Wasteland accents

How do you guys feel about wastelanders having random accents like Sulik is Jamaican and Cait is fake Irish/Scottish. There also Russians, Chinese, Mexicans.

Personally I don't really mind it since modern English, let alone modern accents, realistically wouldn't exist 200 years in the future anyway. It's still a bit weird though.

It's a limitation of any audiomedia; it's impossible to predict how languages will evolve in a theoretical future.
If anything, a nuclear holocaust would cause the opposite of how globalization homogenises cultures, languages and accents today. When cultures and ethnic groups are isolated from each other they reinforce their existing patterns and often stagnate. Especially if they're endogamous.

Ugly Kid said:

How do you guys feel about wastelanders having random accents like Sulik is Jamaican

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Sulik feels kinda odd to me as time goes on - The idea of, presumably Americans, surviving an apocalypse and suddenly speaking in Patwa and wearing bones through their noses - Doesn't feel like an organic development.

It feels like somebody just picked up a bunch of signifiers that indicate "Primitive"(It's kinda odd that Caribbean stuff is part of these signifiers given that all of the Caribbean is made up of modern nation states - World of Warcraft does it too) - And just slapped them together rather than thinking of what it would actually look like.

Ugly Kid said:

Cait is fake Irish/Scottish.

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Cait's accent also feels strange - Best I can tell there's no lore about her coming over the seas, she just inexplicably talks like that for some reason. Also her voice actor is straight up Scottish, but her character's Irish????

Ugly Kid said:

It's still a bit weird though.

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While we're on the topic, one thing that I saw you didn't mention, but always stood out to me about Fallout 2 in regards to accents:

You know that way dialogue is written sometimes, where instead of Genuine it's Jan-U-Wine, or instead of Genetically it's Jean-Et-Ick-ly - You have it on all sorts of characters, the Kids in the Den talk like it, a bunch of people in Redding talk like it.

See, I'm not American - So I don't really know this - But what is that? The game's set in Northern California, and that's not how I associate people from California speaking. Is there a reason for this? It's always been interesting - But I don't actually know what the deal is.

See, I'm not American - So I don't really know this - But what is that? The game's set in Northern California, and that's not how I associate people from California speaking. Is there a reason for this? It's always been interesting - But I don't actually know what the deal is.

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Not American either, but I think it was just that sort of speech was considered funny in the 90s? That's my theory anyways.

Jogre said:

Sulik feels kinda odd to me as time goes on - The idea of, presumably Americans, surviving an apocalypse and suddenly speaking in Patwa and wearing bones through their noses - Doesn't feel like an organic development.

It feels like somebody just picked up a bunch of signifiers that indicate "Primitive"(It's kinda odd that Caribbean stuff is part of these signifiers given that all of the Caribbean is made up of modern nation states - World of Warcraft does it too) - And just slapped them together rather than thinking of what it would actually look like.

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We don't see most tribals up close so it could just be that Sulik is autistic.

Jogre said:

While we're on the topic, one thing that I saw you didn't mention, but always stood out to me about Fallout 2 in regards to accents:

You know that way dialogue is written sometimes, where instead of Genuine it's Jan-U-Wine, or instead of Genetically it's Jean-Et-Ick-ly - You have it on all sorts of characters, the Kids in the Den talk like it, a bunch of people in Redding talk like it.

See, I'm not American - So I don't really know this - But what is that? The game's set in Northern California, and that's not how I associate people from California speaking. Is there a reason for this? It's always been interesting - But I don't actually know what the deal is.

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This is because they speak with rural American accent, aka the "Southern" accent. It's actually common throughout the nation for Historical reasons. Northern California is rural and was initially settled by prospectors coming from rural and poorer areas, especially in the American southeast. After the Civil War, former Confederate officers (also from the South) also settled in Nevada and California. So, the accents in the Den and Redding are pretty much on point.

The "standard" American accent you associate with film and TV is closer to the accents derived from Dutch settlers in Pennsylvania and New York, while the "southern" American accent derives from the English accent before "received pronunciation" was enforced in British schools.

I think it would be better described as a “western” accent. Everyone in the western half of the U.S. used to talk like that as recently as the 1940s. It’s kind of dead now, overtaken by the standard American accent of west coast urban areas. But some older rural folks still talk that way.

We ignore the (possibly different) accents issue in favour of unified accent to avoid trouble. western sound good to me. Or if you want to do New Yorkee, no problem, but it should be unified on the whole module. Same way with redneck accent, or the terrifying New Orleans one, or bloody guvner voice... Just be unified, is all I ask.

VA is hard as it is (very hard to find a non-offensive quality voice without accent grating on the side), we dont really need to stress on different accents just to fuck everything else up.

Accent only sound cute on paper (design doc, novels, comics) but absolutely terrible on audio and visual media.