While playing the demo I took a peak at the character builder and was very disappointed with the various voice choices that they had. Ignoring the part where they all sounded the same, where were the different accents? XCom is about building a squad of the best of the best from around the world and having them all speak perfect English seems really immersion breaking for me. I'm not talking about 3-4 variants for every possible major accent out there, but even just one of each would have been fine.

Just one of those little bits of polish I would have liked to see and was disappointed to not see in the game. Here's hoping they have more in the main game. What do you folks think? Does it kind of annoy you too or is it no big deal? I figure I will stop thinking about it eventually, but it just seems like a missed opportunity.

Is it really fair to judge this since you see such a small number of soldiers in the demo?

Also, considering the hundreds of hours that I dumped into Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Skyrim, I think it's pretty safe to assume that limited voice actors doesn't bother me much.

I'm probably going to mute voices eventually anyway. I'll let my twisted mind decide what they're supposed to sound like.

I'm probably going to mute voices eventually anyway. I'll let my twisted mind decide what they're supposed to sound like.

@Sackmanjones: You'll get over it. In time.

Came here to post this, hopefully they will have a few more voices in the final game

@yesac2004 said:

Came here to post this, hopefully they will have a few more voices in the final game

The game's already gone gold, so it's unlikely that will happen...

I hope so too. The feeling of having an international squad is important for my immersion. Having a Hans or a Jacques with a badass New York accent doesn't seem right.

Well, perhaps there will be more in the final game. They could have cut back for the demo. It's not worth putting everything into the demo, but it's worth giving the player a few options in order to demonstrate that customization is possible. On the other hand, I wouldn't really be surprised if that's all we get. It's not a big deal to me, after the first few missions I won't even notice that they're saying things. If enough people are turned off by this, I can see them adding more in DLC or an expansion. Once they get mods up and running, maybe you can even record your own! How about we come together and make "Giant Bomb VULGAR Language Pack #1"

Is the game moddable? I could see that being a fairly easy to implement solution

@Tim_the_Corsair said:

Is the game moddable? I could see that being a fairly easy to implement solution

Yeah, it seems that the other voices for each different language are included, so it shouldn't be too hard to mod those into the game. It's mad hearing Japanese, Scottish and German guys all speaking with American-accented English.

*I noticed that Scotland seems to be an independent nation in the game, as its flag is in separate from the UK flag. Someone clearly predicting the result of the independence referendum in 2014 :)

Time will tell, but I got my fingers crossed that they just didn't have a large variety for the demos sake. Will be really disappointing if they don't.

I loved that touch in Age of Empires, where your units would speak in their native tongues. It would be nice to see here as well.

When they visited Giant Bomb they said the game was finally done after 4 1/2 years in development. Why are you expecting them to have voices for multiple nations in light of that? Recording voices is costly and takes time. Of course the more details in the game, the better, but I seriously doubt it'll be in there.

@Funkydupe said:

When they visited Giant Bomb they said the game was finally done after 4 1/2 years in development. Why are you expecting them to have voices for multiple nations in light of that? Recording voices is costly and takes time. Of course the more details in the game, the better, but I seriously doubt it'll be in there.

The entire point of the game is to show off and build a team of people from around the world. If they went so far as to dedicate several artists to design entire texture and tile sets depending on what part of the world a mission starts in I highly doubt getting a few voice actors in a studio for a day or two to read off some grunts and groans and the odd one liner or two in different accents is asking a lot.

@Intelligent_Space_Man said:

@Scrawnto said:

I loved that touch in Age of Empires, where your units would speak in their native tongues. It would be nice to see here as well.

"Wololo!"

Okay, maybe not all of the lines were actually from the native languages, but I know there's some Old English in there, and other medieval languages.

@Funkydupe said:

When they visited Giant Bomb they said the game was finally done after 4 1/2 years in development. Why are you expecting them to have voices for multiple nations in light of that? Recording voices is costly and takes time. Of course the more details in the game, the better, but I seriously doubt it'll be in there.

Demos often only have a subset of resources to reduce download size. Sometimes that means reduced texture quality and the like. I think he's reasoning that they may have only included some of the voices in the demo to save on size. If that's the case, than any additional voices likely already exist.

I think we would have known about them by now. It doesn't make sense not to show it off. The Press Preview builds didn't include the extra voices you're seeking either, the OXM videos are proof of that. I'm going to guess they thought that English/accented English was too similar to afford the expense of implementing it. Some of the people at the base do have accents though.

@deerokus: Looks like Catalonia won't be so successful, though.

when interviewing potential XCOM soldiers, fluent english is a required trait they check for in all CVs.

...except for that research lady?

Considering that 2K Games was originally leading with the shooter, I get the feeling that this game doesn't have a large budget. Large enough for the gameplay, but probably not enough to have gone all out with the voice acting.

Would have been awesome, but the realities of this franchise tells me that we won't get that (and unless this game really sells, we won't get a sequel either).