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In Stalker 1, russian has been widely used as a common language.
Given the war launched by Russia in Ukraine, Stalker 2 is taking back the native language of both the company and the area of Chornobyl IRL, which is ukrainian.
Long answer:
First 3 S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games were released in 2007-2009 and their events took place around 2006. At that time There was still a large portion of Ukrainians born in USSR before 1991 who spoke both Ukrainian and Russia. Also there were good trade relations between Ukraine and Russia and Belarus. So naturally Russian and English were chosen as main languages to go with in order to cover larger target audience.
During the next 15 years after release of the first game elder population of Ukraine born in USSR continued to naturally pass away while majority of new generation does not learn Russian at all because Ukrainian is the only mandatory national language and Russia is just an optional foreign language to study at school and majority choose to study English, French or German instead. By 2020 less then 15% of Ukrainians considered Russian as their primary language and about 40% of population were still proficient in both Ukrainian and Russian
A year ago in 2022 Russia launched invasion in Ukraine and this war is raging still. Russian speaking regions of Ukraine suffered the most and because of that a lot of Russian-speaking Ukrainians were either killed by Russians or abandoned using Russian language completely even on family level. Impossible to to estimate correctly, but those percentages from 2020 dropped significantly. Also it is natural that during war almost all trade between involved countries is halted - that included cancellation of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 sales in Russia and Belarus.
After exclusion of Russia and Belarus markets and with significantly diminished demand for Russian language in Ukraine there was not reason to continue making full Russian VO and it was canceled.
Due to my work I have a lot to do with Ukrainian refugees and literally no-one of them is using ukrainian, only russian.
No matter the age.
Kinda weird if it's only 15% that consider it their primary language, could it be that all of the 15% are in Germany?
Or are you citing a forged statistic that transports a political narrative?
While I understand russian is less needed due the exclusion of Belarus and Russian markets, those are not the only russian speaking countries as russian is lingua franca for many world region still.
Russian is one of the most common languages.
Even if you subtract all Russians, belyorusians and ukrainians, russian has still more speakers then Ukrainian, also if the zone would be real, russian would be spoken in it too for various reasons..
Would be really based if politics could stay out of games, but I guess impossible in the former USSR as they all inherited the authoritarian tendencies,
this really diminishes my interest in the game and is a kick in the nuts for many Stalker fans
Well, I have the exact opposite experience, and i'm in France. On that base, I can't believe a word of what you're saying.
Don't bother, some people repeated many times the stuff you wrote, stalker fans with a sense of humanity understand what is at stake and what is really important.
You asked a question, we both answered you that the native language is ukrainian. You may don't like the answer, but go with it.
You don't have to believe me it doesn't change the Subject.
You probably just don't speak those languages and therefore can't tell the difference, before the war you probably didn't know where ukraine is on the map anyways.
Even in the ukrainian army russian is widely spoken.
So you think ban russian narration is humanitarian and saves Lifes or what? Or what is at stake ? What is important about it, please elaborate..
What are you trying to suggest? It's absolutely silly.
Politics censoring games is medieval at best.
I have a sense for humanity so that I see a game is the wrong place to fight a cultural war. Its things like these that caused it in the first place.
There is nothing humanitarian about it, quite the opposite
There are about 8mln refugees in total, how many of them did you really meet? Even if it is 8000 people it would be only 0.1% of total refugees which is no more that statistical deviation. Just because your personal bubble consist on Russian speaking Ukrainians, does not meant it is representative.
Also how do you know their primary language? Did you specifically ask each one in person? These are rhetorical questions obviously. Just because Ukrainian know and speak Russian does not meat that person consider Russian as their primary language.
My information average of multiple statistics from polls and commercial statistics for demands for Russian media in Ukraine(movies, songs, TV shows, books etc). Commercial statistics is the most telling as people may lie during pools but they show their real preferences when they pay money for products with specific language. It does not matter which exactly numbers you chose to believe, but all statistics show the same trend: demand for Russian language dropped at least by x2 times since release of the first S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game and this trend continues.
All other countries, except Russia, have their own national languages to care about. If they care about localization in their national language it would be much easier to ask for subs in their national language first if it is not yet available and try to reason for VO later. There is no good reason for anyone to vote for foreign Russian language before taking care of their own national one. If person do not wish to discuss inclusion/expansion if own national language first then there is no reason to discuss extended support for foreign Russian language either.
When we exclude Russia, Belarus and Ukraine for obvious reasons, the remaining Russian-speaking population will not even hit Top-10 and will be less than 1% of total world population. So there is no reasons to pushing narrative about Russian VO before discussing full localization in Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, Hindi and all other significantly more widespread languages some of which are not even presented as subs. But you clearly do not care a bit about actual popularity of languages and how widely the are used, otherwise you should be asking about VO in all other more popular languages before turn will reach Russian.
Also it is absolutely absurd to compare popularity of Ukrainian to Russian in this case. Ukrainian is a national language of developers so they do not need any excuse or justification to add it to the game. Even if there were only 300 people in the whole world speaking Ukrainian and all of them being developers - adding full support to their national language is out of question, cannot be questioned by any means and cannot be used as an argument for discussing support in foreign languages.
You are the only one trying to bring politics into discussion. I deliberately ignored possible additional political reasons behind dev's decision, because they are irrelevant to this discussion really. As I've already showed about there is no solid commercial reasons to discuss Russian VO before discussing possibility to add VO in dozen of more popular and widely spread languages. Continuing to push politic narratives into this discussion will only expose your own bias and hypocrisy on the subject.
Nobody forces you to play this game really. The world is not turning around you personally and no one with rush to change anything just based on just your personal preferences until there is a good reason for it. And you so far failed to provide any meaningful reason to continue this discussion. True S.T.A.L.K.E.R. fans do understand that current situation reflects current reality. Those who stuck in the past for the last 15+ years... well... they are free to do as they see fit. Have fun with whatever other games suit you best. Cheers!
I'm voicing my opinion and none of the things I've said are factually wrong.
Can you point out where I speak for Ukrainians ? I merely speak for myself the same you do for yourself, it's not my game neither is it yours
I'd like to know what russian immigrants that live here for since the collapse of the soviet Union (Mind you most of those are actually from german minority in russia which has migrated almost completely and not actual russians) have to do with linguistic preferences of Ukrainian new comers, do they feel pressured to speak Russian with their toddlers because some russian speaker could live close by or what ? And what are pro russian immigrants? Is political agenda a nationality now ?
Or do you think language correlates with political views ? This definitely smells like political bias.
Do you think my ability to speak Russian makes me a Putin worshipper? That's how it comes over and if its true you've been completely brainwashed.
This is interesting, if russian narration is generally treated like it is in this particular case with the game it is not suprising how this statistics regarding consumption you're referring to actually form.
Afterall the Soviet born population didn't die out within 15 years, it is still the majority of the population and probably will be it for atleast another 15 years.
Why russian is special in this regard?
Of course there is good reason because russian is widely spoken among cis states and therefor you reach a bigger audience for it.
Especially if the language is home in the setting it geographically represents and the IP has a history to be narrated in said language so comparing it to chinese vo is quite outlandish and can only come from someone who cares little about the world the prequels established, defo not a "true stalker fan" what ever this apparently exclusive club is you're reffering to.
The point is the russian language is also a national language of Ukraine it exists there for the same time as Ukrainian does because both languages formed from the same language and coexisted.
It's also funny that previously devs had a different opinion on what their language was as I can't remember previously Ukrainian VO in the other stalker games.. Is it maybe those games were made by different people after all and the current devs are just IP holders have little to do with the original work?
Would explain a few things.
Nah, I'm not the one removing planned languages based on politics neither I'm defending political censorship, nor I invent coined terms like pro russian immigrants, this rather looks like your position.
Given stalkers fan base is likely the biggest in the banned regions, commercial reasoning is already out of the window. But GSC was never good with commercial planning
Neither does it revolve around you and your personal preference, even tho current events might make it look that way at best we are both stalker fans and that's it, true stalker fans aren't defined by some conditions you make up yourself.
You see if you are indifferent to it that's fine. I'm not indifferent to it and it wouldn't take anything from you. There is no valid reason for you to be against it, apart from pettiness
And I'd be rather stuck in the past 15 years then in small time and pettiness
Call me Rasta Slav, I think highly of myself but God is a bit of a stretch anyway
Why is it so, does my mere ability to speak Russian makes me objectively less of discussion partner?
Please don't project your flawed racist thought process onto others, just because your little chamber is echoing it
Uff, first of all you don't speak on behalf of the ukrainian people, it is you that doesn't want to hear those problems not most of the Ukrainians.
And it is good that way, because otherwise it would mean that Ukrainians don't care for most of their population, and if umyou don't listen to the problems of other why anybody should listen to yours?
And if that is the case and you posess the telepathic ability cause you are the monolith it doesn't matter because the game is intended to aim for a international audience otherwise the game wouldn't be even made probably
What the hell you're talking about? nobody is imposing their language onto you,
It is the other way around, you argue to impose the language you want on me, not the other way around
See you have the choice with which language you want to play the game with, all I want is having the choice too
And having russian alongside Ukrainian doesn't make Ukrainian dissappear does it?
What does it matter ? It is as you say just a justification,
They could say anything, if they invade you because they feel threatened by your bakery products, will you ban bread?
Anyhow, art under political guidelines is how fascism or communism looks like.
It has no place in a society build upon democratic principles
See that is your problem, what does this game getting russian vo has to do with Russians imposing their language on you ? Nothing, it is in your imagination, it is the opposite quite frankly cause the game takes out the choice for who want it, russian chauvinism isn't a excuse for Ukrainian. It rather shows me you have similar thought process to the russian goverment. That's all
As a Stalker fan you should actually get over yourself in a minute and happily support the developers and their very reasonable decision.
To people who feel that strongly about it, like this is a "kick in their nuts", its probably not even about the game. More likely its due to other reasons like them supporting the war but not wanting to face ramifications. Or they dont want to get constantly remembered about russias situation, how bad it already is and how much worse it will get. Either way i cant feel pity about it.