Brotaku

Naoki Yoshida (Yoshi-P), producer of Final Fantasy XVI, has confirmed that the English voice cast for the game is all European as the development team wanted to lean into the game’s fantasy setting by using only British English accents. Yoshida-san says that this was done as to not break expectations from American players about what a fantasy game should be like. Yoshida-san also believes that these expectations were partly set up by the influence of The Lord of the Rings trilogy which built a strong association with medieval fantasy and Europe.

Final Fantasy XVI is currently in development for the PlayStation 5, it will release in the Summer of 2023.

Here’s what Yoshida-san had to say:

Currently, there is no game that depicts a medieval fantasy world of this scale with PS5 class graphics. So we decided to focus on the scenery of medieval Europe and fused it with the fantasy we came up with. This time, the motion capture and voice acting are performed by European actors. However, since we Japanese designed the game, we first wrote the script in Japanese, then translated it into English, and then did facial capture in English after. But even though it’s in English, we’ve been careful not to include any American accents. The decision was made to prevent American players from getting angry: ‘I was looking forward to medieval European fantasy, so why are there American accents?!’. Therefore, all lines are recorded in British English.