I want to start by saying I was wonderfully surprised by this game. My favorite game in the series is easily the first game, hands down, no comparison. It was a fantastic game. The second and third were disappointing by comparison, but were good on their own also. Andromeda is very good as well, despite what so many people out there are saying, I like it way better than 2 or 3. So I want everyone to know I love the game and this is not a critique of the game overall, it's one minor detail that bugs me endlessly (since the first one too!): Alien voices.
Is it not distracting to anyone else in the slightest that the voices for alien races don't make even the slightest sense at all? I've found a FEW conversations about this scattered around the internet (with senseless name calling, rude assumptions and all kinds of mean 'n' ugly 'n' nasty 'n' horrible and all kind of things), but nobody seems to truly get why it's so off-putting to watch a Krogan speak more clearly and eloquently than most people in the real world.
This issue goes to the Turians and Salarians as well, but not to the same extent. While it's unlikely ANY of the races could speak a human language as clearly as they do, I would think those two have the faculties to at least get the sounds close (Asari can of course, for obvious reasons). I know what you're thinking smarty pants, and no, I'm not a linguistic expert, nor have I studied human, Turian, Salarian and Krogan anatomy to the point I could, with absolute certainty, assert that these creatures would be incapable of all speaking a common language, but there are a few observations that astute observers like myself are likely to pick up on...
My first and single most important observation that would have a TREMENDOUS, indisputable impact on the ability for an alien creature to make certain sounds is MOUTH SIZE. Do you see the heads on those things? Do you see what the Krogan mouth looks like? There is NO WAY we'd be able to understand that thing if it tried to speak to us. Lips, tongue placement, tongue size, mouth shape/size, and your teeth among other things all have a huge part in what sounds you, as a human being, are capable of making.
Go ahead and do this wacky experiment with me: leaving everything else the same, widen your mouth as far as you can, until your muscles can literally not stretch it any more, and hold it there and say something tricky or with a lot of different sounds. Pirates of Penzance is great for this. Sing the first few lines of "I Am the Very Model of A Modern Major-General" with the corners of your mouth pulled back as wide as you can pull them. Like your smiling real big, but without actually smiling, just widen your mouth. Now, go ahead and sing the rest of the song as well. Seriously, do it. It sounds hilarious.
Anyway, that god-awful racket you just made, at BEST, should be what Krogans sound like when they speak. That's not taking into account their TONGUE size, the SHAPE of their mouths, or their TEETH or ANYTHING else.
That said, I love the game and am cool with it (mostly by pretending Shepard/Ryder has a device that automatically converts alien language into his or her preferred language implanted directly into his brain somewhere), but does anyone else not get distracted by this lol?
Just wanted a couple opinions on the matter.
