when exactly does the empire become english?

[Kanubis]

This is raised fairly early in a couple of the class quests. The Imperial Agent is told to hide their accent and one of the Trooper's companions is ex-imperial and has the accent.

 

It's Received Pronunciation usually, what used to be informally called BBC English. Although it's generally identified as a Southern thing, it's not really linked to a specific area as much as it's considered a mark of being well educated.

 

I think ingame it's hinted that the accent originated from Dromund Kaas, in one of the class quests mentioned above.

[GhostRiderLSOV]

It's a good thing the Empire was never russian.

That's the other typical american villain.

[Siyko]

It's just canonically nonsensical for the Empire to have developed weird british accents between the events of KOTOR II and SWTOR. I understand that they were trying to borrow / draw inspiration from the Galactic Empire of the original trilogy but I think they took it a little far.

[MustrumRidcully]

It's a good thing the Empire was never russian.

That's the other typical american villain.

Don't forgetten the token German villain. All important.

 

English accents are interesting. And sometimes really hard for a non-native speaker. I prefer watchnig TV shows and movies in their original English (sadly, I am not fluent enough in any other language to do it for non-English stuff). Here in Germany, everything is usually translated and dubbed, reasonably well, but not good enough to me anymore.

I have been mostly exposed to American TV and movies this way, and picked up some of the accents there, and can understand them reasonably well. But then I discovered also Doctor Who and now, more recently, Sherlock, wow, things became really crazy. And there are even American shows that offer a little more variety - True Blood comes to mind. Fascinating. And it really takes some exercise to get a reasonable understanding. (And it's still not quite satisfiacatory in many cases.)

 

Stereotypical Britsh accent = Sith Empire accent works nicely for me. It creates a consistent feeling, as someone else mentioned. And I like it.

[MistressBria]

To most of the world British voice-overs sound cooler/more impressive etc for the general TOR Empire theme and they're in much greater supply hence why they sadly often relegated the more mundane jobs and those with unique or less commonly found voices get higher profile roles. Also, the "Imperial" side of the Empire is for the most part ideally supposed to be in a large part uniform and nondescript further lending itself to the abundance of British voice-over folks. There's some robot chicken skit about how the Imos just give someone a fake mustache or change some minor detail to facilitate Vader's belief that "Force Choke" actually kills them and Force bashing aside that's pretty much how the Imperials are supposed to be, mustache here, hat there but nearly all identical.

[GhostRiderLSOV]

Don't forgetten the token German villain. All important.

 

Ah yes! Dat vich is yoosed for evil zientizts! (no offense to any germans, it's just the usual "accent" inserted for such roles )

[MistressBria]

Simple really:

 

Agent storyline - james bond storyline - needed english accents.

 

British stereotypical accent = Often used for the evil guys in games and movies.

 

The 'british' empire is often used as the evil doer in american videogames. Its sort of a funny cliche thing they have going on that a lot of british people find amusing. Its like the presumption we all drink tea

 

Yes, its the sith empire...but everyones british, and i, being british, find this utterly hilarious and so very awesome.

 

Plus as has already been said, the imperials in the movies were all voiced by british people, or at the least, sounded british.

 

Its all in all, a bit of fun and nothing to get upset about.

 

This is slightly off topic but I always found it hysterical Orkz in Warhammer 40k were Brits made the games so much more enjoyable because of that to me.

[Spotlore]

Whats bugging me a little bit, is the darker then night black dudes with the Jay-Z hair talking like they should have an eye monocle and a Sherlock Holmes pipe.

 

Flame on.

[MistressBria]

Whats bugging me a little bit, is the darker then night black dudes with the Jay-Z hair talking like they should have an eye monocle and a Sherlock Holmes pipe.

 

Flame on.

 

Would you really prefer they sound like Jay-Z? o.O

[Spotlore]

Would you really prefer they sound like Jay-Z? o.O

 

That would be GREAT!

[CptBrit]

I had a nice long answer to this, but the interwebz ate it. Suffice it to say, the British are evil, Americans are awesome, we kicked Britain's butt then saved them from the Nazis, and the British accent, when properly enunciated, sounds sufficiently foreign yet easily understood to make the Imperials seem both familiar and yet different, because Star Wars is an American film, like that or not.

 

You do know your living up the the stereotype of Americans right?

 

Congratz you guys got your freedom, but it was only because... Wait for it... Wait for it...

 

You were saved by the French Fleet.

 

You didn't save anyone in WW2 you jumped into it in 1941 when Hitlers armies although still powerful were getting ready to fail at WW2. By what? Invading Russia something that Nobody has attempted and succeeded on a Major Scale since the Mongols. Though no doubt the American Military Machine ended the war in a fraction of the time it would have taken Hitler to fall otherwise or for a Stalemate and then peace (I.E with the Nazi's still in power but not at war) there was no "Saving" Hitler gave up on invading the UK mainland at the end of the Battle of Britain. But sure if you class "Saving" as SELLING us Bread, Butter and Bullets then yea you saved our asses so well. +1 for Capitalism!

 

The American government then forced all us "Evil Colonials" to give up power in places like the Middle East and Africa or they wouldn't lend money to us... Congradulations Western Soldiers are now paying the price for "American Awesomeness" at the end of WW2.

 

Too all the reasonable Americans i'm sorry i'm not having a go at all of you, but people like BrigOrion make your country look bad. I loved my few visits to the States and people were so polite "Are you guys from England?" my best holidays ever

 

On Topic anyway.

 

I'm playing Empire purely because i'm sick to death of playing characters with other accents, Though the closest accent to mine would be the guard on Dromund Kaas that tells you the road isn't safe. Yes, I'm from Yorkshire and mine isn't that strong (Compared to that guards)

Edited January 11, 2012 by CptBrit

[MistressBria]

That would be GREAT!

 

You prefer GTA over Saints Row as well don't you? >.>

[MistressBria]

You do know your living up the the stereotype of Americans right?

 

Congratz you guys got your freedom, but it was only because... Wait for it... Wait for it...

 

You were saved by the French Fleet.

 

You didn't save anyone in WW2 you jumped into it in 1941 when Hitlers armies although still powerful were getting ready to fail at WW2. By what? Invading Russia something that Nobody has attempted and succeeded on a Major Scale since the Mongols. Though no doubt the American Military Machine ended the war in a fraction of the time it would have taken Hitler to fall otherwise or for a Stalemate and then peace (I.E with the Nazi's still in power but not at war) there was no "Saving" Hitler gave up on invading the UK mainland at the end of the Battle of Britain. But sure if you class "Saving" as SELLING us Bread, Butter and Bullets then yea you saved our asses so well. +1 for Capitalism!

 

The American government then forced all us "Evil Colonials" to give up power in places like the Middle East and Africa or they wouldn't lend money to us... Congradulations Western Soldiers are now paying the price for "American Awesomeness" at the end of WW2.

 

Too all the reasonable Americans i'm sorry i'm not having a go at all of you, but people like BrigOrion make your country look bad. I loved my few visits to the States and people were so polite "Are you guys from England?" my best holidays ever

 

On Topic anyway.

 

I'm playing Empire purely because i'm sick to death of playing characters with other accents, Though the closest accent to mine would be the guard on Dromund Kaas that tells you the road isn't safe. Yes, I'm from Yorkshire and mine isn't that strong (Compared to that guards)

 

This is SWTOR discussion not dogma R us. Also..before you accusing me of being one of these nancy yank Americans I'm Northern irish. Yes Northern or Southern does matter, a LOT.

[Spotlore]

You prefer GTA over Saints Row as well don't you? >.>

 

Can't wait for GTA V. Star Wars is missing some Black influence though. It's got Lando, and only part of Vader was black. (The coolest part) It just dose not seem fair to have the black NPC community all talk the way they do. lol To me anyway.

[IronFirewind]

Welsh.

 

It's impossible to sound evil with a Welsh accent. It's probably the least intimidating accent in the world.

[Zethe]

Aside from the films where a lot of the officers were British, A British accent can often sound much more menacing and evil than our american cousins.

 

Have to say, I much prefer the Empire dialogue over the Republic ones.

 

I've noticed that a large number of Americans seem to really enjoy our accent(Not all, of course), might be one of the reasons the Empire has lots more players. That and being evil. I love the evil choices on the Empire story lines.

 

 

Also about the films, I was told(I'm not 100% sure on this.) that there was no meaning behind a large group of the actors being British. It was simply due to the fact that Starwars when it was first filmed was not a big budget production and was mostly filmed in the UK because it was cheaper to film there. This is the reason there are quite a few British actors.

[Aharx]

Is it so hard to believe that in a 'galaxy far, far away' there are other people who have accents which sound similar to that of people on our own planet? Just because someone sounds 'British' or 'English' does not actually make them 'British' or 'English'.

[FalmeseReb]

It's just canonically nonsensical for the Empire to have developed weird british accents between the events of KOTOR II and SWTOR. I understand that they were trying to borrow / draw inspiration from the Galactic Empire of the original trilogy but I think they took it a little far.

 

sith empire of Kotor =/= sith empire of swtor.

[cypherwulfe]

My opinion, is that what we Americans hear, and recognize as a "British" accent is just plain classy. Remember, not just villains. Bond anyone? We like our villains to be classy, and evil. Just because they speak in a British accent, doesn't necessarily mean that we think the British are evil.

 

I will admit I could not tell you the difference between cockney or welsh, or any British accent honestly.

[ChampionChains]

Would you really prefer they sound like Jay-Z? o.O

 

"Yo, Agent! I got 99 problems, but a Sith ain't one. Take these power coverters to Toshi Station for me, son. Peace."

 

I would do that heroic quest every.single.day.

[psandak]

There is a very simple explanation that no one has brought up yet...

 

in the OT (all three movies), All the sets were built on sound stages in England, so most if not all the extras were British and therefore have that accent. Even the actor who played Darth Vader - David Prowse is British. James Earl Jones did the voice over for Vader only because after listening to the content, Lucas felt that Prowse's voice was not imposing enough.

 

So with that in mind, for the sake of consistency most imperial voices in the PT and games and TV shows now have English/British accents.

[_Miranda_]

I've noticed a bizarre pattern that sometimes borders on spoiler territory in game, where a republic character with a british accent is almost 100% guaranteed to be a traitor, and a imperial with an american accent will undoubtedly defect...

 

British accents are caused by darkside corruption.

[overfloater]

Hollywood has had a high proportion of RP English accents amongst its villains for many years. Why that originally came to be, I don't know, but Star Wars (the movies) more or less just followed that trend.

 

The English were the stuffy, stuck-up, strict, neat, formal, rigid types with a clear-cut plan for world domination that they follow to a tee -- the general American view of the English accent helps support that. (Especially since Americans seem to attribute the RP accent to a far wider community than actually uses it.) Meanwhile, the Americans in movies were the down-to-earth, casual, shoot-from-the-hip kind of guys who overcame with courage and on-the-fly wit. Nothing particularly new was introduced to those stereotypes by SW.

 

 

And while James Earl Jones technically had an American accent for Darth Vader, it was his very formal, carefully-enunciated, "mid-Atlantic" accent (or "stage English" accent). It's the same kind of acquired semi-American/semi-British accent found in many older movies, and used by old-school (often theatre) actors from Jones' generation -- Christopher Plummer is another prime example, albeit Canadian. And it dovetails perfectly into the same stereotype: formal, rigid, strict, neat, etc.

 

 

RP English (the super-stuffy "upper class" accent) is far more common amongst the Empire in SWTOR than it actually is in England, by a factor of about 5 million. I actually returned from a trip back to England through Christmas, started playing SWTOR, and was bombarded by more English-ness from the Sith than I had been by the English in England...

 

To be fair to SWTOR, it does a better job of using regional British accents than the SW movies do. I've heard all kinds, from West Country to Cockney. The Welsh commander (somewhere in Dromund Kaas, I think) attempting to be super-evil was particularly hilarious.

 

 

Can you tell me about all the different accents we have in the States? Not everyone speaks with the bland California accent you hear in the movies or on US television shows.

The complaint generally isn't that Americans don't know all the different regional accents of the England.

 

It's that there's simply no such thing as a "British accent".

 

There are 4 distinct countries in the UK. Each has a distinct set of their own accents.

 

And while Americans will differentiate a Scottish accent, a (Northern) Irish accent, perhaps even a Welsh accent if they're particularly adept -- you'd always call them Scottish/Irish/Welsh, you'd never call them "British accents" -- they are all technically "British accents".

 

So what Americans invariably mean by "British accent" is "English accent". If you're going to differentiate Scottish as being distinct from British, then demonstrate your knowledge and refer to it as "English" too. Otherwise it's a bit like saying a French guy has a "European accent" -- no such thing.

 

 

 

___

 

Wow this post got long. If anyone actually reads it, I'll eat my hat.

[Crito]

Whats bugging me a little bit, is the darker then night black dudes with the Jay-Z hair talking like they should have an eye monocle and a Sherlock Holmes pipe.

 

Flame on.

 

I'm a bit dumbfounded by this. Why would black Imperials not speak with an Imperial accent? Perhaps you think black British people all speak like African-Americans?

[hurrakan]

My favorite of course Was Alec Guinness (who played Ben Kenobi - who hated the dialogue and film so much, he convinced Lucas to kill his character off)

Actually, I heard that Alec Guinness was quite annoyed that his character was killed off in the first film.