Let's talk Arno's accent...

[Gone Rampant]

For those not following Assassin's Creed Unity, Arno is the guy we'll be following in the Animus segment of the game, set before, during and after the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror and the guy getting copied four times for the co-op.

Arno, according to the promotional material, a French/Austrian, and yet in the E3 Single Player demo... he had a British accent. I waved it off- Black Ops 2 had a different VA for Mason, I figured it was just because the VA hadn't recorded that particular monologue, or whatever- I was sure that Ubisoft, a French company, wouldn't get a BRITISH voice actor for one of the most important moments of French history, right?

And then the gameplay trailer came out today, and Arno was still sporting an English accent.

Look, this is a minor problem- I gave no hecks about the whole female assassins thing once it was properly explained to me why it couldn't happen- but this is kind of lame. Considering they went to extensive efforts to make all of the voice actors in the Ezio Trilogy speak with proper accents, why isn't there a French actor?

 

[Happiness Assassin]

Dontacha know? Everyone in Europe sports an English accent. At least that is what Hollywood has taught me.

 

[senordesol]

Because then us yankees would wonder why he doesn't surrender every time he gets in a fight.

 

[EternallyBored]

It could be a demographics decision, they obviously know that English speakers will make up the majority of their audience so they are appealing to their customer base, Americans tend to be more critical of French accents, so they might be trying for "wider" appeal here.

I guess it's interesting to see that pandering to demographic stereotypes doesn't just mean more men and white people in games, it apparently extends to making everyone more anglo- in general. Meh, I've lost all my fucks to give when it comes to Unity at this point, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if the British accent stayed in the final product at this point.

 

[Fat Hippo]

Damnit, I thought this thread was gonna be about Arnold Schwarzenegger.

As for the actual topic...yeah, that sounds dumb, although Ubisoft doesn't exactly have a history of giving fucks. I mean, whatshisface assassin stabby guy from the first AC game had an american accent, even though most everyone else had an arabic accent, and he was presumably arabic as well. That never made any sense either.

 

[DoPo]

As for the actual topic...yeah, that sounds dumb, although Ubisoft doesn't exactly have a history of giving fucks. I mean, whatshisface assassin stabby guy from the first AC game had an american accent, even though most everyone else had an arabic accent, and he was presumably arabic as well. That never made any sense either.

At least he had his accent changed to Arabic in Revelations. And as a side note, it sounds way better. At any rate, AC did seem to be improving in "accuracy of depiction" regard (well...erm, for narrower definition of the term. Mostly accents.) - everybody was going out of their way to flaunt how much they were Italian or Turkish or whatever by talking in Hollywood cliche accents. It's odd that Ubisoft would take a step back after all of this.

 

[Aerosteam]

He's Austrian and has a name similar to Arnold... I'm more confused why he doesn't an accent mistaken for an extremely heavy German one.

 

[bug_of_war]

they did actually explain their reasoning behind this, but keep in mind this is all me paraphrasing. Apparently they chose to give Arno a British accent because whenever we as modern people make English adaptations of past events taking places in areas such as Rome or Paris we tend to give the characters a generic British/English accent. So, being that you are not Desmond, and you're not the Abstergo employee from Black Flag, you're a new person and the translator in the Animus (or Helix thingy...) is translating that way. It's also been stated though that all the people in the crowd will be speaking purely french, kinda like how some folks in AC1 would speak Arabic/French. So yeah...that's their reason.

Also to be fair, Altair and Connor spoke with American accents rather than something more akin to what they may have spoke. Former reasoning was so it was easier for Desmond to connect with the ancestor which fits with Unity's reasoning I guess (they also said they thought it sounded cooler) and the latter being that they did not want to be insensitive and pick an accent that probably was not an accurate one, which is a fair call.

 

[Zhukov]

*shrug*

Have we forgotten that this is the same series in which a man named Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad and living in the holy land spoke with a modern American accent? This in a game set in a time when American accents didn't even exist yet?

I don't really expect much from Ubisoft these days.

 

[Longing]

what's the point of making a french protagonist if his nationality isn't even acknowledged? Should have just made him an englishman living in France for all the effort they put there.

 

[Dragonlayer]

what's the point of making a french protagonist if his nationality isn't even acknowledged? Should have just made him an englishman living in France for all the effort they put there.

Wouldn't that just make him the Scarlet Pimpernel?

 

[Gone Rampant]

what's the point of making a french protagonist if his nationality isn't even acknowledged? Should have just made him an englishman living in France for all the effort they put there.

Ubisoft has said that, with the exception of Revelations, all main characters are not "tourists" and cultures will be explored from the prospective of an outsider.

Also, concerning Altair and Connor- Altair's accent, as mentioned, was fixed in Revelations, and Connor was still voiced by an authentic Mohawk.

 

[teebeeohh]

didn't read somewhere that we was raised by a nobleman? wouldn't that mean he should speak, no matter where he is from since, you know, 18th century Europe and all that?

 

[laggyteabag]

I picked this up when the trailer came out too. I was pretty disappointed, seeing as a French person, who lives in France, doesn't have a French accent. My friend suggested that it might be because some people would grow tired of listening to someone speak in an accent continuously, but people handled Ezio just fine. Ubisoft will probably just shrug it off in-game and say that the Animus removed the accent to make the speech more recognisable to the user, but you would think that with Ubisoft being a French studio, and with Ezio being the most popular assassin to almost everybody, that the accent would be here to stay.

 

[Simonism451]

didn't read somewhere that we was raised by a nobleman? wouldn't that mean he should speak, no matter where he is from since, you know, 18th century Europe and all that?

What are you even trying to say? I think there's some pretty essential words missing from that sentence.

OT: The guy we are playing as is french and would therefore perceive french people talking french (which I guess is supposed to be the majority of dialogue in the game) the same way we would perceive british or american people talking english. The translation is not part of the game world but instead just serves to make the player (who might not be fluent in french) perceive the game world in a similar way to how the protagonist would perceive it, i.e. as a place where people speaking in their own language don't have a foreign accent.