Fire Emblem 16's Dorothea Should have Sung More

Is it just me, or does Fire Emblem 16 fail to take full advantage of the perfection of Dorothea’s voice actress?  I mean, Dorothea’s a wonderful character as a whole, and Allegra Clark, the woman who plays her in the English translation, is actually capable of imbuing her performance as Dorothea with both the warm, engaging friendliness and the gripping, heartfelt sorrow that most define the character.  I honestly find her work here amazing: to be able to keep up with a character as personally nuanced as Dorothea is impressive enough, but Clark has talent enough to go beyond simply being equal to the task, and puts forth a performance that quickly becomes so signature to who Dorothea is that it’s hard to think of any other voice for her.

And she’s got a lovely singing voice!  Now yeah, I admittedly know dick-all about anything musical, but I think I can at least tell this much: Allegra Clark’s got some sweetly sonorous pipes.  And you’d think that’d be a perfect quality for this character, given that Dorothea’s famous across all of Fodlan for being the greatest diva of her time.  Right?

But as it turns out, Clark’s lovely talent for song is barely even touched upon in Fire Emblem 16!  Yeah, you’ve got a character defined in no small part by her status as a nationally renowned star of the opera, and a voice actress that can actually make you believe that, and yet Dorothea sings, what, twice in the entire game!?*

Ferdinand!  Fucking FERDINAND gets to belt out a tune as often as the character who’s an operatic superstar!  And don’t even get me started on Annette.  Annette gets to do some sing-song nonsense 4 times!  I have to sit through Annette’s painfully dumb little songs about her eating dinner or cleaning a room like she’s some Dreamworks princess reject twice as often as I get the pleasure of hearing Dorothea sing?**

Yeah, I know that the translation team probably can’t change Dorothea’s support conversations or main game dialogue just because this side of the ocean really lucked out with its casting call, but honestly, I still feel it’s not entirely unwarranted to complain.  Because really, regardless of the actors for the parts, does it make any sense that of all the characters who are given opportunities to sing in the game, the ones who do so the least often are the opera stars?  It's an error in logic no matter how you look at it.

It just seems like a real wasted opportunity to take advantage of the full range of an actress’s talent, especially when to do so would have been so easy and natural for the character.

















* And 1 of those times is for and about Edelgard, of all schmucks!  Jeez, Nintendo, you couldn’t at least have had Dorothea sing about a subject more worthy of her talents?  Manuela, Dorothea’s other friends, the goddess, the war currently raging across the land, a particularly good salad, pocket lint, almost anything I can think of would be more deserving of the praise of Dorothea/Allegra Clark’s musical talent than that gullible moron!


** Yes, yes, yes, I know Annette’s voice actress, Abby Trott, is the woman who sang the Super Smash Brothers Ultimate main theme and thus clearly also has substantial musical talent.  But that was Smash and this is Fire Emblem, and that talent is not on display with Annette.  I frankly think that the tortured groans of Draco as the Super Nintendo’s soundcard desperately threw its every limited faculty into imitating the voice of a human being (or possibly a troll-bulldog-washing-machine hybrid) in Final Fantasy 6’s opera made for a more melodious musical experience than Annette’s little ditties.