The Brilliance of Accents in Xenoblade Chronicles 3

Accents are a large part of Xenoblade Chronicles, serving as a way to differentiate the series and make it feel more grounded. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 continues that tradition but in some intriguing new ways, some that are completely unlike those seen in any previous title. Let's discuss the brilliance of Xenoblade Chronicles 3's accents.

The Brilliance of Accents in Xenoblade Chronicles 3

Accents and dialects have become a massive part of the Xenoblade Chronicles English dub. All of the mainline games have used the different ways that people speak and how they speak it to dramatically compelling effects – if you want to read more about how important accents are to the previous games in the trilogy, we have an article on the Importance of Accents in Xenoblade Chronicles. 

Now that Xenoblade Chronicles 3 has been released, we can judge whether it continues this interesting legacy that began with the first game. Fortunately, I can say that it not only succeeds in this regard but builds upon it.

Not only does the accent usage and dialect implementation surpass what we have seen in the previous titles, but it also evolves and acts to become an integral part of the storytelling in Xenoblade Chronicles 3. Accents are no longer just background details and funny quips. They have paradoxically come to define the people of Keves and Agnus while also having their restrictions cast aside. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is a special game not only because it uses its accents well, but because it uses it to tell a story more concisely than anything before it.

Let’s talk about the brilliance of accents in Xenoblade Chronicles 3.

This may contain some spoilers up to Chapter 6.

Want more Xenoblade Chronicles content? You can find more here on KeenGamer:

  1. Xenoblade Chronicles 3: How To Unlock All Heroes
  2. Xenoblade Chronicles 3: How To Unlock All Hero Ascension Quests
  3. What Comes Next After Xenoblade Chronicles 3? Expansion and Future Games Speculation
  4. 7 Great Changes made in Xenoblade Chronicles 3

Who Speaks What

Just like last time, let’s begin our discussion by outlying what kind of accents we hear in Xenoblade Chronicles 3.

The core story of Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is an eternal war between two nations, Keves and Agnus. These two sides must constantly fight and kill each other to steal their life force. Each soldier lives for only 10 years (10 terms). 

Contexts sake needs to mention that Keves is almost entirely based upon Xenoblade Chronicles 1 while Agnus takes its inspiration from Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Races, architecture, and even down to what technology is used in their weaponry. For our talk, the races featured are what is most important.

Keves has the following races present in Xenoblade Chronicles 3:

  • Homs (Noah, Ethel)
  • High Entia (Eunie, Queen of Keves)
  • Machina (Lanz, Mwamba, Valdi)
Homs, Machina and High Entia

Homs, Machina and High Entia

Agnus, on the other hand, has these races:

  • Human (Taion)
  • Blade (Sena, Queen of Agnus)
  • Gormotti (Mio, Juniper)
  • Indoline (Teach)
  • Urayan
Gormotti, Human and Blade

Gormotti, Human and Blade

These are the main races that make up each of the different factions in the world of Aionios. It is important to note that there is also The City, where several folks speak with a distinctive Australian accent such as Guernica Vandham, and the Nopon who speak in their own strange ways.

So is it just that each nation speaks in the accents that they previously had in the previous games? If you said this, you wouldn’t be completely wrong, but you would be doing a disservice to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and how your knowledge of these races (and the accents they used to speak) deepens your connection to this world.

 

Kevesi and Agnian

Unlike Xenoblade Chronicles 1 or 2, accents are not used to discern place. In the previous titles, if you heard a Welsh speaker without seeing their picture, you would almost certainly recognise them as a Gormotti individual due to how distinct and well-rooted that accent was in the place of Xenoblade Chronicles 2. This could be said about almost every race in those first two games. Even Xenoblade Chronicles 1 where the difference was a lot more difficult to spot (as it was a difference of class rather than entire dialect).

You can’t really say that of Xenoblade Chronicles 3. In this game, it is instead a melting pot.

What do I mean by this? I discussed what races existed in the previous games and how they correlate to this game. These races are very prominent and distinctive and any fan of the previous games is sure to easily spot the differences: the Machina are made of metal, the High Entia have wings on their heads, and the Blades all have some form of supernatural effect. It’s not hard to spot.

The Machina of Xenoblade Chronicles

The Machina of Xenoblade Chronicles

The truth is that these names do not exist in Xenoblade Chronicles 3. They are not High Entia or Machina or Blade or Gormotti – in fact, I was waiting for the entire game for someone to say one of these names and it never happened. What they are are Kevesi and Agnian.

To further this, there is even a standard quest which addresses this fact. In Colony Gamma, Namuki has a quest called Research Procedures. In this quest, you will fight some of Colony Gamma’s soldiers so that Namuki can gather data on the Kevesi members of the party. What you learn at the end of the quest is that Namuki spots the differences between the group – that Lanz has a baseline tougher body and that Eunie’s wings aren’t on any other person in the group – and they admit that they never really thought about it before. In this world, the old races and their ways of living are no more. They may look like High Entia or Machina or Blade, but they aren’t really, at least not in the way that they were in the previous games.

This is an important fact to realise for both the worldbuilding of Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and for the main story itself. Keves and Agnus are two nations who constantly fight and die and fight again: they have had their individuality stripped from them so that Moebius has a source of fuel and feed. As such, what need do they have with different races? High Entia or Machina? They don’t, they simply need to know who the enemy is. They just need to know who is Kevesi and who is Agnian.

How does this affect the accents? 

Blades are pretty easy to spot

Blades are pretty easy to spot

The Melting Pot of Xenoblade Chronicles 3

As I previously said, the game is like a melting pot.

In Xenoblade Chronicles 1 and accents were indicative of place. You heard a Welsh accent, you thought or Gormott and Torigoth. You heard an upper-class British accent, your mind wandered to the towers and people of Alcamoth. In those games, accents were a way of putting place to its people and in doing so the games could tell a bevvy of interesting little side stories and details (such as the theatre scene discussed in the previous accents article). 

In Xenoblade Chronicles 3, that place has been removed and only the accents remain.  Somehow, this manages to tell an even stronger story.

Some characters speak how you would expect them to, such as Noah’s Southern accent which aligns him more with Shulk and the Homs of Xenoblade Chronicles 1 or Mio who speaks in the traditional Welsh of the Gormotti. However, some completely buck this trend. At several points through the game, we will find characters whose accents are completely unlike anything we know: Gormotti who speak in an American accent, Blades who sound British, and Urayans who lack their distinctive Australian edge. 

The most prominent, of course, is Eunie. The foul-mouthed High Entia is not at all like her snuffing ancestors, the graceful and noble people of Alcamoth. Comparing her to the Kevesi Queen is like night and day in terms of how they speak and how they act. Eunie carries herself with the roughness of the Cockney accent, very separate from the rich upper class of the old High Entia. Some still speak this way, too, such as Zeon which only serves to make Eunie a more memorable character. She defies everything that we would expect from her and, in part, that serves to make her such a well-regarded and lovable character (alongside how well she is written).

Eunie's the boss

Eunie’s the boss

This is what I meant by melting pot: all the races and accents of the previous games have been thrown into a pot and mixed up. Sometimes it comes out how you expect, and others come out completely unexpected and surprising.

Once again, this ties so well to the story. We know that a lot of these accents are indicative of the world we see at the start of the game, the worlds before they were separated. Eunie still had the same mean streak and Cockney accent before she was reborn in Aionios. This means that the worlds of Xenoblade Chronicles 1 and had already gone through innumerably change and development since we had last seen them, place where the distinct and separate lands of the Bionis and Alrest had begun to mingle in new ways. 

On the other hand, it also says more about the current state of Aionios. These accents are what make them Kevesi or Agnian as much as the races that they are drawn from. They are a key part of identifying the enemy and who needs killing on the battlefield. Their intermingled nature stems from not from a lack of desire to create a diverse world, but a desire to create an easy world. Two distinct societies that know each other by voice and appearance alone and two societies whose sole need is to kill the other.

It is in that world where Xenoblade Chronicles 3’s accents remain.

Colourful Colloquialisms

One part of the writing of Xenoblade Chronicles 3 that is a vast improvement on the previous games is the type of wording used by each character. In the first two titles, the accents were rich but what they were saying was quite basic. You had the odd bit of British slang here or there, but for the most part, it was the interesting accents doing a lot of the heavy lifting.

Not so in Xenoblade Chronicles 3. MONOLITHSOFT went full steam ahead here in creating characters with different ways of speaking that correlated to their accents. They use British slang and colloquialisms that aren’t seen a lot in games (‘mate’ or ‘innit’ for example) and they have their own worldwide system of swears and insults taken from British sayings (‘snuff’ and ‘spark’ being two). They even use traditional British swears, mostly from Eunie and Lanz, that you are more likely to hear down the pub than in a JRPG.

A quiet moment

A quiet moment

Doing this makes the world feel so much more alive. For the people who know these words and know the meaning, it becomes a fun and representative way of seeing how we speak on the big screen. For those who know nothing about it, it feels all the more fantastical and memorable. Everyone remembers Eunie’s funny sayings and her swearing: in fact, I’m sure that we could make an entire full-scale diagram of the Queen purely based on the number of ‘Queen’s {blank}’ exclamations she makes throughout the game. Distinct ways of speaking and the words being spoken are two sides of the same coin. It’s more memorable while enriching the world of Aionios at the same time.

For example, there is a certain conversation in Lanz’s Side Story. He and Eunie are trying to have a conversation when she calls him a ‘spoon’. Lanz retorts back that she is, in fact, the spoon. They go on to bicker back and forth about how much the other is so much more spoon-like, while the others try to have a more civil conversation. This moment stands out not only because of the strength of the writing or the comedy inherent in the scene but for how relatable and real it feels. I have had this conversation and used this insult against my friends. It builds out the world and makes everything feel strangely grounded – of course, they swear, of course, they fight, of course, they have slang. Everything just slots neatly into place. 

The colloquialisms and turns of phrase are my favourite part of Xenoblade Chronicles 3‘s accents. They never failed to make me smile.

A happy Lanz

A happy Lanz

A Captivating Performance 

To close, I just wanted to highlight the voice actors who made this kind of thing possible. The previous Xenoblade Chronicles games, especially 2, were criticised for their voice direction. While I disagree with a lot of what people say about the performances of those games, it is undeniable that there is a bit of roughness there – a bit of messiness. Many don’t, but I like that rough edge that the games have, I like that they take a shot with smaller, less known actors that get their chance to shine. On that front, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is the best yet.

All of the main performances are simply sublime. Henry McEntire imbues Noah with softness and an edge that is so striking, with a performance that managed to drive me to tears in chapter 5. Aimee-Ffion Edwards did an incredible job as Mio, allowing her to be charming, comforting and sharp whenever she wanted. I don’t think I have to say much about Kitty Archer’s performance as Eunie because everybody already loves her and loves everything about Eunie and loves every foul-mouthed thing that tumbles out of her gob.

Olivier Huband pulled off the two sides of Taion perfectly: the cocky, arrogant tactician and the insecure kid who never got to grow up. Jack Bardoe made Lanz an unforgettable character with an unexpected balance of seriousness and carefreeness that set him apart from other Xenoblade characters who came before. And last but certainly not least, Rebecca LaChance as Sena was a pure joy to watch and relate to as she battled through Aionios headstrong yet reserved.

The entire voice cast is incredible and the amount of life that they brought to all of these characters has made Xenoblade Chronicles 3 something to remember. It is easily my favourite English dub of any video game and should stand tall as a shining beacon of a game that managed fantastic writing, superb performances and amazing delivery. I cannot gush anymore about how perfect everything sounded in Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and how the observations to do with accents and worldbuilding wouldn’t have been half as impactful without the talent behind each character.

The will to fight

The will to fight

As I have said once before, dubs and dubbing aren’t something that we usually think about when playing games. It is always about what is said rather than how it is said. I hope that the whole Xenoblade Chronicles series but especially Xenoblade Chronicles 3 serves as a lesson that the how can elevate the what beyond anything imaginable. The use of accents and dialects and colloquialisms in Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is nothing short of marvellous and it is something that I hope a lot of people take away from this game going forward.

More and more companies seem to be expanding into new areas laid out by Xenoblade, with Final Fantasy XVI perhaps being the most important. To see accents and dubbing get more focus and attention will almost always make a game better as it shows an attention to detail and to desire to create a fully fleshed-out world and set of characters. An accent can’t ever really save a character, and neither can what words they use, but they can certainly elevate them to new heights, as seen with Xenoblade Chronicles.

I love Xenoblade and this is what makes the accents of Xenoblade Chronicles 3 so brilliant. If nothing else, we have another Welsh cat-girl that can say funny things so I’d call that a win.

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