Jarun Tann - Different Accents for Alien Races?

Hi Brenavu. How's it going?

I didn't have a problem with his accent. I had a problem with the poor voice acting for the character. Very.. bland. To me it sounded like he was just reading it off the page with little effort/emotion; just going through the motions with none of the little ticks and quirks we've heard in Salarians in prior games.

I don't think the writing helped in this case, either, as I don't think it matches the voice actor's talents in this instance.

It isn't the only case of this, either. Most of the voice acting I've heard is decent to great; but there are several that stick out like a sore thumb as being down-right terrible. Tann's and Addison's are near the top of that list for me.

The idea of having different dialects/accents among the aliens is nice, but it's defeated by the idea that these aliens are actually speaking in their own languages through a filter so everyone can universally understand them. Maybe there's individual settings on that thing, like how I can make Siri sound Australian.

In any case, it's funny that this just had to be "liberal leftist" anything. I almost severed my optic nerve rolling my eyes.

I think the accent could be handwaved as a regional thing.

Also Kesh doesn't sound terribly different from Eve but that's not a bad thing.

Yeah, we're taking the politics out of this. You want politics, visit the thread in off-topic.


Now then, different accents happen in sci-fi all the time, obviously because they get different actors who have different accents, yet are perfectly capable of acting the role as required. See: Babylon 5, Star Trek, pretty much every major sci-fi from which Mass Effect has drawn its influence. You can safely assume they have different regions/dialects or whatever as needed, without it needing to be explicitly stated.

And another point to consider- some species have thus far been voiced by one actor in their entirety. While I love Mark Meer, does that mean that we'd need to "explain" the casting of anyone else as a Hanar, vorcha or volus? Actually I'm pretty sure I've heard different volus VOs already...

It doesn't have to be retcon. The lore just needs to be expanded.  There's more than enough room in Salarian lore to explain different sub-races of Salarians and their culture.  Then we'll learn that Juran Tann comes from a different part of his Salarian homeworld or something.

1. Humans don't need to be explained.

2. Quarians should've been explained. I mentioned that in my original post. Why should it be explaiend? Simple, it increases immersion to learn about alien sub-races & various cultures.

3. I expect Rowling, Martin & Tolkien level writing for Mass Effect series, nothing less.

cry me a fuckin river

Is there an IRL accent that they were heavily drawing from?  IIRC the actors for quarians were of different ethnicities

Ahh, the desperate rhapsody of the final gasps of a dying political culture cursing reality. Such sweet music they make. A footnote in history will remember the passing of gas that gave breath to the OP.

Someone on the old BSN put it well

"British people doing Romanian accents, and Romanian people doing British accents"

Not perfect, but accurate enough

Logic will always win against political correctness. Sorry, but you guys are the ones losing right now.  You'll also lose again in 2020.



I agree, it's not that big of a deal, but I'm expecting Tolkien, Martin & Rowling level detail from Bioware.  Still, I'm pleased that we both noticed this problem!