I always thought of it as the following:

Dunmer in Morrowind: gravelly and raspy voice. Like they all drink and smoke way too much. Attributed to exposure to ash from nearby Red Mountain.

Dunmer everywhere else: regional accents (Skyrim = Australian, Cyrodiil = British) because of upbringing and lack of proximity to Red Mountain ash.

If you've ever read http://www.uesp.net/morrow/preview/morinter1.shtml, you can see the cockney dialect was almost what they were going for back then. So it doesn't seem too strange to me.

Not all. Some sound like Joshua Graham from FO:NV.

Funniest post I have read in a long time! I still prefer the smokers voice to the faux British accent.

They sound more like dike van dike in Mary Poppins Im just hoping one of um doesnt start singing about being a chimney sweep. If you went to the east end and talked like that you would get a smashed bottle in your face.

The human races are justified. All of the races are based heavily on some type of human culture from Roman to Scandinavian. The Scandinavian accents are pretty smooth and not exactly over exaggerated and talking like some sort of drunk Viking.

Elves really should have a voice like this. They seem like actual races not based off of much human culture. But no, they HAVE to be have this boring voice.

They should have made all the voice acting neutral american. That way, threads like this wouldn't exist. Let's just say the voice acting part was played by a British accented person.

What, Australian? No.

ED-E ROCKS... But REX is better... Next
time they need an EAGLE that can find enemys and attack on command...

I vomited when I heard the Dunmer voice in Skyrim. Beth completely beyond recognition destroyed the personality of the Dunmer. Same with Oblivion.

British voice actors need food? And the lack of living in Morrowind breathing in the worst air ever, maybe this is their true voice.

Whatever the epidemiology, I preferred the raspy voices. One could probably argue for selective pressure that bred in a thickened trachea or that would result in the rasp.

There really is no reason for the Dunmer voices to have changed. They usually live 200-250 years as commoners. Longer as well-to-do citizens or much longer as magic users. Most of the Dunmer in Skyrim are likely the original refugees from Morrowind. I doubt their accent would change. Those that were born there like in the gray quarter should have retained their accents as well as they mostly were interacting with their own fellow Dunmer there and thus would develop an accent similar to their parent's or community's accents. There were also Dunmer in both Solstheim and Mournhold with the raspy accent. Those Dunmer did not live under Red Mountains shadow and still retained their raspy accents. None of the other races had a raspy voice and they had been living under the ashfall for most of their lives in some cases on the island of Vvardenfall. Not like every non-Dunmer was a foreigner who just arrived there. Morrowind had been apart of the Empire for several centuries at that point.

This accent change is only a design choice. The raspy Dunmer voice is mostly dead and it is pretty effing stupid imo. It was a really cool and unique accent that fit the Dunmer like a glove.

Maybe all those years in skyrim cleared everything up.

And you just criticized an aspect of Morrowind...


TO THE BUNKER!!

I think he was saying it's stupid that they dropped it.

You should really get that checked out. Sudden and unprovoked vomiting can be due to lesions in the brai...

...What's that? Hyperbole, you say? Hmmm...

What is even more weird is that the female dunmers weren't at all raspy, but only the males? The men sounded like the cab drivers from new jersey while the women sound like angry school teachers. I guess the voice variation comes in handy here... nearly all of the dunmer in morrowind had the EXACT same voice. And no, I don't mind the "ELLO GUVNA" cockney voice either. Although I'm well aware if you go talking like that in certain parts of England, you'd get your ass kicked.

I'm not a big fan of the VA change, would've been better off if Baker or Craig did the voice work instead of Keith. At least this still gives the option of Baker having a bigger role in DLC's.


The majority of the male Dark Elves should sound like him, since they share the same VA.

I love the accents, actually, but there are occasions where I do expect one of the Nord males to say "Come with me if you want to live." And occasionally some of the dunmer do sound a little "dike Van Dyke" as in "Cor bloimey Mary Poppins!" Like an American doing a british accent.

I don't mind the Dunmer accent, but in part it's how you imagine it to be I guess: I always think Bosmer should sound a little bit Celtic, certainly I always hear Niamh's voice as with an Irish accent in it.

What disappoints me is Bethesda brought the original Dunmer voice back in Fallout 3: Point Lookout.
Desmond had that voice, and at the time, I thought it was a subtle hint from Bethesda saying, "Yeah, we're bringing it back for the next game."

Despite a bunch of posts that make people sound as if they know everything, no one's been able to explain this.
Maiq speaks the...truth?

What I always though would be quite a cool idea is if some races actually spoke in another language, but just had subtitles...

I think he was saying it's stupid that they changed the dunmer voices from Morrowind. Did you read the whole post? You could be joking..

Interesting. It does indeed sound like a Brit. But what is this text anyway? Just some guys's fanfiction or from an in-game book?

No, it's not cockney nor is it English and definately NOT British.

it sounds like New Zealand to me