American and British are both foreign accents...

I'm personally not a huge fan of some of the accents. They never sounded like that before, and now half of them sound like they are doing bad Arnold impersonations.

Kiwis have foreign accents too.

Someone on the Oblivion forums once said he thought Orcs should have Japanese accents.

In any case, with all due respect to our wonderful Japanese friends, I don't think Nords with Japanese accents would work for me.

Oh, and I don't think the current (guard) accents sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonators. They are somewhat Austrian like accents a little I guess, but I don't really think they sound particularly like Arnold.

dude!! i've watched loads of foreign movies from sweden, finland, iceland, norway, but i cant seem to find their accents in the game! swedish accent is cool but i dont thik its even in the game. seems like they just hired a half dozen austrians.

I dont mind the German and Scandinavian accents for the Nords. I'd rather they totally scrap all American voice actors and use at least British for Imperials and Bretons. American accents in Middle Earth should not be there.

In an ideal fantasy world, no accent should sound like any accent we know on Earth.

I'd rather hear European accents than American accents though, that's for sure.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHH YYYYYEEEEEEEAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah just sounds off, I cringe pretty hard when every child in Skyrim has a shrill Californian accent and they feel the need to talk to me every time I move within a 5 meter radius of them..

I do not mind the accents, I actually really like the female Nord guard accent a lot.

One accent I hate is the male Dunmer it is quite bizarre, I can not place it at all. It is only very slightly better than Oblivion, but a far cry for the fantastic Jiub from Morrowind voice. Which is a shame as the voice actor is great, he did an absolutely fantastic job as Joshua Graham in New Vegas.

Agreed. Whomever was in charge of voice acting did a lazy job. I wish they had chosen a single accent for all the Nord actors to emulate, because it's totally stupid that most Nord women have Russian accents, but no men do.

We are so ethnocentric sometimes

REPRESENT!!!!

It is very eclectic, the Schwarzenegger rural south Austrian accent for male Norns and Icelandic I guess for female, seems strange. Male and female Dunmer do not have the same accents.

Not just that, the celebrity voices do not match the accents of their assigned races. A good example is Claudia Christian, she did a voice for a number of characters of various races, but always sounded like herself.

Beth's sound department really dropped the ball on this.

pst, I know who you are hail Sithis.

At least one of the deadric princes should sound like Darth Vader!

I completely agree.

Add in the beast races as well, how some of them sound like they used to and some just sound like normal humans.

I honestly wish we could go back to a time where voice acting was like it was in Morrowind.

I quite like the accents in this game, much more so than in the previous installments of the series. With each character you can sort of get a sense of their history regardless of race just based off their accents, or at least I do.

<-- Scandinavian

None of them are close to being Scandinavian, not the greybeards, not the nords.

Since the american accents is by far the worst on the planet, i would pick the british accents.

The accents are awesome, give the setting flavour and help with immersion. Nice one Beth.

Thank you! the term "scandinavian" is is used so broadly nowadays, any accent that seems a bit thick and european is automatically assumed authentic scandinavian. Also "american accent" could include a lot of things, like new yorker, irish-american, etc, so there is a lot of versatility if you can hire the right person.

Accept Nirn isn't middle earth, it's a fantasy setting. Fantasy doens't always have to be based off middle ages 100% of the time. Realistically, they wouldn't be using any accents from Earth.


At least I can understand what Americans are saying. I barely understand anything that come out of someone's mouth with any Scandinavian accent.

Ha, I'm guessing the OP is American, yeah? Sorry, didn't mean to stereotype, but, well, way to be a stereotype

Personally I like the use of foreign accents, they're not always exactly on the mark in Skyrim, but at least Bethesda didn't whitewash everyone with generic American ones, or bad English ones (Fable, I'm looking at you, you lisping cockney rejects - except Stephen Fry obviously). I get annoyed enough that every good world cinema film gets a rubbish English-Language remake.

The fact is though that places like Northern Europe and Britain etc have a very long heritage, the language in terms of regional dialect has been developing a lot longer than American, so for example in my native England you can spot a completely different accent in a town 15 miles down the road. I'd imagine your average English-speaking foreigner wouldn't know what on earth to do if a Geordie or Glaswegian spoke to them (thinking about it neither do I sometimes haha). I'm certainly willing to bet that the same applies to the rest of Northern Europe.

Personally though, in Skyrim, I think the Redguard work with an American accent, although an African one would be cool. The Dunmer should sound Japanese, Bretons should sound French, Imperials should sound a bit Italian/Mediterranean, and Nords obviously have more Nordic accents, Norwegian, Swedish etc. The Khajiit have a hint of Arabic which I think is spot on, and the Argonians have their own raspy sound which is distinctive enough as it is. Altmer would be cool with a well-spoken, posh, stuck-up English accent whereas the Bosmer could be more Celtic/Gaelic with Irish and Scottish voices (but not Welsh, sorry noone wants to hear that )

In fact, I'd go one further - I'd like to see actual foreign languages spoken. Basically almost everyone speaks the common-tongue, but if two people with the same first language speak together it's completely foreign. You could then have speechcraft skills in 'translation' so various plot items said in other languages came up with English subs. Like you'd have to speak Argonian to overhear two Argonian shopkeepers being racist about your Dunmer character.

Another failwhale.

This. I really don't get the hate on the accents, especially the North American ones. I can easily detach the accents from what they are in the real world and accept them as what they are in the game.