The producer of Final Fantasy 16 has revealed that the game won't feature any American accents for its characters, out of fear that they wouldn't be accepted by American players due to the game's Medieval Europe-inspired setting. The Final Fantasy series has some famous settings, including Ivalice, Spira, and Eorzea, and these have featured a mixture of real-world accents.
It's common for the fantasy genre to feature lots of characters with accents from the British Isles, including in video games. The Dragon Quest series is filled to the brim with UK-based accents, as is Xenoblade Chronicles, even if the games have featured high-tech or science fiction elements. The Final Fantasy series has had protagonists with American accents in the past, such as Tidus, Vaan, and even the version of Cloud Strife in FF7 Remake. The fact that the games are set in a fantasy world means that any accent can be used, as most players will ignore any discrepancies, especially if they particularly like an actor's performance.
The next fantasy realm that Final Fantasy fans will visit is the new world of Valisthea from FF16. The residents of Valisthea will only be speaking with accents from the United Kingdom, as producer Naoki Yoshida revealed to Dengeki Online (as translated by aitaikimochi on Twitter), that the game will not feature any American accents for its characters. This tracks with the Final Fantasy 16 trailers that have been revealed, as the English dub has only featured British-sounding characters so far.
According to Yoshida, most fans associate the Medieval Fantasy genre with Europe, as well as with The Lord of the Rings. The plan with Final Fantasy 16 is to fuse Medieval European imagery with the developers' vision for fantasy, which might be why there are kaiju-style battles happening alongside the armored knights and spellcasters. Voice acting and motion capture for FF16 was performed by European actors, who performed the game in British English, even though the initial script itself was written in Japanese, and then translated. The reason for this is due to concerns that American fans wouldn't like to hear the American accent spoken in a game that uses a Medieval Europe-inspired setting.
The Lord of the Rings comparison is apt, or at least it is with the film adaptation, as it was made in New Zealand and had a number of local and American actors, yet nearly all of them spoke in English accents. It's odd to think that fans are fine with a game where the Bahamut and Odin Eikons do battle, which involves a giant dragon fighting against a knight who rides a six-legged horse through the air, but they would draw the line if the knight spoke with a Brooklyn accent. FF16 looks set to push Square Enix's series forward, but it still seems that the fantasy genre cannot escape from this disdain for certain types of accents. If Middle-earth couldn't do it, then Valisthea wouldn't have stood a reasonable chance either.
Final Fantasy 16 will be released for PlayStation 5 in summer 2023.
Source: Dengeki Online, aitaikimochi/Twitter