Final Fantasy 16 producer Naoki Yoshida has revealed in a recent interview that the game's english voices will be dubbed in British accents, all because of a very specific reason.
final fantasy 16
According to GamesRadar, Yoshida said that the game's english dub will be using British English because Square Enix was worried it "might offend" Americans. As for why these people would get offended in the first place, he mentioned how the game is basically supposed to set in Medieval Europe - and how a typical American accent would sound out of place in that particular time period.
Yoshida said this is all about potential criticisms about "authenticity" - even if the game itself is a JRPG made by Japanese developers who weren't even too familiar with the medieval west as a whole. Here's what he had to say, as translated from an interview with Japanese site Dengeki Online:
"Even though the script is written in English, we made sure to not include any American accents. We decided to do this to prevent Americans from playing the game and saying something like, 'I was looking forward to playing a game set in a fantasy Medieval Europe, but why are they speaking American English?!' To prevent this, we made sure that all the dialog was recorded using British English."
Either way, their fears might seem to indicate that fans can be a bit too... "passionate" about the games that they're playing. But that's the deal here, and it's not really something that the Final Fantasy series has avoided over the years. Tidus from FFX, for example, had a stereotypical "modern" American accent. So does Cloud from the Final Fantasy remake.
But since Final Fantasy 16 is going to take heavy inspiration from European landscapes, it does make a bit of sense that they go "home-grown" so to speak. Or else, the characters really won't feel like they belong there.
FF16 is scheduled to release exclusively for the PS5 in Summer 2023.
Read also: The Steam Summer Sale 2022 Is On - Here Are The Best Games To Get
On British Accents Being The 'Default' For Fantasy Settings
Go back and reminisce about every single piece of fantasy media you've seen (movies, TV shows, video games). What's one thing they almost always have in common? British accents. Final Fantasy 16 being set in another fantasy world is more or less not an exception. But why is that even a thing? Why are characters in fantasy worlds almost always British?
In an article by the BBC, A Song Of Ice And Fire series creator George R.R. Martin gave a simple reason. English accents fit well in fantasy settings because the genre itself is rooted in the Middle Ages. Lords, kings and queens, castles, and even mythical creatures like dragons - all of these are trappings of medieval times.
Small hobbit-hole with blue door and picket fence at Hobbiton film set in Matamata, New Zealand, on partly cloudy summer afternoon.
TV critic Matt Zoller Seitz has a far more grounded explanation. He says British accents work well for fantasy because it sounds "sufficiently exotic" to help make the viewer "feel" they're in a different world, while also sounding familiar and comprehensible enough at the same time.
Or maybe British accents just sound sexier.
Related: Final Fantasy 16 Will NOT Be Open-World, Confirms Producer