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[Sakura]

Not only just budget (though that is a big part for smaller companies) but I believe typically it has to do with direction too.
The Japanese devs creating the game likely have a vision and idea for how the lines sound and are delivered. While the localisation team, well, is kind of just doing their thing with what they have.
Awkwardly translated lines can contribute to it as well.
It goes both ways for the same reasons really. Japanese dub of Witcher 3 for example isn't as good as the English dub.

 

[Mauricio_Magus]

Even the good recent dubs have had problems that actually changed perception of characters to the point where it affected people's opinions of that character.

Drakengard 3's dub is fantastic. Taro's games usually get great dubs actually, like Nier.

The problem with the dub, however, is that the main character Zero was characterized very differently in the dub via her voice than in the Japanese version.

Zero in Japanese is an aloof, murderous person who finds the people in her way to be 'exhausting' and would rather kill them than bother to talk to them, and go on her way.

The way the dub decided to characterize her was as an eternally angry character that came off really, really bitchy.

If you played the dub of Drakengard 3, you're almost getting a completely different version of Zero thanks to voice direction. I'm not saying Japanese Zero never got angry (she did,) I'm saying that a central part of her character finding everything a pain came off very differently in the dub. I was really glad I got the JP voice DLC for that game because of this difference.

I played the game in Japanese so I had no idea about this, dammmmmn that kills a lot of what makes "Zero" an amazing character.

 

[Lingitiz]

Never knew that. All those games have such superb voice acting. I just chalked it up to the company being that much better than its peers rather than them being the 'main' cast. Awesome.

Part of that is that there's such little actual voiced dialogue in those games that it's probably not hard to get everything right. And there are very few cutscenes where characters having moving lips and actual lipsyncing is required.

 

[Vex_]

Right now I'm playing Type O HD and it adds a delightful camp value to the game's story moments. Not only are the actors bad but it seems like many of them have trouble reading sentences, so they'll like stop and start awkwardly. You can tell the script's formatting must have ended a line at a certain word or something and they didn't opt for doing many extra takes.

That has less to do with the vas and more to do with the direction + PSP limitations that game was based around.

Example: only 2 characters MAX can be on screen at once. This was due to the fact that it was using in engine assets a majority of time (not all the time) to show a conversation. That pause doesn't happen in the cg cutscenes at all. The direction is arguably bad, and the writing is bad... This means no matter how good they (VAs) were, they were generally saying stupid shit.

It was still stupid shit in Japanese. Trust me.


Anyways, and a question for the thread: How is Japan's dub of GTAV? Hmmmm?

 

[Guerrillas in the Mist]

It goes both ways for the same reasons really. Japanese dub of Witcher 3 for example isn't as good as the English dub.

The Witcher series is Polish, though. Actually, it's an interesting one to bring up, as the original Witcher had a notoriously poor translation into English, so much so that they rerecorded much of it for the Enhanced Edition patch/rerelease. The sequels were a lot bigger in terms of budget, and largely previewed in English by comparison.

 

[zeopower6]

Even the good recent dubs have had problems that actually changed perception of characters to the point where it affected people's opinions of that character.

Drakengard 3's dub is fantastic. Taro's games usually get great dubs actually, like Nier.

The problem with the dub, however, is that the main character Zero was characterized very differently in the dub via her voice than in the Japanese version.

Zero in Japanese is an aloof, murderous person who finds the people in her way to be 'exhausting' and would rather kill them than bother to talk to them, and go on her way.

The way the dub decided to characterize her was as an eternally angry character that came off really, really bitchy.

Hm... I feel like that sort of character (the Japanese version) would be much easier to represent in Japanese over English, so I think I understand why they went with the 'super mega bitch' for the English dub.

 

[Dio]

Anyways, and a question for the thread: How is Japan's dub of GTAV? Hmmmm?

It's a small minority of games that have better dubs than the original voice acting from the country it's from. Same goes for movies.

Japanese original? Japanese is almost always better. English original? English is almost always better. French original? French is almost always better.

 

[WhiteRabbitEXE]

One big reason is that they don't do simultaneous cast recording

The voice actors can only come in on certain days and rarely, usually never together.

This is why conversations sound really stilted many times in dialogue.

That's the case for virtually all voice acting, good or bad. Simultaneous recordings are extremely rare in general.

 

[Luigiv]

There are a number of factors but the bigest reason is that good localisation is really hard when not only do the lines need to capture the same meaning as the original language but also have to properly match the lip syncing. Often times this leads to unavoidable stilted dialogue with weird timing rrquirements that not even the voice actors in the world could save. Of course there are other reasons but that ones the most universal.

 

[Feep]

Dude I'm right here ; ;

 

[KyanMehwulfe]

I felt like Vaan's performance was the only exception to that, but still, FFXII's english dub was pretty bitchin'

even vaan has his moments hehe i like his scenes at the start where he talks about being a sky pirate, in the... galaf (sp?) village with ashe, or atop that cataract tower or whatever when him and ashe really struggle with what to say to the judge there. especially that last scene I think distinguishes between just good writing and good voice acting because i remember both vaan and ashe rely a lot of gasps, pauses, change of tone to sort of show their struggle because they don't have a lot of actual lines. with ashe it's more of an animation thing cuz she relies a lot on things like darting eyes or grit teeth (the beach scene with balthier or again at the cataract) but vaan's voice acting really nailed the pauses, gasps, etc i thought.

he's not well written into the game and his sort of ashe parallel (they have kinda struggle with delusions of grandeur to distract from their personal family losses) doesn't always have the best written lines (or enough of them, i guess) but i thought his voice acting in some of his better scenes does a pretty decent job.

i mean, it's not always great, especially when the game has across the board such great voice acting... ondere and ghis in the mines... vayne and cid, mmm zargabanth and the other judge (sp?) in the hallway, even reddas when he banters with balthier (you're apprentice is more sky pirate than you)... main characters like balthier stand out as superb of course but the game really has such deep voice acting that i think a lot of credit has to go to the management of it.

which i think is a good point to come full circle, as it's clearly not just the result on two or three good voice actors or lucking out, but just good production management when the voice acting is so fully well done and consistently strong.

 

[Earthpainting]

I kind of wish they still were actually notoriously bad. I think on the whole we're at that uncomfortable space where the actors are doing what they can with typically weak scripts, while also trying to adapt to the pacing and mannerisms of the original Japanese performances. The end result may not be great, but it's not necessarily caused by the acting itself. I assume the writing and especially the direction are higher up on most people's lists of problems. If it were crazy bad, that'd create entertainment, but a flat or awkwardly sounding scene is going to be boring, and that's not what you want.

 

[Sakura]

Anyways, and a question for the thread: How is Japan's dub of GTAV? Hmmmm?

I don't recall the game having a Japanese dub.

The Witcher series is Polish, though. Actually, it's an interesting one to bring up, as the original Witcher had a notoriously poor translation into English, so much so that they rerecorded much of it for the Enhanced Edition patch/rerelease. The sequels were a lot bigger in terms of budget, and largely previewed in English by comparison.

It is Polish sure.
But the level of work and money that went into the English version compared to the Japanese version is pretty obvious when you listen to both.
For typical dubs, especially of a niche JRPG, they don't get any where near that level, which is why you end up with 'inferior' English dubs.

 

[zeopower6]

It's a small minority of games that have better dubs than the original voice acting from the country it's from. Same goes for movies.

Japanese original? Japanese is almost always better. English original? English is almost always better. French original? French is almost always better.

tbh I think Japan at least seems to put more effort into their dubs compared to other regions across all mediums (TV, movies, etc.).

 

[The Spoony Hou]

I'm playing Shen Mue 2 right now.

Yeah.

 

[zoozilla]

It's was funny until I found out why the game has a dub at all.

Huh? Is there some sad story behind it?

 

[Doctor_Thomas]

Souls games are alright.

I always found the dialogue in Souls games to be really.... off. It's not bad, but it just sounds really unnatural. I never thought much of it.

 

[Terrell]

It looks like typically Japan tends to go for stunt casting for big Hollywood stuff, so they cast famous actors or singers for Hollywood voice roles instead of actual voice actors, so unlike anime or games (or VNs or drama CDs) the acting is not up to par, so I don't get why you think it's 'throwaway' work.

http://www.kitakubu.co/2014/07/how-much-do-japanese-voice-actors-actress-get-paid/

Apparently video game work pays the best followed by pachinko, then anime... then Western movie dubbing at the bottom. Where did you get the idea that Hollywood films tend to pay big bucks for Japanese voice actors?

And tbh, most people on most forums have a bad misconception about English dubs. Most people who complain about them probably haven't even heard one recently. Older ones were bad because of reasons stated in this thread or the voice director was Japanese and had the final say on line deliveries which is kind of why a lot of things end up sounding awkward.

Well, considering we have VAs who are essentially assigned to always represent certain Hollywood actors in every film they are in (see: Maaya Sakamoto, aka Aerith Gainsborough, aka the voice of Natalie Portman in pretty much EVERY movie starring Natalie Portman), I had to imagine the contracts required to make that happen were substantial, since it's essentially a career-long dedication, from the look of it.

 

[The Spoony Hou]

Huh? Is there some sad story behind it?

From what I heard, Sony of America forces games to have an English dub to approve their release. That game was release by a small company, so they got their family and friends to dub it or something.

 

[zeopower6]

Well, considering we have VAs who are essentially assigned to always represent certain Hollywood actors in every film they are in (see: Maaya Sakamoto, aka Aerith Gainsborough, aka the voice of Natalie Portman in pretty much EVERY movie starring Natalie Portman), I had to imagine the contracts required to make that happen were substantial, since it's essentially a career-long dedication, from the look of it.

Probably more for continuity than anything. Usually they cast people for as long as they can as a certain actor. However, I don't think it's normal aside from the small handful of actors that end up in such contracts who are usually legendary and have hundreds of credits to their name anyway. (whoever dubs Keifer Sutherland usually, and so on...)They sometimes do it with English dubs as well with certain actors taking roles that Japanese actors usually have, but not to the extent that it's done in Japan.

From what I heard, Sony of America forces games to have an English dub to approve their release. That game was release by a small company, so they got their family and friends to dub it or something.

I recall reading that for a long time they required it if a game was getting a retail release. It's possible that licensing costs for original voice tracks were more expensive than producing your own dub at the time. I wonder what changed in recent years and if it was just that they got more lax with the policy than anything else.

 

[Terrell]

Probably more for continuity than anything. Usually they cast people for as long as they can as a certain actor. However, I don't think it's normal aside from the small handful of actors that end up in such contracts who are usually legendary and have hundreds of credits to their name anyway. (whoever dubs Keifer Sutherland usually, and so on...)They sometimes do it with English dubs as well with certain actors taking roles that Japanese actors usually have, but not to the extent that it's done in Japan.

And considering the legal hoops that are jumped through just to get original Japanese voices in English games and the amount expected to pay them, I had to imagine major Hollywood productions that net millions would earn them a substantial amount of money. And this continuity casting is becoming much more commonplace.

But perhaps you're right, and it's more of a career prestige thing, not necessarily for the money.

All that being said, it's hard to deny that the VA industry in Japan has a MUCH stronger baseline by necessity of all the foreign content that is imported into it for consumption by everyday people, as opposed to here, where it's a far more niche requirement due to the content itself being more niche and therefore not held to a higher standard with no real baseline expectation for performance generated.

 

[ss-hikaru]

From recent games it seems like English voice-acting is a lot better than it used to be. While I didn't play Danganronpa or Bravely Default in English my little brother did and I thought the casting and acting was verygood, on par with the Japanese version! If English was the only option for those games sure I'd complain, but I wouldn't suffer Catherine also seemed good to me.

I'm playing Lord of Magna now which has no Japanese dialogue option and the voice acting is also pretty good. My only complaint is the high pitched voices sound too forced.

The only recent case I can think of where I've turned off English voice acting is Persona 4G, and then I think it was more a case of I didn't like the sound of the dialogue being cut off because I was skipping through the text faster than they could talk rather than the voice acting actually being terrible or anything. I also turned off voices for Tales of Symphonia, but that was because the voice acting was painful to listen to and also it's an old game so not really representative of voice talent nowadays. Oh, but I just remembered the voice acting in AA5 Dual Destinies was pretty bad...unfortunately you couldn't turn that off... That's the only recent example of bad voice-acting I can think of.

 

[DeSolos]

My uneducated guesses:

• Actors don't have very much room to act. They have to fit roughly into the same recording length as the original actor for each line.
• Voice direction. Being the second voice director on the project can't be easy. Wouldn't be suprised if it didn't pay well either.
• Script and localization. Somtimes the original script sucks. Sometimes the localizer made it suck. Sometimes both.

My own tinfoil hat conspiracy theory:

• Not enough competition in the VO industry.
• Lots of veterans from anime dubs and cartoons. They're fast, consistent, and good enough, but can make the dub soulless and samey(looking at you Silent Hill HD Collection).

 

[Pyramid head]

I remember listening to an interview with the guy who was responsible for Konami's dubs (can't recall his name) and he basically said that English/US voice actors were not really in abundance in Japan at the time so there was slim pickings. He also claimed that Guy Cihi was the best of a bad bunch who read for James in Silent Hill 2, and that part of the reason they hired him was due to a sob story involving his daughter who he had brought along with him to audition for the part of Laura.

 

[Massive Duck. C.M.]

I live in Japan so most of the games I play are in Japanese anyway, but when I get something from PSN because it won't be out here for a long time (or ever), I do notice that the English VA is generally much better than it used to be.

These days, unless the game has a tiny budget the English VA will be cast domestically anyway, so it's more on the local branch/casting director.

 

[thetrin]

Souls games are alright.

That's because the English VA in Souls games is the only voice track in the game. The game's native voice track is English.

Honestly, it's getting better, but some companies are not interested in paying top dollar for localization (which is what VO is wrapped into). They want as low a price as possible to maximize profits and minimize overhead.

If you want to see some real heinous shit, you should check out JP localizations of western games. That shit gets fucked up constantly.

 

[Moonlight]

My uneducated guesses:

• Actors don't have very much room to act. They have to fit roughly into the same recording length as the original actor for each line.
• Voice direction. Being the second voice director on the project can't be easy. Wouldn't be suprised if it didn't pay well either.
• Script and localization. Somtimes the original script sucks. Sometimes the localizer made it suck. Sometimes both.

My own tinfoil hat conspiracy theory:

• Not enough competition in the VO industry.
• Lots of veterans from anime dubs and cartoons. They're fast, consistent, and good enough, but can make the dub soulless and samey(looking at you Silent Hill HD Collection).

Your tinfoil conspiracy theory doesn't make any sense. There's tons of crossover that exists in dubs, video game (western or otherwise), cartoons, TV shows, commercials, foreign dubs, etc, etc, etc. Silent Hill's HD collection rerecorded with Troy Baker, one of the biggest and most critically acclaimed names in the industry.

'Competition' in the VO industry (which is... like talking about the 'competition' in live action acting industry) is complicated by union contracts, scheduling, availability, distance, etc, etc, etc. There are recording studios that certain developers/publishers will work with because they and their 'stable' are the easiest to work with due to a myriad of factors.

Your 'actual' theory has far more weight. Voice actors intrinsically lack context for what they're saying without the benefit of strong voice direction.

 

[AnkiRendan]

The quality of English voice acting is pretty good lately. I think a better question is "why do people still just automatically assume it's bad?" because that seems more apt to me. Not to say that there aren't examples of pretty crappy VA, and the reason for those tends to be poor voice direction more than anything else, but I think that's bandied about a great deal more often than is remotely warranted.

I agree with this so much. It's extremely annoying to read about this on forums whenever the sub vs dub debate comes up.

 

[Vex_]

I don't recall the game having a Japanese dub.

Exactly. This is why people always complain English sux this, or English dub inferior that. It is because English dubs are some of the only recording done anyway. They get scrutinized if they even breathe wrong on the mic. It isn't really fair imo.

A lot of the time, jp dubs just sound cool to people who don't know any better.

 

[Lurgan1337]

Japanese dub of Witcher 3 for example isn't as good as the English dub.

There is no "English dob". English is the original script for the game. It was translated/dubbed for other languages including Polish.

Silent Hill's HD collection rerecorded with Troy Baker, one of the biggest and most critically acclaimed names in the industry.

I guess the voice director just didn't do his job right.
I dunno any other reasons.
Same with Peace Walker and Hayter. He sounds awkward like early amateur anime dubs.

 

[Rich!]

Danganronpa is another. English VA is absolutely terrible. It's cringeworthy and loses all the charm of the JP original.

Also, Monokuma's JP VA is perfect, weird and filled with the right kind of malice. The English Monokuma sounds like fucking Teddie from Persona 4. No thanks.

 

[skLaFarebear]

I played the game in Japanese so I had no idea about this, dammmmmn that kills a lot of what makes "Zero" an amazing character.

Not really. Played the dub only and I still think she's an amazing character and probably my favorite from the Drakengard/Nier games. While bitchy, I didn't really think of her as an extroardinarily angry person, more of just someone with a really harsh tone to their voice. I definitely wouldn't classify her dub version as aloof though.

While kind of a different character, she's still greatly voiced and really sells some of the more emotional/extreme scenes. I didn't think any less of her than anyone else who played the sub.

 

[Eusis]

The quality of English voice acting is pretty good lately. I think a better question is "why do people still just automatically assume it's bad?" because that seems more apt to me. Not to say that there aren't examples of pretty crappy VA, and the reason for those tends to be poor voice direction more than anything else, but I think that's bandied about a great deal more often than is remotely warranted.

This. I feel like this is something from the nineties that never quite left some people's heads, despite the fact we are in a far, FAR better position compared to then.

I suppose however there may be the fact some of it can come off as kind of awkward or painful to hear anyway, but more and more it seems it's either poor directing, or the material inherently does not translate well to something that would sound acceptable spoken out loud in English. And usually when I hear VA I don't like I think the latter is usually the case, not that we're witnessing another Chaos Wars.

There's also cases however where the original developers meddle in it despite not really being good enough with English to make a sound judgement call there. See Other M (seemingly.)

 

[Morrigan Stark]

People are ironically praising Souls games' dialog, right?

No? The VA is perfectly fine. The dialogue as well. (They are two different things, but both are fine, ranging from serviceable to good.)

It's terrible, embodying everything that people criticise in other games.

I have no idea what this is supposed to mean.

 

[Dio]

Not really. Played the dub only and I still think she's an amazing character and probably my favorite from the Drakengard/Nier games. While bitchy, I didn't really think of her as an extroardinarily angry person, more of just someone with a really harsh tone to their voice. I definitely wouldn't classify her dub version as aloof though.

While kind of a different character, she's still greatly voiced and really sells some of the more emotional/extreme scenes. I didn't think any less of her than anyone else who played the sub.

Yeah, I'm not shitting on people who played the D3 dub. It was a stellar dub, actually. They just kind of took Zero's character in a different direction in it.

 

[EGM1966]

Mostly it's a function of how they approach it as noted by others which may be a function of budget.

Getting people to record lots of unconnected dialogue with minimal direction and cast interaction is always going to produce poor results.

 

[skLaFarebear]

Yeah, I'm not shitting on people who played the D3 dub. It was a stellar dub, actually. They just kind of took Zero's character in a different direction in it.

I agree with that. First time I heard that Zero was actually an aloof character I was kind of surprised. While she showed some signs of being indifferent/uninterested, she came through as more bitchy/cold throughout.

I really liked the more bitchy Zero though as someone that has no context of the Japanese Zero. I know its not part of the original version, but I still think it worked really well. And if anything, it gives me motivation to watch all the cutscenes in JP to see the differences.

Edit: I'm not saying I prefer it or think its better than Japanese Zero if it seemed like that's what I'm implying. Just that even though it was different, it could have been much worse.

 

[RetroDLC]

Modern day VO isn't nearly as daft compared to the mid '90s and Mega Man 8. If something is laced with Engrish, it's due to poor project production and a reluctance to outsource abroad on the part of the director.

 

[charlequin]

This has always been a weak argument to me. You don't have to understand the language to know by tone and pitch alone what emotion is meant to be there.

This is a cognitive invention. People who speak no Japanese and claim to be able to make reasonable and accurate judgments about the quality of Japanese voice acting are fooling themselves. We actually see this relatively often in the form of English-only speakers praising the JP voice acting in a game that native speakers will happily tell us is awful if you speak the language.

The Japanese devs creating the game likely have a vision and idea for how the lines sound and are delivered. While the localisation team, well, is kind of just doing their thing with what they have.

In general, almost anything outside a bargain-basement-tier localization will have voice direction that's closely familiar with the material and the intentions of the original team, these days.

 

[Vex_]

This is a cognitive invention. People who speak no Japanese and claim to be able to make reasonable and accurate judgments about the quality of Japanese voice acting are fooling themselves. We actually see this relatively often in the form of English-only speakers praising the JP voice acting in a game that native speakers will happily tell us is awful if you speak the language.

DING DING DING DING DING DING! Yip. That's what I'm saying doe. Even in cases where English is known to be superior (using anime as an example) dbz, yu yu hakusho, & cowboy bebop people still try to say jp has higher quality.

Imo: NO.

 

[Mista Koo]

This is a cognitive invention. People who speak no Japanese and claim to be able to make reasonable and accurate judgments about the quality of Japanese voice acting are fooling themselves. We actually see this relatively often in the form of English-only speakers praising the JP voice acting in a game that native speakers will happily tell us is awful if you speak the language.

Yep. It's even more evident when you speak English as a second language and prefer English dubs to your native language for similar reasons.

I once watched a white girl speak Japanese exactly like an anime character, it was the first I noticed how unnatural anime VA was.

 

[Dio]

Yep. It's even more evident when you speak English as a second language and prefer English dubs to your native language for similar reasons.

I once watched a white girl speak Japanese exactly like an anime character, it was the first I noticed how unnatural anime VA was.

Yeah but that doesn't mean it's bad. When it comes to Japanese performances, and things like that in general, it's not supposed to sound normal - there is a dichotomy between regular conversational Japanese and entertainment Japanese. The stuff you see in dramas and anime, I've heard it said that it's because of traditional Japanese theatre, specifically Noh.

 

[TanookiTom]

Do people here consider games from the Assassins Creed series, Watch Dogs, Splinter Cell, The Witcher series etc. to have bad voice acting?
I think "foreign-made" games is a large group... Seems like the discussion is mostly about Japanese games.

 

[Pellegri Testament]

Yeah but that doesn't mean it's bad.

It doesn't mean it's bad to the non native speaker*, while native speakers may say something is shit and the non native speaker can't tell the difference because they don't actually understand the language. There's a word for people like that, it's not exactly something positive.

I think "foreign-made" games is a large group... Seems like the discussion is mostly about Japanese games.

It's always mostly about Japanese games, because many people only watch their anime in Japanese and they believe their games should be heard in the same language. It's always the anime watchers that bring up this kind of discussion too.

 

[Dio]

It doesn't mean it's bad to the non native speaker*, while native speakers may say something is shit and the non native speaker can't tell the difference because they don't actually understand the language. There's a word for people like that, it's not exactly something positive.

Yeah, I understand that, I'm just saying that when you translate a lot of this stuff 1:1 to English it doesn't really come across that well because it's not supposed to sound conversational or realistic. When it comes to voice acting over here it's a lot more focused on realism than the theatrical approach.

 

[nOoblet16]

A lot of the times it's the script.
I remember Vanille's voice actress from FFXIII said that while she was recording the voice director wanted her to make those annoying sounds and she didn't seem to like it very much and found it odd.

Most of the time when people say "Bad voice actor" they just mean Bad voice direction or script. People frequently say FFXIII has bad voice actors which is completely false since Troy Baker, Ali Hillis, Vincent Martella are not bad, it's the script and the direction that made them sound bad.

This is a cognitive invention. People who speak no Japanese and claim to be able to make reasonable and accurate judgments about the quality of Japanese voice acting are fooling themselves. We actually see this relatively often in the form of English-only speakers praising the JP voice acting in a game that native speakers will happily tell us is awful if you speak the language.

Yep this is true.

 

[kurisu1974]

Suffer, like G did?

 

[zeopower6]

Do people here consider games from the Assassins Creed series, Watch Dogs, Splinter Cell, The Witcher series etc. to have bad voice acting?
I think "foreign-made" games is a large group... Seems like the discussion is mostly about Japanese games.

I think it's hard to come up with non-Japanese examples since there don't usually tend to be English dubs of those games. And considering most foreign-made games that aren't Japanese usually are voiced in English to begin with, it's a pretty small list that would be dubbed into English. Kind of hard for me to come up with a recent example tbh.

At what point are you able to "accurately judge" the voice acting if it's not your native tongue? Are you just not allowed to have an opinion until you are fluent?

 

[hodgy100]

See Xenoblade for a pretty easy example. The voice actors themselves are good, and major story cutscenes are well done. But there are tons of minor voiced scenes where the delivery is just off, like the actors didn't know the context of the lines or weren't in the same room and whoever was directing them in the booth didn't care enough to make everything sound right.

And a brit myself. I found the VA in Xenoblade extremely grating :S

 

[EvB]

I always assumed that it was because the people making the gam had no awareness of how awful they sounded due to not being their native language.