ha dark skinned is black or black descent..the guards sound danish because they're nords, just like khajit sound like puss in boots because they're antonio banderas'

Hello. I'm Trayvond the Redguard, and it'd be nice if you could GET OFF MY LAWN [censored]

Okay, to all the people who are saying "This is Tamriel, not Earth, so any voices make sense, there's no reason to have the Redguards voiced by Africans or Arabs or whatever." The fact is that, as with almost all fantasy, certain ethnic groups and races in-game are based to varying degrees on real-world cultures. The Redguards are obviously physically modeled on black people, and culturally modeled to some extent on Arab and North African culture. One poster who is himself African said even some of the words are actually taken from Arabic, if I remember right. The Imperials are similarly modeled on ancient Italians of the Roman era. Some of them have the moderately dark skin common in parts of Mediterranean Europe and their names are clearly modeled after Latin words and names, and their soldiers' armor is somewhat closely modeled after armor used by the Romans. The Nords are to some extent modeled after Scandinavians and (somewhat) Germanic people, down to the names and the art and architecture styles. The horned helmets are not directly Norse in origin (they didn't wear horned helmets) but are in fact modeled after later (19th and early 20th century) artistic representations of Norse legend and mythology. And so on, and so forth.

So to me it makes clear sense to have the Redguards be voiced by people using a North African accent, where there is a good mix of black Africans and Arab culture. The game's representation of the Redguards wasn't created ex nihilo in the mind of a developer, it was based on something from the real world.

Nazir sounds awesome

What about the Dunmer speaking in an aussie accent? What sense do you make of that?

idc what voice they used, I just wished Redguards had a unique accent. Something exotic or more powerful. But right now they sound too much like wimpy imperials and milk drinking nords.

More thread necromancy, but anyway, not even all those with African genes on Earth have an accent that comes from 200 years of history in the United States. Why those rules should apply also to fantasy worlds I have no idea.

How bout this... Bethesda tried.

Well, the Dunmer aren't based on any particular Earth culture the way the Bretons and Redguards and especially the Cyrodilians and Nords are, so I guess they just had to pick an accent and go with it. Isn't there just one Aussie voice actor doing some Dunmer males, though? I don't remember more than that. I think all the rest of the Dunmer men sound American and I wanna say all the Dunmer women have a British accent, but I can't remember offhand. Anyway, only the human races seem to be based off of specific Earth cultures.





Because again, the Redguards are, like the other human races, based off of an actual real-world culture to some degree - that of North Africa, to some extent. The Nords are based (loosely) off the real-world Norse, and so they at least attempted to have voice actors use a (possibly pseudo-) Scandinavian accent. Not sure why they made no effort at all to have the Imperials have anything but American accents - an Italian accent would have been interesting.

Nazir is voice by a black actor - Erik Todd Dellums (same guy who did Three Dog in Fallout 3) http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Erik_Todd_Dellums

What's interesting is that male Orcs ARE voiced by a black man - http://www.behindthevoiceactors.com/Noah-Nelson/

There aren't really that many Black Africans who live in desert regions, so there isn't a comparable Earth culture. If you went by straight population numbers, the best accent would be a sub-Saharan African accent I guess. But they can do whatever they want as we are talking about a fantasy race who someone ended up on Nirn.

You sure about that? They have curved swords! If they model anything they model people from the middle east, my first thought was Alladin when I first saw the schmitars.

You sir are a gentleman and a scholar, and that was me you were referencing haha. I read one of the books in the college of winterhold that was written by a redguard scholar. His name was probably one of the most stereotypical Arab name I've ever seen. I can't remember it exactly, but it even used the classic Arab naming structure, similar to Alta?r from Assassin's Creed, whose full name was Alta?r Ibn-La'ahad. The name follows this exact same structure, even using the word ibn which is a literal arab word meaning "Son of". Point is, you can't deny who the Redguards were intended to be based off of: a fusion between north africans and arabs, who historically have had thousands of years of interaction with one another.

I thought Hammerfell was more middle-eastern than african. Also, I recall Cyrus from Redguard having an ordinary american accent.

I like the new one more then the one in Ob.

So keeping in line with your reasoning (and in the spirit of complete immersion in Tamriel), what real life people do you propose Argonians and Khajiits should sound like? How come Argonians don't sound Brittish/Aussie like the Gieco lizard? Or perhaps with a Hispanic accent like the Taco Bell Chihuahua? I'm personally having a hard time figuring out which people the Argonians sound like TBH.

I guess what I'm really saying is, based on your line of reasoning, why do Khajiits have such an "Arabic" accent (especially Ma'iq the Liar)? Especially since real life big cats like lions and tigers don't possess vocal cords? I guess I'll finally learn the answer to this when a gecko or Komodo Dragon starts b.itching to me about how they were enslaved for centuries by people of African descent. [/sarcasm]

there would not be 'african-americans' (a term I do not like because it implies dual citizenship or something similar), but Redguards should have African and Arabic voice actors.

The OP doesn't make any sense to me for myriad reasons.

Wow. Some in this thread is trying too hard to deny that many of African decent have different accents or something. As if that's racist. lol

Well I used that term African Americans because I don't want people being politically correct and accused me of being racist because I said black. And I agree they should be voiced by "native" Africans and Arabic.

Well I don't deny that. I just prefer for the redguards to be voiced by arabic and native africans.

Well I propose that humans in the ES games should sound like people that fit's their proper culture. (in that case it's African and Arabic for Redguards) while Non humans will be voiced by an alien like voice.... So I think the argonains and cat people don't have to be voiced by a normal human. (accent wise)

Ignore the trolls, friend. They obviously didn't read past the OP, and all their "points" hav already been countered several times over on every page.

Exactly. Getting a black American to do the voice of Redguards is silly, because the only similarity between a Redguard and a black American would be dark skin. Leaving off the whole North African/Arab/Middle Eastern connection makes no sense. If they're going to have the Nords voiced by either Scandinavians or somebody at least trying to do something recognizable as a Scandinavian accent, it makes sense for something similar to be done with the Redguards, and, for that matter, the Bretons and Imperials. I mean, heck, I'm an American, but in a game like this where they're modeling specific fictional nationalities after specific real-world nationalities, I'd think it perfectly logical to not have any American voice acting at all.

Now, I will admit that it isn't a big problem when they are voiced by Americans. Even the voices provided by American actors sound far better than the ones from Oblivion. Something about the tone of the actors in Oblivion was off-putting, especially one of the male actors doing the voices for some male elves. He just sounded like he was trying waaaaaaay too hard.

The funny thing is I am the OP... Well it is clear that they must have skipped most of this thread. Since my opinions and many others have been made clear already.