Final Fantasy 16 Won't Use 'Offensive' American Voice Actors

We love Japanese games, but their presentation of American characters isn't often particularly favourable, and it's equally unintentional. Apparently, Final Fantasy 16 is changing the tide and won't include American voice actors for fears it will "offend" audiences. 

Whether it's Kingdom Hearts' wonky cadence (we're looking at you, Sora, and your weird laugh) or Metal Gear Rising: Revengence's hilarious baddie Senator Steven Armstrong, American characters often become caricatures of themselves, not often hitting the mark. Final Fantasy has a past of this too, but now, it's looking to make a change.

Why Won't Final Fantasy 16 Use American Voice Actors?

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Final Fantasy 16 is making an effort to strip the series' future of its exaggerated American characters by simply not using American English voice acting. But the reasoning isn't exactly what you'd expect.

Rather than making the change to maintain the overseas seriousness of the series, according to Noaki "Yoshi-P" Yoshida, it's a change that's being made in order to not offend American players. "Even though the script is written in English, we made sure not to include any American accents," he said in conversation with Dengeki Online.

"We decided to do this to prevent Americans from playing the game and getting mad and saying something like 'I was looking forward to playing a game set in a fantasy Medieval Europe, but why are they speaking American English? To prevent this, we made sure that all the dialogue was recorded using British English."

Final Fantasy Is Making A Good Choice

Though the reasoning for the removal of American English is fair considering the setting of the game, Final Fantasy 16, and Final Fantasy at large, is probably better off being sapped from the series. It's not as though the American accents in the game are largely offensive, but the characters tend to be a bit of a mood-breaker for western audiences.

We're all for the uber-capitalist archetype that made Revengence so campy and fun, but if the series is trying to maintain a more serious tone, this is probably a wise move. Final Fantasy might be packing up the goofy American characters for this title, but who knows - we might see them make a return later on. And we'll be there to giggle at them.