SOLVED: Bring back facial animations in the diplomacy screen

[hansbrix]

The facial animations of the characters in the diplomacy screen have been removed with the latest patch. Now the faction leaders say their dialogue without opening their mouth, which is breaking immersion. This small feature has been in Rome 2 for the last 10 years and now it's randomly gone. To CA and the great modding community: please bring back facial animations in diplomacy asap.

Edit: Ok guys, I just managed to solve this issue by myself. F*ck1ng finally! Praise the gods!

If you want to play Rome 2 in the native language of your country with working facial animations, do the following:

1. Open the local folder, where you've installed Rome2 (right click on Rome2 in your
Steam library, select "properties", select "local files", select "browse").
2. Open the "data" folder, which is located in your local Rome2 folder.
3. Copy the file named "local_x.pack" ("x" stands for the shortcut for your country. If you
play the game in German the file is named "local_ge.pack"; for Italian players it might
be named "local_it.pack", for Spanish maybe "local_sp.pack" etc. - it's self
explanatory) and save it somewhere, where you'll find it again later - for example on
your desktop. This is for backup purposes.
4. Open Steam, right-click on Rome 2. Open "properties" and select "English" as the
language for your game. After this step the game will take a moment to automatically
update the audio-files to English.
5. Once this is done, go back to where you've installed Rome2 on your local harddrive and
open the "data" folder once again. In the "data"-folder you'll find two files. The first one
is named "local_en_shared_rome2.pack". The second one is called
"music_en_shared_rome2.pack". Copy both of these files to your desktop (or wherever
you'll find them again later).
6. Repeat step 4. but select your native language, for example "German", instead. The
game will update again and reinstall the sound-files with your native language.
7. Now copy the "local_en_shared_rome2.pack" and the
"music_en_shared_rome2.pack" files from your desktop into the "data"-folder of
Rome2.

Et voilà! The facial animations of the characters are working again for your specific non-english-language-version of the game. It was about time. Enjoy!

[Yews]

Reminds me how they completely removed the region names on the campaign map. All regions on the map used to have their accurate names that you could see when you hovered over the earth in that region, like the land around Roma displaying as Latium and the land around Athenai as Attike and so on. They randomly removed this functionality in an update. Or that little story with the blood-splattered main menu eagle that came with the blood and gore add-on but was completely removed for good shortly after the add-on released.

[Messsucher]

It is almost like someone in CA would hate Rome 2.

[DerRitter]

Jeez, wtf

[Potato Soup]

Hmm i still see the facial animations in my game. I wonder what the issue could be.

[hansbrix]

Yeah it sucks. It's so unnecessary to remove features like facial animations. There is literally no benefit to it. And once again modders are the last hope to fix this.

I'm totally with you @Yews. As somebody who loved the blood and gore features, I felt ripped off, when CA removed not only the blood splattered eagle but also a lot of the special mocap kill animations.

@Potato Soup are facial animations still working in diplomacy screen for you?

[Potato Soup]

Originally posted by hansbrix:

Yeah it sucks. It's so unnecessary to remove features like facial animations. There is literally no benefit to it. And once again modders are the last hope to fix this.

I'm totally with you @Yews. As somebody who loved the blood and gore features, I felt ripped off, when CA removed not only the blood splattered eagle but also a lot of the special mocap kill animations.

@Potato Soup are facial animations still working in diplomacy screen for you?

Yeah so far they are still working. I do use mods though but i don't think they edit the mouth movements as far as i know.

[hansbrix]

Originally posted by Potato Soup:

Originally posted by hansbrix:

Yeah it sucks. It's so unnecessary to remove features like facial animations. There is literally no benefit to it. And once again modders are the last hope to fix this.

I'm totally with you @Yews. As somebody who loved the blood and gore features, I felt ripped off, when CA removed not only the blood splattered eagle but also a lot of the special mocap kill animations.

@Potato Soup are facial animations still working in diplomacy screen for you?

Yeah so far they are still working. I do use mods though but i don't think they edit the mouth movements as far as i know.

Is your game-language set to english? Because mine is german, maybe thats the source of the problem. CA should fix it either way.

[Potato Soup]

Originally posted by hansbrix:

Originally posted by Potato Soup:

Yeah so far they are still working. I do use mods though but i don't think they edit the mouth movements as far as i know.

Is your game-language set to english? Because mine is german, maybe thats the source of the problem. CA should fix it either way.

Yep it's English.

[hansbrix]

Ok, thanks for the info. In this case it's maybe an exclusive issue of the german version. I hope, there'll be a fix soon. It's annoying af.

[kam2150]

Try to verify game files in Steam.

At least for me its working too but maybe this verification will fix it for you too.

[Potato Soup]

Originally posted by hansbrix:

Ok, thanks for the info. In this case it's maybe an exclusive issue of the german version. I hope, there'll be a fix soon. It's annoying af.

You're welcome. I hope it works for you.

[hansbrix]

Originally posted by kam2150:

Try to verify game files in Steam.

At least for me its working too but maybe this verification will fix it for you too.

Thanks for the tip, I just tried it but it didn't work.

I fear that CA will ignore this issue. Hopefully modders will fix it asap.

If anybody has an idea on how to fix this, please let me know.

[kam2150]

For a test, have you tried to switch to English, as you proposed it could be language related? Not that you should play in English, I ma just curious if that would be the source of the issue.

[hansbrix]

Originally posted by kam2150:

For a test, have you tried to switch to English, as you proposed it could be language related? Not that you should play in English, I ma just curious if that would be the source of the issue.

I just tried it and it actually works fine with the english audio activated; so it's indeed the source of the problem.
I love the german voice-overs and played with them for 10 years now. I don't want to play with the english voice-overs just because CA messed something up once again.

[Preacher]

Originally posted by hansbrix:

Originally posted by kam2150:

For a test, have you tried to switch to English, as you proposed it could be language related? Not that you should play in English, I ma just curious if that would be the source of the issue.

I just tried it and it actually works fine with the english audio activated; so it's indeed the source of the problem.
I love the german voice-overs and played with them for 10 years now. I don't want to play with the english voice-overs just because CA messed something up once again.

CA still hasnt fixed proper NTW cannon and musket sounds