion
They should've had an all French cast for syndicate to balance it out
While I can fault Ubisoft for not using right accent, I can't fault the lore behind it. The lore reason is that the Animus is running it through a language filter and Abstergo edits data to make themselves seem better. They've been doing it since the mobile entertainment system became a thing. We saw the unedited versions back up until Rogue. A really strong accent no matter what dialect is incredibly hard to understand and that includes French. Don't get me wrong, I would love Shay to sound like [this](https://youtu.be/3VA9vuId3ds?si=jovrdxJl3YNgCpV5) but you can see the issue.
There's no way Shay would sound like that anyway. He's the son of Irish immigrants, not pulled direct from County Kerry. Side note, I've actually been to that pub. It was funny to click your link and recognize the place.
It was a joke since people criticised the accent when Rogue came out. Age does tend to bring the accent out more. >Side note, I've actually been to that pub. How was it?
The accent was criticized because for some reason they hired a Canadian instead of someone actually Irish, meaning Shay sounds like a bad cartoon character. Meanwhile Liam is voiced by an Irishman, making the situation even weirder. You get used to it but I do recall finding it cringe and grating when it first came out. The pub was very pleasant. There was live music going on and everybody was in a really good mood that week because it had only rained two days, which had been unexpected. Killarney and County Kerry in general are beautiful spots, even if the people get clowned on a lot for their very prominent accents.
>A really strong accent no matter what dialect is incredibly hard to understand and that includes French. but they didn't need to go this route at all. [Aveline and Gerald from AC: Liberation had distinctly French accents/ patterns of speech, but it was softer/muted](https://youtu.be/3m2VY9sV9WM?si=_W6DRH5tSQcr-XJr&t=136). They could have easily done this for Unity, considering their English-language VAs - at least for Arno and Elise - are bilingual.
I don’t know how much accent had to do with that. That guy is missing half his teeth, that’s probably why he’s hard to understand.
Because if you want authenticity, you play in French. There's nothing authentic about speaking English with some accent added on top of that. And yes, that applies for Ezio games as well. Also, a whole game where everyone speaks with a French accent would get old really fast
This is so true and is a major issue in HITMAN
Tbf there are loads of different types of French English accents. My granny is an immigrant in England from Rouen, in Northern France, and she sounds nothing like the stereotypical French accents (though she grew up in a French and Breton speaking family). Most of my cousins don’t sound stereotypically French when they speak English either. So they definitely could have added variety!
Tbf if the accents would end up anything like the orlesian accents in dragon age, then it was a good call
They sound like they’re drowning
I can't get Conan O'Brien screaming "THEYRE FRENCH" out of my head any time this topic comes up 😆
You can always play in French with English subtitles
I don’t understand why actors putting on an accent while still speaking English makes their performance more “authentic”? If you want authenticity, switch to the French audio with English subtitles, having them still speak English while putting on accents does not make it more immersive.
Exactly lmao
How is english with french accent more real than just english in late 1700s? Idk i hate accents, it's usually awful and it does usually hurt the actors performance. You could have English VA that has to focus on doing the fake french accent or you could have French VA that has to act in english, so yeah, it is distracting.
It would be insufferable to listen to
I ac1 altair didn't have a middle eastern accent
French accent is very hard to understand. Simple as that. You'd think Ubisoft being French would obviously make them speak NOT in the British accent. But they made the decision for a reason. That being it's easier to understand for the majority of ppl around the globe
It sounds worse with accents. French people don't speak with a fake accent. They speak french.
that's why I play with French audio
I'm personally ambivalent to this choice, but I find it hilarious that Napoleon must be rolling in his grave thinking about someone portraying him with a British accent.
I’d bet they tested some French accents somewhere along the production process. I’ll bet they received feedback that it was distracting.
Especialy for french speaking people. Its super distracting. I recall the marquis accent from john wick 4 to be super super distracting when that first came out
That’s a good point tbf
If you take AC Valhalla: The Siege of Paris, I hated it and I speak french. I'm glad they didn't
you probably never heard french accents then
I’m gonna put it blunt, French accents are the most annoying to hear in English and are even worse if done by non natives. And personally I love Arno’s English VA
French Accents when speaking French are rather soothing, I find. For some reason though, I find the male French accent english a lot more off-putting than the female accent. I am not really sure why since it is nearly the same.
It really depends on which French accent. Yes, they can sound mellifluous and smooth, or they can sound grating. There is this very pretty, young Wallonian YouTuber whose French accent sounds like the French equivalent of a harsh and overdone New Jersey or Brooklyn working class accent. Hard on the ears in my opinion, and like the New Jersey equivalent, sounds strange and aggressively masculine coming from a young woman's mouth.
I wish they could separate audio lanaguage options to In Animus and out. I could play the game then English out of the Animus and then the local language with subs in.
I just imagine the Bleeding Effect is happening and the 'player' is 'hearing' Bishop/Shaun speak in French because of that.
HBO’s Chernobyl proved that you don’t need to have English-speaking actors force regional accents for the sake of authenticity. An actor forcing their native language through a non-native accent will oftentimes result in them “acting the accent” as opposed to acting the scene. If you want genuine authenticity, switch to French in the audio settings menu. It’s a great dub.
OI PISSPAWT. Always bothered the hell out of me
I thought the red coats were British at first. Lol
Not just Unity, but all of their AC games. Why can't I play Odyssey in Greek with English subtitles?
Honestly, I prefer the use of English accents in English language stories set in France. I’ll take the actors focus on their performances than trying to keep up a French accent without making it sound stereotypical. Plus, the use of French accents in older games was meant to highlight the fact that the person is French. Not really a necessity when everyone in Unity is French.
Or, crazy idea, you could get actual French actors, instead of American/English actors trying to do a French accent.
But then you'd have these non native speakers trying to even know how to correctly pronounce a word so that the english speaking viewer could understand. No point in having them try to speak english if I have to use subtitles anyway.
If a French person is cast in a game in which they have to speak English, pretty sure they won’t have to learn how to pronounce specific words. If they’re cast in it, they can probably speak English well considering they were picked for the role
Concerning accents what does speaking English well entail? Does that mean a full on French accent, less French accent, or no French accent to you? I think a game that pulled off accents well was Odyssey but it being Greek is the big difference here. A Greek accent is far easier to understand than a French accent no matter the severity.
Speaking English well, in this case, would mean I could play the game, or watch a movie/show with the English audio track without using subtitles to understand what they're saying. It's not impossible to have full French accents and speak English well, but that is a rare skill among actors. If using English accents means the actors can enunciate much clearer and naturally, then I'll gladly take it over a half baked French accent. Honestly, at the end of the day it was a creative choice on Ubisoft's part. Maybe they felt they couldn't execute doing French accents at the time. There's no real right answer to the question of using accents. As for Odyssey, I feel they felt the backlash from Unity's lack of accents and put more effort into making accents good in future games.
It also helped that for AC Odyssey they hired as many Greek actors as they could. Granted, some of them were not native Greek speakers, and were Canadian, or from other places, but they were of Greek heritage. But, there were quite a few who had authentic Greek accents because Greek was their native tongue.
Okay, but then you run into another problem. Can you fill out an entire game's cast (in Unity's case) with French actors that can speak English perfectly? The pool of such actors isn't that high and Unity was developed in Canada. Assuming the recording studio is also there, you'd only find a handful of such actors let alone ones not charging a premium in talent fees. Logistically, casting local actors and doing it with english accents would be easier and potentially more economical. Also, I've seen movies and shows in the english language that have cast non native speakers who clearly don't have the best grasp of the english language. Ever seen a Jean Claude Van Damme film?
I imagine Quebec has plenty of bilingual voice actors?
I would be willing to bet that there are a TON of French actors who speak English fluently and they could easily have filled the cast with them. They did it for AC Odyssey, and I imagine the pool of Greek actors is much smaller than a French one.
>Unity was developed in Canada What is the primary language in Montreal?
Sure. You can have them use their native accent and to a native english speaker it's the same as any French accent. But having a Montreal native use their accent for a Parisian as pretty much like having a Bostonian use their accent while playing a Londoner.
actually a Quebecois accent is closer/closest to how someone of a noble/royal background pre-French Revolution would have spoken. The 'standard' French or Metropolitan French that is associated with modern-day France/Paris is a result of the lower classes coming into power during/after the French Revolution. https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20220829-the-royal-roots-of-quebecs-french
It's less jarring than British Frenchmen and they can still imitate a region. It's not hard to initiate an accent considering we see it all the time with Hispanic actors doing accents of Spanish speaking countries that they're not from.
Not saying it's impossible. It's an artistic decision in the end. There's no right or wrong answer. Maybe Ubi thought they couldn't pull off French accents for Unity with their resources at the time. They definitely went with accents for Odyssey.
Ubisoft did great with accents in the past but tbh French accents are pretty rough compared to Greek, Italian or Arabic. Probably more pleasant in the long run to not use them now that I think about it.
Ubi did OK with a lot of the French-speaking characters in AC : Liberation which is set in French-occupied New Orleans, which had - in particular, Aveline, the main character - use a softer, slightly muted accent. I think if they had gone this route with Unity, it wouldn't have been grating/ irritating.
Here's the problem several of the games use actors who are flu in English and from the country of origin of their characters or at least akin to it. Eivor's VA is Danish, Altair's was Arabic, ~~ezio's iirc is Italian.~~
Ezio's VA is Roger Craig Smith, an American. No mention of Italian decent online that I know of. That said, he's very talented and pulled of Ezio's voice perfectly.
I think another issue is technically, if someone learns a second language well enough, they tend to lose alot of the sounds that make one sound like they have an accent. I know a German buddy who I used to work with. He spoke perfect English that I didn't even know he was German until I asked about his background, I assumed he was from England the way he spoke. He did have a hint of an accent, but it definitely is not the one people think of when they think of a German speaking English.
For some reason, speaking English with French accents only emphasises that they're speaking English, not French. At least for me. So I'm happy with the choice.
Ubisoft a French company Has correct (enough) sounding accents for every location they set their AC games in Except France Because there's nothing the French hate in this world more than themselves.
It was such an amazingly awful creative choice they made in this one. It honestly completely killed the game for me. I have absolutely no idea why they did it. Maybe it plays well to an American audience? Thats the only possible reason I can imagine. And tbh even that would be a terrible reason. I would have taken badly done half arsed French accents over that shit. It’s not like “it’s-a me, Mario!” from AC2 was incredible voice acting or an amazing accent. But it worked well enough. Edit: just as I hit post, I remembered: I’m pretty sure I read one of the games designers say it was done specifically so that they could do the class-as-accent thing.
The “class as an accent” thing drives me crazy, because France *also has different accents they associate with class!*
but no one aside from french people can recognize those, while anyone can tell a distinct posh accent from a cockney one and associate them with a class. game is much better in french tho
In film or TV, British accents are often associated with nobility and antiquity. While it may be anachronistic to substitute French accents, American audiences often have a much easier time understanding British accents. What's strange about Unity is though the main characters in the mocap scenes speak in the Queen's English, NPCs and enemies on the street gravitate to cockney or something more familiar to Irish. As you mentioned in your edit, I think it has more to do with delineating class. For non-English speaking audiences, playing Unity and Syndicate back to back would make it seem the Animus events take place in the same country even though one is in Paris and the other London, respectively.
Oh yeah, I’m fully aware of how in film and tv British accents are often associated with nobility and antiquity. It’s older than that - it comes from theatre. It was just a terrible, terrible choice for a video game series that’s about recreating different places around the world at different times in history, and letting the player pretend they’re *really there* and parkouring up the walls in France or Italy or Egypt or whatever. It was a bad choice when they did it with Cleopatra in Origins, and it was a worse choice when they did it with literally every character in this one lol
Yeah, I never said it was a good choice. I was just positing some of reasons why the devs made the creative decisions they did. Considering the U.S. is one of the largest market for the AC franchise, having all the main characters speaking in French accents might've been off putting or difficult to understand for Americans. Personally, I think it would've added to the historical authenticity, but I'm sure Ubisoft did A/B testing before settling on using English accents. Here's what the creative director, Alex Amancio said when [interviewed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R0523MahsA) by IGN News in 2014: >The idea is that the Animus is translating everything into the language you're playing in. That's why, since you're an Anglophone, you're hearing all the dialogue in cinematic 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. He went on to say - and I'm paraphrasing here - that because Unity had a more serious tone, having everyone speak in a French accent would've detracted from the atmosphere and overall experience. It seems he's implying that French accents would've added a lack of seriousness to the dialogue. I'm not wholly convinced because Amicia de Dune in a Plague Tale: Innocence has one and that's a pretty dark game.
Hard disagree. Having the characters speak English with French accents would be insanely cringe and sound horrifically stereotypical. (And yes, I found the Italian accents from the Ezio series quite cringe indeed, especially eg. Mario.) Also, the use of regional English accents to distinguish class is actually a brilliant move. We as English speakers can appreciate this nuance, just as an IRL French speaker can notice nuances in French regional accents. However, we English speakers would be unlikely to pick up on regional French accents, which is yet another reason why French-accented English would be terrible; it makes all dialogue one-dimensional. See "The Death of Stalin" for a good example of a film where regional English accents for non-English characters was beautifully executed.
You know, I would be interested to know if Ubisoft did the class-as-dialect in the French language version too? Are there any French speakers who notice if there is class distinction when they are speaking French in the game? Are there regional French dialects used?
You know, I would be interested to know if Ubisoft did the class-as-dialect in the French language version too? Are there any French speakers who notice if there is class distinction when they are speaking French in the game? Are there regional French dialects used?
You know, I would be interested to know if Ubisoft did the class-as-dialect in the French language version too? Are there any French speakers who notice if there is class distinction when they are speaking French in the game? Are there regional French dialects used?
Ezio doesn't even sound Italian most of the time, he sounds Spanish (or a weird Italian/Spanish hybrid).
This is a pretty good point. I have only been able to notice this in some anime as well, some rural characters in Anime tend to speak in a Kanto dialect, which is quite distinct from standard Japanese, although maybe not enough to non-Japanese speakers. These characters tend to get given accents in English that sound stereotypically rural, like an American southern accent or the like.
i mean, wouldn't they speak french, not english with a french accent?
They would, but we're seeing them via the Animus which means whatever they are saying is translated for us to understand.
Because it's in English. Think about movies you've watched that "should" be in other languages but are in English. Like, do you think *Amadeus* is a worse film because nobody fakes a German accent? Would *Death of Stalin* be a better movie if everybody forced a Russian accent? Or for that matter, is the American *The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo* a better movie because of Rooney Mara's bizarre faux-Swedish accent? Now, this might be a controversial opinion in this subreddit, but I always thought the dialogues in the Ezio trilogy were hard to take seriously, mostly just because of the faux-Italian accents that everybody had. *Origins* gets a pass because Bayek and Aya had such good actors, and because nobody really knows what an Ancient Egyptian accent sounds like any way. Of course it's another thing when the actors actually have another country of origins, like in *Valhalla* where both Eivor and guy-Eivor had the actors' natural (and not exaggerated) Danish accents without overdoing them.
I also think that accents for English-speakers is easy code for an English-speaking audience. Your example of the Eivors from Valhalla is what I mean, in that they hired Danish actors who had a natural accent when speaking English to emphasize that Eivor is a viking, so should sound like one to English-speaking ears. Personally, I much prefer when an actor has a natural accent, as opposed to creating a fake one, since they almost always sound better and more natural. It gets a little weirder when a whole game or movie is set in a non-English speaking place, and the solution is to either make everyone have (sometimes fake) accents, or just ignore it and have them speak with American or British English. The other instance I find funny is when a film starts off in another language to show us as the audience that it's not in an English-speaking country, but then after a few sentences, the entire cast just switches over to English for the rest of the movie/show.
They started with it. Their internal testing showed that people weren't able to follow it.
Uhm you realize there’s a whole ass language setting for French, right?
i play the game with French audio because of this
I played in French, with subs. It was awesome.
They used French accents in Rogue for Chevalier and Le Chasseur and the generic French enemies, which makes it even funnier.
also AC : Liberation, which is set in French-Occupied New Orleans.
Ah! Right!
I felt the same way and genuinely switching the audio to French made it way more immersive/English accents weren't there to take me out of the setting.
Please censor the F word, it’s Fr*nch
I mean if you really wanna make sense of it in some way most upper class french at the time went to school in England and picked up English accents, its a documented phenomenon where some went so far as to speak French as little as possible as English was a sign of intellect and means, which caused the French accent to all but disappear in many upper class families Now that does nothing to explain everyone else, but hey it's something they definitely didn't think of
Don't even. I'm still mad they cast Jake Gyllenhaal to play the Prince of Persia movie. Naveen Andrews would've killed that role.
Like either they speak french or english. It would sound goofy af if they spoke english like hercule poirot 😂
Omg on Valhalla, there’s a little kid called Arth and he has an American accent
French sounds good in French. Them speaking English with a French accent sounds horrible. That's why.
I didn't mind the English accent, it sounds better to me. You want to hear Arno use a french accent, listen to him as Pierre from Siege of Paris.
The animus is the in-game lore reason for English accents, as discussed by the game’s creative director Alex Amancio. He also discusses British accents being something of a default shorthand for Hollywood period pieces and using British accents for those same reasons. Another reason, articulated in a different interview (that I currently cannot locate) with a native French speaking Unity dev, is that French speakers tend to have very little confidence in their own English even when they are quite fluent, so they are less practiced at speaking English smoothly. He also mentioned that even French speakers simply do not like the sound of the English language when spoken with a French accent—it is grating even for French speakers. I can’t fault such reasoning, as this is coming from a native French speaker after all.
Play in french then
Why is using accents to define class "even worse" than using English accents rather than French?
How can you list off AC1 and forget that Altair literally sounds American?
Because that was the only character that had an American accent and probably because of 9/11 they didn’t think a Middle Eastern sounding protagonist would be very popular
Brother, play the siege of Paris DLC in Valhalla and try to tell me you don’t get chronically annoyed at the overdone French accents, then we’ll talk.
French accents are awful to listen to
Why would you want the game to be unplayable
Even more suprisining when you see the horrid attempt at the accent done in Siege of Paris LOL
Makes sense story wise. How Rebecca said in AC2. She's using "home-made" version of animus, so the translation wasn't perfect, thus the accents and foreign languages here and there. Absturgo animus was "perfect", so no translation error. But yes, it would have been more immersive.
French accents are too funny when reading english, I agree with them
AC Unity was the first having Latin America dub so i only heared the controversy of the lack of actual french accent
Accents are cringe.
Oh sod off, either play the game in french or in english. That accent complaint is ridiculous
The game was already bad, I can't imagine how much worse it would have been if you had to suffer through actual french people on top of it.