The problem is that Mer live a long time. It is much more believable that Dunmer from Morrowind would retain their accents than that they would lose them. Especially considering they are sticking together in the Grey Quarter for the most part in Windhelm yet they all have an accent that clearly does not match them. The accents in Skyrim are all over the place and horribly implemented too.

If I am to believe that there are accents in the game then the majority of the accents should be regional. They are not. That is how accents are developed, it is mild to extreme regional isolation. Windhelm's residents should sound much different from those of Markarth's. Whiterun's should sound similar yet still different from Falkreath's and so on and so forth. The accents are all over in Skyrim and if it was actually like how it is in Skyrim then the accents would blend together in a matter of a few generations or so with a few exceptions.

If it had been done regionally I could appreciate it. But it isn't. Nor are there ANY Dunmer with the more traditional raspy voices so that too is out of place. Especially in the Grey Quarter with long lived Dunmer being the main residents. Not too mention any Dunmer that are visiting from elsewhere. One of the worst cases though is that Argonian raised Telvanni Dunmer. He should sound very different from almost any NPC in the game. Racial accents with some variation would have been much better than what we have in Skyrim.

Because people from different places have different accents. It's pretty easy to pick out a Scandinavian or Asian accent here. Someone who is more accustomed to the accent could probably separate a Norwegian from a Dane. Heck, it's pretty easy to tell if someone comes from the South Island and this is a small country, so why should TES be different? Tamriel is a huge place.

There's one thing I don't like that bothers me more that anything:
- in Oblivion - beggars that switch voices
- in Skyrim - I saw when player gets to Riverwood and there are husband and wife speaking very Schwartzenegger-y, then suddenly their kid comes and sounds like Dennis the Menace!

I don't think you guys really got my point. I'm not so much objecting to different accents as I am objecting to the sameness of voice within each group of NPCs. Same accent, same tonality (...same voice actor...) It really shows up when you play one of these games for a long time. It wrecks immersion when every guard sounds like every other guard, every Breton female sounds like every other Breton female, etc.

I agree with the notion of regional differences in speech pattern, but it should make a difference whether a character is supposedly newly arrived, or raised in the region; it shouldn't be a racial thing. A Nord who was brought up in Morrowind should sound more like a Dunmer, for instance.

And I really don't "get" the Orc voices. In Oblivion, they used the same voice actor for Nords and Orcs, and some of the Orcs (one guy in Skingrad comes to mind) have the vocal articulation of Shakespearian actors. They have tusks; they should sound like they have a mouthful of marbles!

Skyrim did realy well with the khajit.
dumner were horrible,
Nords were... Ok at best..
Children deserved to be shot..
Redguards were bad (and i want cyrus)
Argonains were ok... would have liked an aditional voice
Orcs were ok
High elves- Only one voice.. It's a stereotype and i don't like it. The female one was worse
bretons- can't remember
imperials- ugh
bosmer- Not enough voices

Can't say im a fan of cockney theives guild members either

Voice changing in Skyrim - Arvel does it I believe, and the guards certainly do (post-Civil War quest). They seem to have treated some members of the previous voice cast rather badly, and for no discernible reason. With the result that some of the voices, frankly, just don't fit anymore.

It seems like out of the 70 or so voice actors, most of them just did one or two voices. Like, a specific Daedra or semi-important NPC (Brynjolf, Kodlak Whitemane, etc.), but all the "generic" NPCs all have one voice per gender per race.

Despite the Cockney, I thought the male Dunmer were much better than Oblivion. They sounded like pansies in Oblivion. At least in Skyrim they're a little manlier. They're still nothing when compared to the Morrowind growl.
The Redguard voices diappointed me a bit. They sound too....normal. It actually sounds like the guy who did some of the Redguards also did some of the Bosmer. I think that voice for the Bosmer is okay, but it just doesn't fit Redguards. They need to be deeper, and more like Cyrus.

I think more accented VA for the races would add some variety to the mix and give more of an image to the races. For example, you could give Bretons a Gaelic or French accent while hand the Imperials a typical English/British accent like in Oblivion to stop the confusion between the two.

I missed Cyrus' voice actor. Did they use him at all in Skyrim? I don't remember hearing his voice yet. Maybe they thought he would be too recognizable, but his voice was always reassuring or something, like going back to Morrowind: "This is where they want you, Head down to the dock and they'll show you to the census office."

As i've said before in similar threads, here's my order of preference when it comes to voices / accents in a fantasy game:

• Completely unique and distinct for the fantasy race, like nothing on Earth.

Failing that...

• European (or I suppose any region), but very neutral sounding, so when I hear an NPC talk, I don't immediately think "he/she sounds [insert nationality]"

Failing that...

• European, but obviously British/German/Whatever sounding. It's not ideal, but at least it can pass as medieval... which is what a considerable chunk of western fantasy is based upon.

Just as long as it's not a strong American accent.

...I liked the cockney Dunmer accents, but then again I never played Morrowind. Delvin mallory still has my favourite voice though, simply because he sounds like a real person. Not only does he have an accent but the voice actor really does sound cockney (and yes I'm from London)

The Dunmer voice in Skyrim is like meeting Jesus Christ and found out that he had a Mickey Mouse voice. That's how horrible and out of character it is in comparison to Redguard/MW. Beth completely beyond recognition destroyed the personality of the Dunmer.

As for Oblivion Dunmer voice, well, it will be like choosing the best of the two evils.(btw, don't take this personal, the english accent has nothing to do with what I'm saying)

They're there, they're just not very well distributed. The vast majority of them seem to have voiced single characters, with the other 10 VAs doing everyone else.

I was rather disappointed as to how virtually none of the voices from Morrowind and Oblivion returned - many of the actors did, but with different roles. A shame, seeing as some of the more traditional ones (Michael Mack's voice for the Redguards) I was actually quite fond of.

The Nords, Imperials and beast races for the most part are adequate, it's primarily that gruff 1950s American voice on some of the Dunmer and Bretons that gets to me. Then there's that scrawny male American voice actor who seems to fill in for three or four different races. He sounds like Todd.

The Redguard voice actor was my favourite in Oblibion, it was the only one which almost never annoyed me and fit the race. Be it cultural or physical or a mixture of those aspects, black people in real life tend to have somewhat different sounding voices to other races, so it feels pretty weird having the obviously white sounding voice actors do all the redguards.
It sounds like a pretty poorly imitated cockney accent to me, unless it's just some weird variation I've never quite heard before outside people from other countries trying to sound cockney. It's also totally out of place on a Dunmer. They should sound serious and dark and imperious (and this is coming for someone who thought the Morrowind voice was a bit too guttural), and they just sound like tryhard gangsters here. Bretons should have English accents though. Most of them seem to be American, and coupled with their appearance (should have been slightly elven looking and more slender), this makes them nigh on indistinguishable from many Nords and Imperials.

Despite the male Dunmer voice, I actually kind of like Skyrim's female Dunmer voice. Maybe I'm just weird, but I dunno...the more husky female voice seems to work for me somehow. But I'm sure it's not for everybody.
Always loved Khajiit voices. The ones in Skyrim seem a little higher pitched than Oblivion, but the accent's pretty much the same. If they added a few "purring" sounds à la S'rathra in Redguard, they'd be darn-near perfect.

The Khajiit voice in Skyrim is the best so far if you ask me, after S'rathra. Reminds me of some adorably stereotypical stout Arab merchant from an old cartoon or something of the sort. Argonians on the other hand could have done with a slightly more guttural, serpentine intonation.

What do Sload sound like? Jabba?