Thanks for sharing! Regarding the races' accents, we've seen some notable shifts in their use or non use over the years depending on which game director or narrative director's era we've been under. If you check e.g. Kuunavang's voice in the first EoD promo video (where she chats with Soo-Won about mortals' ephemeral lives), she has a thicker Japanese accent compared to what she ended up with in EoD itself. Regarding the Faolain example, I recall that Bobby Stein himself even commented on the weird shift of Faolain's accent from S2 flashback (American) to Twilight Arbor dungeon (British) to HoT (American again) although it seemed like a mistake during development to me because of changing VO directors at the time. Similarly Canach's accent has always had a more American sound to me than the British Received Pronunciation; I can't recall if devs mentioned whether this was due to Canach wanting to distance himself from the Firstborn's perceived "snobbiness" upon joining the Consortium, though. Several races have lost their accents over time, e.g. all of Central Tyria's tengu have Japanese accents whereas Kalidris in Caledon Forest DRM (and one of the wall guardian tengu who used to have the Japanese accent in open world) and most of the EoD tengu (except for the ones voiced by Captain Fa's VA Paul Nakauchi) suddenly have a certain American accent. It's rather weird for the wall guardian tengu near the bridge and for the shy Kalidris since both should've been influenced by their houses' way of speaking instead of suddenly having more "outsider" accents. Largos of Central Tyria had kind of Russian-ish accents whereas Key of Ahdashim raid's, EoD and SotO's largos have, once again, American accents. I've been speculating that this might either be because the VO directors have changed over time so maybe they don't have internal documents about certain accents, and some of that knowledge was lost when previous VO directors left, or the accents were deemed as cultural appropriation and were thus toned down to the more generic American ones to seemingly not come off as racist (even though it'd make perfect sense lorewise that not every race or individual would speak Tyrian fluently). This would in part explain the weird shift in Faolain's accent between core (the Twilight Arbor story) and post-core stuff (S2 flashbacks and HoT) instead of retaining the British accent throughout. But then we've also had recent cases in JW where some femnorn (mainly ones voiced by Aurene's VA Nika Futterman) and White Mantle women (the ones voiced by Peitha and Bog Queen's VA Patti Mattson) suddenly have what sounds like a distinct accent, so maybe the devs are now toning down the Americanization of the accents and try to add more distinct accents once again. :) I imagine that if we must justify the SotO and JW sylvari's accents, their decade or so of involvement among the cosmopolitan Astral Ward might've been enough to influence their accents...although it wouldn't explain why some other sylvari who have lived among the landbound races of Central Tyria ever adopted their accents but retained their British ones... There are some other oddities in SotO and JW too. E.g. R'tchikk uses a male skritt model but is referred to as she and has a female voice, and there are several (I've counted dozens across the current SotO and JW zones) sylvari, asura, and charr NPCs who have male or female voice but actually have the opposite sex model for some reason. Meanwhile I don't recall encountering any human or norn models which would have the opposite sex voice. I doubt that ANet intended there to be that many trans characters among Astral Ward and Lowland Kodan all of a sudden, so this has to be some mixup, and whoever is adding the models to the zones might not be aware of the subtle differences between generic male/female asura/charr/sylvari/skritt models. In fact, in my recent new playthrough of "Godspawn", I noticed that one of the named Lowland Kodan dance event NPCs in "Battle's Eve" actually has a female voice when they have a male voice in the open world dance event, so it seems like yet another mixup and QA not checking what voice that named (even if minor) NPC is supposed to have. As for the Trees' children emerging as adults from the pods, there's a notable exception: sylvan hounds. For some reason they emerge as pups but gradually grow into hounds rather than emerging as adults in the first place. Perhaps that's the Pale Tree's way of fostering a nurturing nature among sylvari by having them bond with pups at first and watch those kids grow into adults as time passes. :)
What an amazing and thoughtful comment! I've been learning so much by people's comments here, on Discord, and on the companion Reddit thread. Really interesting to see how much variation there is that I never really noticed before!
Perhaps a Sylvari who has undergone the wizard ritual loses their accent. They stop being who they originally were. From what we know about Zojja and other characters who work with in the Astral Ward, they aren't all full wizards. Faolain still sounds like she has her voice accent in HoT even after transformed.
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Thanks for sharing!
Regarding the races' accents, we've seen some notable shifts in their use or non use over the years depending on which game director or narrative director's era we've been under. If you check e.g. Kuunavang's voice in the first EoD promo video (where she chats with Soo-Won about mortals' ephemeral lives), she has a thicker Japanese accent compared to what she ended up with in EoD itself. Regarding the Faolain example, I recall that Bobby Stein himself even commented on the weird shift of Faolain's accent from S2 flashback (American) to Twilight Arbor dungeon (British) to HoT (American again) although it seemed like a mistake during development to me because of changing VO directors at the time. Similarly Canach's accent has always had a more American sound to me than the British Received Pronunciation; I can't recall if devs mentioned whether this was due to Canach wanting to distance himself from the Firstborn's perceived "snobbiness" upon joining the Consortium, though.
Several races have lost their accents over time, e.g. all of Central Tyria's tengu have Japanese accents whereas Kalidris in Caledon Forest DRM (and one of the wall guardian tengu who used to have the Japanese accent in open world) and most of the EoD tengu (except for the ones voiced by Captain Fa's VA Paul Nakauchi) suddenly have a certain American accent. It's rather weird for the wall guardian tengu near the bridge and for the shy Kalidris since both should've been influenced by their houses' way of speaking instead of suddenly having more "outsider" accents. Largos of Central Tyria had kind of Russian-ish accents whereas Key of Ahdashim raid's, EoD and SotO's largos have, once again, American accents.
I've been speculating that this might either be because the VO directors have changed over time so maybe they don't have internal documents about certain accents, and some of that knowledge was lost when previous VO directors left, or the accents were deemed as cultural appropriation and were thus toned down to the more generic American ones to seemingly not come off as racist (even though it'd make perfect sense lorewise that not every race or individual would speak Tyrian fluently). This would in part explain the weird shift in Faolain's accent between core (the Twilight Arbor story) and post-core stuff (S2 flashbacks and HoT) instead of retaining the British accent throughout. But then we've also had recent cases in JW where some femnorn (mainly ones voiced by Aurene's VA Nika Futterman) and White Mantle women (the ones voiced by Peitha and Bog Queen's VA Patti Mattson) suddenly have what sounds like a distinct accent, so maybe the devs are now toning down the Americanization of the accents and try to add more distinct accents once again. :)
I imagine that if we must justify the SotO and JW sylvari's accents, their decade or so of involvement among the cosmopolitan Astral Ward might've been enough to influence their accents...although it wouldn't explain why some other sylvari who have lived among the landbound races of Central Tyria ever adopted their accents but retained their British ones...
There are some other oddities in SotO and JW too. E.g. R'tchikk uses a male skritt model but is referred to as she and has a female voice, and there are several (I've counted dozens across the current SotO and JW zones) sylvari, asura, and charr NPCs who have male or female voice but actually have the opposite sex model for some reason. Meanwhile I don't recall encountering any human or norn models which would have the opposite sex voice. I doubt that ANet intended there to be that many trans characters among Astral Ward and Lowland Kodan all of a sudden, so this has to be some mixup, and whoever is adding the models to the zones might not be aware of the subtle differences between generic male/female asura/charr/sylvari/skritt models.
In fact, in my recent new playthrough of "Godspawn", I noticed that one of the named Lowland Kodan dance event NPCs in "Battle's Eve" actually has a female voice when they have a male voice in the open world dance event, so it seems like yet another mixup and QA not checking what voice that named (even if minor) NPC is supposed to have.
As for the Trees' children emerging as adults from the pods, there's a notable exception: sylvan hounds. For some reason they emerge as pups but gradually grow into hounds rather than emerging as adults in the first place. Perhaps that's the Pale Tree's way of fostering a nurturing nature among sylvari by having them bond with pups at first and watch those kids grow into adults as time passes. :)
What an amazing and thoughtful comment! I've been learning so much by people's comments here, on Discord, and on the companion Reddit thread. Really interesting to see how much variation there is that I never really noticed before!
Perhaps a Sylvari who has undergone the wizard ritual loses their accent. They stop being who they originally were. From what we know about Zojja and other characters who work with in the Astral Ward, they aren't all full wizards.
Faolain still sounds like she has her voice accent in HoT even after transformed.