Zelda's Tears Of The Kingdom VA Took Inspiration From The Hit HBO Show "Game Of Thrones"

I’m actually not surprised, and I haven’t even seen the show, just clips, her voice just gave off that vibe to me.

This website should be renamed - ZeldaLife

I much prefer this to when it is Pokemon-obsessed.

I don't quite know why, But I never really was a big fan of her Zelda voice.

I'm still not digging the performance and after three attempts I'm not even sure if it's JUST a direction thing.

English Zelda just sounds whiny as hell and it does NOT suit this version of her whatsoever, being the curious, confident "tomboy" the princess is described and shown as by different characters. The dialog in the introduction alone sounds like she's constantly on the edge of a nervous breakdown when she's just super happy and excited about discovering new information on things she researched.

@Doomcrow It's all about the algorithm. They will talk about whatever game is currently out right now to get those clicks.

@DaniPooo I have a hunch that it's because she sounds as if she's on the brink of tears every time she opens her mouth.

I like how her voice sounds but it's a little too melodramatic.

@DaniPooo I think it's just her voice, she's improved, but it's just grating to me.

@Dom_31 I agree entirely. I dont think we need to beat about the bush though. The Zelda VA work is poor. Nintendo signed this off and it once again shows their lack of understanding and knowledge of the western markets.

Question. All the money and success of Switch. Why do Nintendo still not invest in some proper expertise in the West? Where are the Development staff? Where are the decision makers?

As for this article... Game of Thrones is nothing like Zelda and that is a frankly embarrassing comparison to make from someone that is supposed to understand the character and the lore. It's no wonder Zelda sounds so dreadful if you think Game Of Thrones is the mark.

Game of Thrones is only comparable to Zelda in one way. The success.

@MontyCircus

Amen to that.

@Dom_31 I think you just described perfectly why I find some issue with her voice, like on any other character I think it would be fine, but it’s Zelda, her voice doesn’t really fit the character at all, plus she doesn’t remotely sound or feel like the curious, confidant, person the games set her out to be,

@puddinggirl
I changed the voice acting to japanese, it feels now like whatching an anime movie.

@puddinggirl I feel the same way, especially in the intro when she was excited about what she photos, at first I thaught she was going to start crying. Just my personal preference of not being keen on the style

kinda off topic, but i really dislike how in my country's dub(Italy),after 2 italian dubbed Zelda games (BOTW and AOC),everyone still says Herooleh insted of Highrule.

The English voice beats the Japanese one by far. The Japanese one is so shrill and annoying.

Her voice acting makes me nervous. Always sounding like a frail and whiny little girl. Doesn’t match the modern Zelda i like to see in this game.
I set the game to european spanish. For me the perfect Zelda.

Ah, that explains why I thought it sounded like a North American's idea of an English accent - because it is a North American's idea of an English accent!

@DaniPooo I've just started Breath of the Wild and if there's one niggle I have with the game it's Zelda's voice. No shade on the VA but, yeah, I don't think it works for me either :/

I don’t really like her voice tbh. I’m sure someone else could have done a better job

@DaniPooo I've seen her in interviews, her normal voice is actually really good. If she wasn't doing the ***** fake British accent she would have been a really good Zelda, as it is now I use the Japanese voice acting almost solely because of her voice.

@MontyCircus @Doomcrow I do hope they will go fanboy mode on Pikmin 4 when it launches.

I can see that. I do feel bad that this VA gets bashed on a lot, I think the voice is because of her royalty, but said royalty doesn't match her personality, that's the issue. Someone kinda touched on this but I would like it if this was her voice in the first game, where she is trying to live up to her role and thus be uncomfortable, and slowly over time her voice softens and becomes more natural, especially when she is giddy about something like a frog or an artefact, like she slowly let's her guard down, especially around Link.

Her voice sounds good to me because when dealing with anime-style characters living in royalty and set in a medieval world it's the correct route to go with an English accent. She's mainly lived in the castle with the king and other similar-speaking characters so she would naturally have that accent, even if she's secretly adventurous at heart. Plus the VA is capable of voicing a strong sounding Zelda as her speech at Fort Hateno displayed in AoC.

Now that I think about it I often see people trashing the English accents in Xenoblade, so I think some people just have a bias towards American anime VAs because they're the most commonly heard and it's what they're used to.

She deserves no praise, honestly

easily the worst voice in the entire game, both botw and totk

@nocdaes In all fairness, Nintendo has never really been all that good when it comes to voice acting for their games beyond a few short quips. Whenever they attempted full voice acting, it was almost always ridiculed.

Even longtime professional voice actors, such as Jen Taylor (famous for Cortana from Halo and Princess Peach from several Mario games), have been criticized for their roles in Nintendo games.

Obviously, that doesn't speak to the talent (or lack thereof) of the voice actors themselves, but likely due to the direction from Nintendo's sound team. Even the most venerable actors can be hampered by bad direction.

Which is probably why Nintendo would be better served contracting voice-over direction to a professional company, especially one that works in the anime industry (such as Funimation/Crunchyroll, Sentai Filmworks, or Viz Media).

Since these companies have experience working with Japanese companies in dubbing anime into English, their expertise is second-to-none. So if Nintendo wants to improve their voice acting, maybe they should outsource.

I really don't understand the hate Patricia Summersett has received for voicing Princess Zelda. I think she has done an awesome job with the role. She really shines in Age of Calamity (which is Princess Zelda's story first and foremost), but that game had much better cinematics and voice direction.

That explains why the VA came across as so grating and annoying. I muted volume during the intro garbage.

@AstroTheGamosian If they contract out to an anime company, then all we will hear are the same 4-5 VA’s that anime cartoons have been using for the past 3 decades.

Instantly switched to Japanese VO. I don't want to dump on someone in her position, but bad is bad... and it's bad I'm afraid.

It’s… not good. Like if you want to go for the plummy posh girl voice then just hire an English woman.

Like I said: Nice person, terrible VA for Zelda.
And didn't want her back for Totk. I see most people didn't either.
I wonder if she's oblivious to the criticism?
I kinda liked seeing Zelda geeking out at the start of the story. But yeah, it just kept getting worse and worse from there. They should've brought over the voice director from XC3. Even if they had to fly them over from Europe.
Despite the voice acting often being mid at best, I've really, REALLY enjoyed hearing Dimitri as Rauru for the first part of the game. It made me get attached to him even more. Dimitri's VA just nails that royal, composed tone. I need a scene where Dimitri and Chrom's VAs talk with each other. Might be the only good reason for sticking to English.

I will be the bad guy and say I hate her performance. She singlehandedly forced me to play BotW with German voices because I could not stand her whiny voice and I usually never play with German voices (which is my native language). And her performance in TotK isn't any better imo. At least they let you freely switch the language in the main menu ...

Her voice is only even worse now that they she can be compared to Rauru in the same scenes in this game. Chris Hackney did a far better job and so did Matt Mercer.

I hope nobody has thoughts of Game of Thrones as a style or adaptation choice for the series. If any series goes that route, its Fire Emblem. Regarding Patricia Summerset, I don't have ToTK yet. I anticipate her performance. If this is the last time we see this Zelda in this Hyrule. Then I wonder about the future of Voice acting.

I thought her performance in BotW carried that game’s story. I haven’t seen all of TotK’s story yet, but the into scene where she finds the cave paintings and turns into an enthusiastic Zonai conspiracy theorist was pure joy.

Never batted an eye on game of thrones but I love Patricia Summersett‘s voice work in this one.

That's interesting. I haven't seen the last unicorn but there are a lot of parallels between Daenerys Targaryen and Zelda.

@chbcn Las Flipantes Aventuras de Margarita y las Lágrimas del Reino de Jirule

What's funny is I feel she's a good voice actor, and yet I feel like somehow her voice misses the mark for what Zelda should sound like. That's only my opinion, but all I can say is after TotK's run is done, this will close this Zelda story arc. By the time the next Zelda story arc begins, we'll likely have a different Zelda VA.

For the folks that don’t like Zelda’s voice- serious question: what do you think is missing or what do you think should be improved? I saw someone said too whiny or something for BOTW but given the tone of the game it makes sense to me even there.
I feel like I’m nuts… I truly don’t understand the negativity.

I hated her voice when I first played botw but it's since grown on me. I think it didn't match up to what I wanted and expected a Zelda to sound like, but I've accepted that this Zelda, like all Zeldas, is unique.

Just like BOTW - I couldn't switch to Latin American Spanish fast enough 😂 it just works.

Despite having many strong actors on GoT, Clarke’s performance was consistently narrow in range and ultimately unconvincing in delivery. It was kind of like seeing Anthony Hopkins and Gary Oldman run circles around a young Keanu Reeves in Dracula.

@nocdaes In fact, Zelda dubbing in many other western countries is of very good quality. The English version is bad just because it is bad. There is no need to display a completely flawed ethnocentrism to justify that. It’s not about Nintendo being too Japanese or whatever, it’s about dubbing not being as good as it should be.

@Dom_31 her jp voice isn't anything like what you describe either...

@MrLinkTathapast Don't worry, there's plenty more than just four or five. In over thee decades worth of English Dubs, there are numerous voice actors who have been around for a long time and are still working today.

As it is, TOTK already has Cristina Vee, and she's been voicing characters in anime and video games for over a decade now. In fact, she voices both Bennett and Xingqiu in Genshin Impact, the game that was considered a ripoff of BOTW (which frankly couldn't be further from the truth).

And now they have Matthew Mercer as the voice of Ganondorf. He voiced Trafalgar D. Law in One Piece, Jotaro Kujo from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Hit from Dragon Ball Super, Kagaya Ubuyashiki from Demon Slayer, Chrom from Fire Emblem Awakening, Cole Cassidy (formerly known as Jesse McCree) from Overwatch, and even played Ganondorf and Kirby in a live-action dystopian webseries called There Will Be Brawl.

Voice actors such as Spike Spencer, Keith Silverstein, Zach Aguilar, Corina Boettger, Tiffany Grant, Amanda Winn-Lee, AmaLee (whose name is also Amanda Lee, which I sometimes confuse with Amanda Winn-Lee), Allison Keith, and more, could all end up being in Nintendo games; and those are all just the ones off the top of my head.

As it is, a few of them have already voiced characters in other video games (Spike Spencer in Trauma Center, Zach Aguilar and Corina Boettger in Genshin Impact, Amanda Winn-Lee in Persona 4, and Keith Silverstein in both Skyrim and Genshin Impact).

But to clarify my point, maybe not so much the voice actors themselves, but the voice directors, since they have experience directing voice actors in anime. As I said, you can have all the voice-over star power you want, but if you don't have a good director, their performance is going to suck. Thus, at the very least, get the directors.

@LXP8 I don't have a problem with Xenoblade's accents, most people have a problem with repetitive combat dialogue and Rex not really yelling. The problem with Zelda is that no one else in Hyrule sounds like her. Games like Dragon Quest even have different British accents based on where characters are from, another example of how it's done right. Zelda just sounds the way she does because of crappy American tropes that every person of royalty in a fantasy series must speak non-rhotically.

@nessisonett they did a reverse of Skye Bennett in Xenoblade 2.

@NIN10DOXD Yes I don't like the repetitive combat dialogue either, though I have seen people on this site say they hate the English accents of the first Xenoblade game. As for Zelda, her father has the same accent and so it can be assumed that other members of the castle and her deceased mother would sound the same

One of the times the German VO is so much better. I don't like whiny Zelda as well.

Her voice sounds like a princess who is feeling the pain of her kingdom. I think it's works well.

@NIN10DOXD I can't stand the voice acting in Xenoblade or Dragons Quest. It was so annoying it completely ruined those games for me.