Horrendous subtitle timing is preventing me from liking and playing this game :/

[Gameinsider1986]

Hello,

just wanted to ask if anybody else feels like the subtitles are horrendously timed.
I tried to play it in English, German and with a german fan translation, but the outcome is the same.

I eventually get to the classroom in the beginning of the first chapter, it proceeds to where the teacher is giving some kind of lecture and then, at some point, the teacher's sentences begin to stumble or get jumpy like; there is one sentence with "4 lines"(!) getting displayed at some point (at least in the German version) and suddenly the sentence is gone after just "2 seconds".

First I thought it could be 'cause my computer can't handle the highest graphics, but even choosing the lowest didn't make a difference. So I assume it's not my PC, but the game itself with it's subtitles being timed poorly ...

I really want to enjoy this game and heard so much good news and stuff about it, but I just can't get past the first scenes with such horrendous timing. They could just have made things said in the "background" being displayed at the upper screen and things the character itself says (or others) on the bottom of the screen. Like this with sentences being displayed for only 1-2 seconds (seriously) and each sentence immediately vanishing as another character starts to speak, I just can't proceed like I want to.

Please, someone give me an all-clear signal for the later parts of the game :'(
Is it just in the beginning of the game or is the timing that bad all the time?
Cause if it is, I won't deal with the game anytime soon, as much as I would want to do that.

Thanks for reading all this unnecessary stuff from me, btw :)

[Dank Souls]

The game prioritise what Max is saying. If you want to hear the whole lecture just don't do anything.

[Gameinsider1986]

Okay, then it seems like that won't be the norm. Good to know :) But still, I didn't do anything with her. Just after she wakes up, the teacher just says half the sentence and they wrote the whole one there instead. I really hope that's just in the beginning. And thanks for your reply :) Of course I will play the game, but I just wanted to know if I have to get used to timing like this. Saw quite a few games with bad timing, so ... :'(

[Jeckenn]

Not sure what your PC specs are but if it is lagging that badly then try reducing graphic settings until the audio is up to speed with the graphics.....also seeing as I play in English I don't need subtitles and I just turn them off if you can do the same then you could try that.

[Gameinsider1986]

Well, as I said it is "not" lagging. That's the point. I thought it was, but that's just how the timing seems to be :/ And my English is good, but I want to enjoy it with the subtitles. That's why I asked if anyone good tell me it get's better later. But as ICO already said, it just seems to be that the other dialogues are not that important anyway, so I'll make it through somehow, I guess :) It's just that I encountered "too many" lazy programmers and creators lately, so maybe I did overreact a bit. But it's still sad if this continues througout the game. I hope my worries are unsubstantiated :)

[Jeckenn]

The VO for Life is Strange is so good you don't need the subtitles, in fact all they did for me was distract me from enjoying the game.

[Gameinsider1986]

Well, English is not my native language. I tried the demo once without subtitles and when it comes to those technical terms the game got, I can't understand everything properly. I love to play games only in English, but sadly, I got my limits there. But thanks for your advice :)

[MorningLightMountain]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Jeckenn:

The VO for Life is Strange is so good you don't need the subtitles, in fact all they did for me was distract me from enjoying the game.

The quality of the audio generally has very little to do with the reason someone is going to be playing a game with subtitles on.

[Gameinsider1986]

So, I played til I can examine stuff now, but sadly, the timing only got worse :/
I really hope I'll get to the point where I can enjoy this game that everyone seems to love. And I'm helping to find translation mistakes etc. in a patch as well, so.

But really sad that they didn't bother with making the sub timings better. I mean, this is the most horrible timing I've ever experienced in a game (and I played many games, on PC as well as on gaming consoles) and this one beats them all, sadly. I'm not trying to say it's a bad game. It's more that I can't seem to enjoy it even if everything else is great if they put not that much work into the timing which is essential for some people to understand and play the game. What would those people do that can't hear for example? Yeah, those people may be fast readers due to that, but it's still horrendous :'(

[Palatine Katinka]

I always played it with subtitles even though english is my first language as I'm always worried that if I don't have subtitles in a game I'll miss hear something or background noise will stop me hearing it properly. Not sure why I worry so much about that. It's not like I do the same with films...

Anyway, I never had a problem with the subtitles and timing but I can imagine it could easily be a problem for other languages where an accurate translation may need more words or longer words to express the same point and then have issues fitting it on screen in an appropriate time window. One option would be to keep your finger poised over F12 during conversations and screenshot any time a large block of text appears then read it at your leisure. You can also use the game's main mechanic to go back in a conversation and let it play again if you didn't have time to read it the first time round.

[Gameinsider1986]

Good idea with the screenshots, Palatine, but it's not only that I can barely read it sometimes. The thing that bothers me the most is that they even sold the game like this :/ I know LiS got many fans, but the game really get optimized in terms of subtitles, even though I know they'll never do that. Even later, the subtitles were still ... well ... not as optimized as they should be in terms of timing :( And it just doesn't do a game like this that everyone likes justice. "That's" my point :)