Slavs speak modern Russian?

[Anderson]

Is that right? Pardon the remark, but it's more than amateurish for the DLC. This has to be changed I reckon. Ancient slavic has nothing to do with modern Russian language.
This is really weird.

AOE 2 is probably the best AOE game and I'd love to see it grow and prosper, but that means also responsible design decisions! Best wishes.

[Duke Atreides]

From what I understand Russians are a slavic people and speak an East Slavic Language. So what do you want them to speak English? And if it bothers you too much you can always put the game on mute and listen to music.

[Anderson]

Originally posted by chambers0517:

From what I understand Russians are a slavic people and speak an East Slavic Language. So what do you want them to speak English? And if it bothers you too much you can always put the game on mute and listen to music.

Modern Russian, Ukrainian, Belorus, Serbian, Bulgarian - none of these have anything to do medieval Slavic.
Easily googleable phrases. The English speak old English. Doesn't it make sense to have Slavs speak old Slavic?

[Anderson]

It's easily patchable I reckon. Should not be that hard. Besides there's only like 10-20 phrases and that's it. But it goes a long way to show dedication and attention to the game.

[Vityaz]

Originally posted by Anderson:

Originally posted by chambers0517:

From what I understand Russians are a slavic people and speak an East Slavic Language. So what do you want them to speak English? And if it bothers you too much you can always put the game on mute and listen to music.

Modern Russian, Ukrainian, Belorus, Serbian, Bulgarian - none of these have anything to do medieval Slavic.
Easily googleable phrases. The English speak old English. Doesn't it make sense to have Slavs speak old Slavic?

Wait, what? The old Slavic language is of course different but it's still more similar with Russian than with French, Mandinka or Greek. They just took the voices from AoE 3, which isn't great, I admit. The architecture of the buildings and also the Boyar unit itself isn't that great designed, too. The Slavic civilization should get some love like the Indians got, so beautiful buildings! :)

Perhaps, if they split the civilization into Poles, Rus and Serbs or Bulgars for example, we wouldn't have one civilization for half of Europe.

[justastupidman]

Originally posted by Vityaz:

Originally posted by Anderson:

Modern Russian, Ukrainian, Belorus, Serbian, Bulgarian - none of these have anything to do medieval Slavic.
Easily googleable phrases. The English speak old English. Doesn't it make sense to have Slavs speak old Slavic?

Wait, what? The old Slavic language is of course different but it's still more similar with Russian than with French, Mandinka or Greek. They just took the voices from AoE 3, which isn't great, I admit.

They originally did, but added new recordings later. It is still Russian with some archaisms.

Of course that isn't really representative of all Slavs during the whole timespan of AoE2, but it isn't as inaccurate as the Goths speaking Middle High German (?) with a modern German accent (they should speak Gothic) or the Byzantines speaking Latin (they should speak Greek).

This game was never meant to be one hundred percent accurate and never will be.

Also, just googling phrases will never be enough. You still always need voice actors who can pronounce them well enough. I'd rather have phrases in a correctly pronounced modern language than in an atrociously mangled historic one.

[Cysion]

On release, the voices were modern Russian, but a few years ago they were replaced by voices in "Old Church Slavonic". Make sure you're on the most recent patch and you should have it fixed :)

[Anderson]

My apologies. I was on an old version because I moved a few times my home and didn't diligently check the changelogs. Thank you very much! You're great people.

[Anderson]

Originally posted by Vityaz:

Originally posted by Anderson:

Modern Russian, Ukrainian, Belorus, Serbian, Bulgarian - none of these have anything to do medieval Slavic.
Easily googleable phrases. The English speak old English. Doesn't it make sense to have Slavs speak old Slavic?

Wait, what? The old Slavic language is of course different but it's still more similar with Russian than with French, Mandinka or Greek. They just took the voices from AoE 3, which isn't great, I admit. The architecture of the buildings and also the Boyar unit itself isn't that great designed, too. The Slavic civilization should get some love like the Indians got, so beautiful buildings! :)

Perhaps, if they split the civilization into Poles, Rus and Serbs or Bulgars for example, we wouldn't have one civilization for half of Europe.

I appreciate how the slavs are atm because they fit well into the general thing without paying attention to the national dimension. The early Dark Ages slavs are what AOE 2 is about.
The only complaint would be that Wallachian campaign with Vlad Tepes (Dracula). They aren't slavs.
But considering that in AoE 2 in general it is often to get that even in the original campaigns - it's perfectly understandable. Placeholders are good.
Besides Wallachians and Moldovan kingdoms had a lot of Slavic/byzantine influence before they became Kingdoms of their own so it's perfectly fitting in general.
Looking forward to buying the new dlc and wondering if AoE will get to the windows shop or not. We'll see.

[Vityaz]

Yes, they aren't Slavs, but as you said were influenced by them and besides that, you play this campaign also as Magyar and Turks. It's clear, that we cannot represent every civilization in the game. That's okay. But I think it would have been better to choose a 'real' Slav campaign, like something about Alexander Newski or Vladimir I. and adding some nice battles around the Slavs to the Forgotten Battles.

I would be happy to see the broad term Slavs getting split up, but it's okay as it is now. Old Church Slavonic is a great choice, because Slavs as Orthodox people can understand each other and for example a Serb and a Rus can identify themselves with it.

[Devang]

It was the same situation for the Indians. They had the AoE3 voice clips from AoFE (mod version) to AoAK. Funniest thing was medieval Indians saying 'hello!'.

[Anderson]

Originally posted by Vityaz:

Yes, they aren't Slavs, but as you said were influenced by them and besides that, you play this campaign also as Magyar and Turks. It's clear, that we cannot represent every civilization in the game. That's okay. But I think it would have been better to choose a 'real' Slav campaign, like something about Alexander Newski or Vladimir I. and adding some nice battles around the Slavs to the Forgotten Battles.

I would be happy to see the broad term Slavs getting split up, but it's okay as it is now. Old Church Slavonic is a great choice, because Slavs as Orthodox people can understand each other and for example a Serb and a Rus can identify themselves with it.

Almost. Imho when it comes to serious speech each language changed too much. Am not understanding an official court decision in Ukrainian with just knowing Russian. Since the Medieval ages and well into the spring of Nations of 1848 too much each Slavic nation has transformed into independent nations that it was reduced right into redundant to claim any herald of panslavinism for any of them.

I reckon that for the Dark Ages the most relevant campaign would also be Kievan rus and Balkanic Croatian stories.

[Vityaz]

Of course the languages changed. With exercise you can understand Ukrainian as a Russian speaker for example. Or Swabian or Bavarian as a German speaker. But Old Church Slavonic stays almost the same to this day, this is the language of the liturgy.

And in Age of Empires we don't have Nations, so a Bavarian or a Swabian player (who are both German) have to be content with Teutons (and Goths). That's why we don't have Swiss, they were/are 'German'. So Slavs are a broad term, so that you can play as the Serbian kingdom or as the Republic of Novgorod for example.

[Anderson]

Originally posted by Vityaz:

Of course the languages changed. With exercise you can understand Ukrainian as a Russian speaker for example. Or Swabian or Bavarian as a German speaker. But Old Church Slavonic stays almost the same to this day, this is the language of the liturgy.

And in Age of Empires we don't have Nations, so a Bavarian or a Swabian player (who are both German) have to be content with Teutons (and Goths). That's why we don't have Swiss, they were/are 'German'. So Slavs are a broad term, so that you can play as the Serbian kingdom or as the Republic of Novgorod for example.

Pretty much yes. And you need months if not years of exercise to fluently understand cousin slavic languages, without reservations. For an uninitiated speaker only about 50% of the content is clear. And that considering if you speak only that language, i.e. in the post Soviet space most people are at least vaguely familiar with russian, therefore the connection of belarus and ukrainian with russian is easier. But if you were born after the 1990's chances are it will be much harder due to the fact that it's not taught in school as in the soviet period. Before the 90's even Romania and Poland studied a little bit of russian. Now there is none and each day it's more and more evident in those countries, likewise as in the Baltic states.

[Anderson]

Originally posted by Tawm:

Tor alternatively having a seperate Balts civ added to encompass Baltic states, Lithuania, maybe Hanse. Let us not forget we already have Huns and Magyars both representing for Hun-gary and Asian nomads entering central Europe (a baffling redundancy in my opinion but off topic)

Baltics are quite different. I mean Estonians are basically closer kin to Finland and Norway and those Nordic countries with the Finno-Ugric origin. Interestingly theyare closer to Hungarians than to slavs by any stretch of the imagination. Only Lithuanians and Latvians are more of their own thing and have little to do with slavic in general. Nobody knows exactly how do they stand with germanic or slavic. They are worth special attention in short ;)

[justastupidman]

Originally posted by Anderson:

Originally posted by Tawm:

Tor alternatively having a seperate Balts civ added to encompass Baltic states, Lithuania, maybe Hanse. Let us not forget we already have Huns and Magyars both representing for Hun-gary and Asian nomads entering central Europe (a baffling redundancy in my opinion but off topic)

Baltics are quite different. I mean Estonians are basically closer kin to Finland and Norway and those Nordic countries with the Finno-Ugric origin. Interestingly theyare closer to Hungarians than to slavs by any stretch of the imagination. Only Lithuanians and Latvians are more of their own thing and have little to do with slavic in general. Nobody knows exactly how do they stand with germanic or slavic. They are worth special attention in short ;)

Norwegians are North Germanic as are Swedes, Danes, and Icelanders, but not Finns. Estonians are Baltic Finns[en.wikipedia.org]. Finns are another gap in the European civs of AoEII. :)