In the demos for the game, the Dark Elf bandit in Bleak Falls Barrow sounded like the Dunmer sounded in Morrowind -- the right way. But ever since I played the game, I can't understand why they made them sound British again. This also made me dissapointed in Oblivion, where, in a demo, they sounded just like Morrowind's Dunmer -- the way they should sound -- but when I played the game, they (along with all other elves) sounded British. What happened to Jeff Baker(correct?)?

Edit: For those unfortunate enough to have not played Morrowind, here are the Dunmer voices.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG8OjKiGAvE

Edit 2: No, it's not from ash, as all races would have the raspy voice. Please read all posts before posting, or at least the vast majority.
k?
k.

Maybe they wanted to humanize them?

Dafuq did i just read?

@Conniving
But Elves aren't human.
And why'd they have to put the correct voice in the demos of Oblivion and Skyrim.

@Unconnected
You just read my thread titled "Dunmer Aren't British".

Becows oim a skoirim danma, nat a vordenfull danma.

Non Vvardenfell Dunmers arent breathing in ashy fumes all day from red mountain. Hence the lack of smokers voice.

Question - wouldn't the other races also have a smoker-type voice?

Sound more Australian to me, but I agree the raspy voice sounds better.

Dead-on phonetic writing. But they sound more Australian to me than British. Like real blue collar Aussie.

*reads title*

No, they're Morroalian silly. Or Austrorowind?

Well, what precisely is an "Elven" accent, and what does it sound like? I've never met an dunmer in real life.

For all we know they should sound like they are from Jersey.

Well in the Aussie accents defense they DO come from a screwed up Island nation with a lot of bizzare things that are nowhere else...

Pasty grey skin,less than great teeth, ... there are some similarities ...

It's a cockney accent. The most vile and horrid of all British accents (in my opinion).

The Dunmer still have gravel-ish voices, but now they sound Cockney.

Doesnt Dunmers in skyrim have australian accents? :/

Also the steward dark elf in winterhold i think or it was dawnstar,when you ask him about work he gets that raspy voice

NOOOooooooooooooooo o o o o o o o o o !

sounds like a FO ghoul

Yep, Cockney is exactly what I think whenever I hear them. I think the devs wanted to really hammer home that the Dunmer are now a bunch of low-class trash living in the ghetto of Windhelm. So they used a low-class trash accent to go with them.

I think you mean:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWaLxFIVX1s

The Dunmer in that video all sound like ghouls from Fallout 3 to me. Which means that apparently all Dunmer were at some point required to smoke an entire Marlboro factory by themselves.

That is exactly what I mean. Exactly!

Take my word for it, international friends - the Dunmer in Skyrim don't sound remotely British. That atrocious dike Van Dyke "cockney" accent is laughably bad.

Since no one's answered the initial question of "Why?" I'll take that.

Demos and trailers always use placeholder voices, often provided by a member of the development team, or from an early recording session with a voiceover artist. Those samples are recorded long before they actually finalize scripts and start final recordings for the game, much less introduce those recordings into the game environment. So when they recorded the original samples, that may have been the direction they were thinking of taking the Dunmer, or it may have just been a developer fooling around.

Man, it's all nostalgic up in this piece.

I miss those raspy dunmer voices too. They hands down set the mood for Morrowind and let you know how much they appreciated you being there.