In Starfield’s future, Earth has become inhabitable and the populate has taken to space. So it stands to reason that some Starfield NPCs would be Irish or have Irish roots. But the accents those NPCs have? They’re attracting attention for the wrong reasons.
As spotted by IGN’s UK News Editor, Wesley Yin-Poole, at least one NPC has an ‘Irish’ accent that is all over the place. He tweeted footage of an NPC, Charlie, using the accent and it’s really something. And many Twitter users have greeted it with similar disbelief.
It’s not so much that the accent’s over the top, it’s that it appears and disappears mid-conversation. As one Twitter user puts it, “It’s as bad as the Aussie one in Paradiso. Why in the world could they not hire the millions of Aussie (or Irish) actors living in the US!” Another compared it to Star Trek: The Next Generation’s ‘Space Irish’.
Take Dead Island 2, for example. Irish slayer Dani is played by an actor who’s, well, Irish, and she employs actual, accurate slang to make the character seem authentic. Not so in Starfield.
Sam Barlow, creator of Immortality, Telling Lies and many, many more, offers a counterpoint, explaining that “With this many NPCs (many with a small no. of lines) there’s a good chance they had actors playing several roles, something V.O. actors are used to doing. The best way to get differentiation there is to have different voice/accents from each actor…”
It’s fair point but unlike previous Bethesda games, Starfield has an absolutely massive voice cast. The developer has gone out of its way to ensure you don’t hear the same actor all that often. We doubt it ruins Starfield but we’re absolutely going to be bracing ourselves for this particular conversation.
