Jarun Tann - Different Accents for Alien Races?

Since OP singled out Admiral Raan as being immersion-breaking, but doesn't seem to mind that literally none of the other members of the Admiralty Board has the same accent as Tali (never mind Kal "America, fuck yeah" Reegar), I'm guessing he only considers the accents bad and part of the "liberal leftist" agenda of diversity when the VAs are brown.

All I'm saying is different alien accents should be explained as sub-race or sub-cultures within that Alien Race. If the alien speaks differently way out of a norm, it should be explained via lore, that's all I'm saying.

Human: "Your accent doesn't sound like the other Salarians."

Salarian: "I come from a different part of our planet where our dialects differ."

That's its simple. It's about immersion.

I'm middle eastern and have no problem with POC voice actors, but I don't want diversity to override the importance of maintaining immersion.

I agree, I like having aliens with more accents because it shows that alien race has many sub-cultures. All I ask is it's explained in a fun and interesting way in the lore or by the NPC themselves.

Yup, I agree that's he's a poor voice actor for this character.

There's a galaxy of voices and accents and looks. I think it's good that MEA is advancing the lore of these races. It's good to see a more reflective Krogan, for instance. Races very within a single nation, across class and region and so on. In ME1-3 there was a tendency towards unrealistic homogeneity, each race was (pretty much) an embodiment of a single human character trait.

I don't find the accents odd, therefore, and didn't think it needed explanation.

Do you think Natalie Dormer was chosen to play Dr. Lexi to promote "liberal leftist diversity?" Because the British asari stood out to me far more than Tann did.

Why does Tann need to specifically state that he comes from a different planet/part of a planet, to explain his accent? Isn't that already incredibly obvious because of his accent?

I live in the UK, where you can literally walk into a neighbouring village or part of your town and hear people speaking with a different accent. Why does it mean he had to live in a completely different region to other Salarians anyway?

Which is the point, if humans can have accents then so can aliens.

It would be extremely weird if we were a special snowflake in this regard. 

I really don't have a problem with Salarians having accents. There could have just been Salarians from different parts of their home world or colonies that had accents that we just never met before. Or heck, even if there is no lore-specific reason for the accent, it really wouldn't bother me.

What does bother me is not the accent, but the voice actor. To me, his voice acting just really isn't that good and while I've personally never heard of this guy until I saw him in one of these Andromeda videos, I understand he is apparently an actor on a TV show or something. That's great, I'm sure he's a fine actor, but his voice acting for this game in particular sounds really bad to me.

Having a Salarian with an accent is part of some liberal, leftist agenda? Go home, BSN. You're drunk.

I have no problem with the accent. I mean, hell, are there any other Salarians in any of the games that talk the way Mordin does?

Mostly I just don't like the actor's performance. Tough to nail down exactly why.

I don't mind his accent. And the people pointing out Lexi sounding British for no apparent reason have a point - we've never had an asari with a British accent before yet here we are. Again, I'm not bothered, but it seems a double standard is at play here as I've heard no one complain about that. Really, since we're listening to people through translators there's no reason for them to have accents at all. If we're going to talk 'realism' and 'lore.' But, I enjoy the variety. If quarians can have accents that are all over the place, why not have variety among other aliens too? And as for Kesh not sounding like a Krogan - we've only ever heard one other female krogan speak so we don't have much to compare it to, but she reminds me of Bakara even so.

That said... I don't think his VA work here is all that great. Sounds very stiff to me. Nothing to do with the character - his delivery just falls flat at times. I'm almost getting the impression he tried to suppress his accent and it's interfering with his actual acting? In his VA video I feel like his accent is more pronounced. In a game full of stellar performances and great casting, his stands out as a bit weak. It's unfortunate because while I don't know the actor well, I was looking forward to his performance from his VA video. He seems like a pretty funny guy.

I know this makes me a total pervert, but I liked Tann. Both the writing AND the voice acting. The weird combination of enthusiastic colonist, sleazy politician, anti-Krogan racist and anxious-accidental-boss in way over his head seemed spot on.

This is definitely someone my Ryder can manipulate ...hmmm...use work with.

What threw me a bit wasn't the accents but the phrasing of the dialogue and the punctuation. I thought 'why is Tann speaking soooooo slowly?'

It's probably me just being used to Mordin (replaying ME3SP up until two days ago) and the way that Tann spoke didn't seem particularly Salarian to me. I'm sure it wasn't this way, but it felt a smidge like the dialogue had been recorded before the race of the character was confirmed.

Still really enjoying it though.