Lore Question: Language

[Tal]

Hello all,
This will be another fairly spoiler-less thread focused on nitpicking and fun-depriving questions that I ask (in a nasal voice and with a particularly haughty sneer reserved for people who didn't know with which fork to pick up their spoon).

WHAT LANGUAGE IS THIS!?

Just curious if the Devs ever mentioned why we can understand people in England.
When we first land there, we obviously can't speak with the locals or understand them. Ketill mentions he kind of gets the gist of what they're trying to say, but that's as far as it goes.
Then a helpful translator comes along, but depending on our choices the translator may or may not join us or even show up at all and we don't have to take him with us and even if we do, we might not be taking him everywhere.

But after all that, whenever we run into anyone, we can understand each other perfectly - regardless of a translator's presence or absence. It's never mentioned what language they're speaking to us in, but since they also use Saxon words (they called me some name or title, they claimed it was "mistress of the house" - I assume it was actually "♥♥♥♥♥" or something), I'm assuming it's not Old Norse.

So what language are we communicating in?

It's driving me crazy.
Here I am, speaking to this Angle or that Saxon or this Pict. Uh, hello? How are we doing this again? Are we falling back on the German Saxon dialect that both we and our translator understood? Do 8th century Angle farmers casually speak it?

WAS IT ALL JUST A DREAM ALL ALONG!?

[Benman]

Yup, definitaley game breaking. Exactly like old these movies that have the same problem. Really movie breaking.
"Zee Zjermans zat speak English"

I'm not trolling here. I just want to say i am not at all bothered.

You seem to be bothered. Are you also bothered about the fact that at some point all your hirdsmen get skillpoints after a quest or battle but only like a maximum of 6 hirdsmen fought that battle. That's also pretty weird ...... gamebreaking?

[Tal]

There's a difference between game-breaking and S.O.D-breaking. Like I said, this isn't a big deal, but it's just something that drives me nuts.

I understand why things are done the way they're done - in the movies, like you mentioned, you see two Soviet Samurai (or whatever) speaking in English (in ridiculous, fake accents) with each other instead of whatever language they should be speaking with each other (it's Swahili, right? they speak Swahili in the Soviet Samurailand).
The reason they do that in the movies is that 1) Celebrity Actor #49 doesn't speak any other language than English, and, 2) they do that so that the dialogue will be understood by an American audience.

But note I'm not complaining that the game isn't in authentic Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon. Everyone speaks English when we can understand them. Vikings, Picts, Angles, Saxons, Gunnar - everyone speaks modern-day English using modern slang and that's mostly fine. The slang kind of bothers me, I would have enjoyed a more fake-authentic feel like in the Song of Ice and Fire novels where characters use slang and a manner of speech that reads like medieval-esque speech, while all of it takes place in our modern English.

What bothers me is that the game did take pains to have a nice scene where it becomes obvious that the vikings we play and the inhabitants of the mysterious island realms don't speak the same language.

So in the game's universe the Norse and whoever else don't speak the same language and it's a thing acknowledged by the game.
What bothers me is that the game just outright forgets that's the situation 5 minutes later and every Tom, ♥♥♥♥ and Harry can walk up to you - the viking who just landed for the first time in England - and be understood by you.

The skillpoints for quest-completion is just a reality of RPGs that we learn to accept, same as with "I can only wear one ring on each hand" and "we need to gather a mighty army, but I can only take three companions with me at a time".
Those things are dumb in the context of what's actually going on, but we can understand why they're there, mechanically.
It's nice if they're explained in-game using dialogue, but it's not a deal-breaker for us (I mean it'd be nice to see an RPG where that doesn't happen, but...)

I'm just saying - one moment you can't understand a word they say without a translator, the next you can discuss intricate political intrigue with a Pict, having just met a Pict for the first time and having no common language.

[Nova]

Part of the reasons it's only in one scene is due to the nature of the game. It'd get extremely boring if you had to deal with the same introductory ordeal every time you enter a new city if, for example you had killed everyone in the first village.
Not only would it get really dull, having to establish the same level of understanding every time, it would also significantly increase the word count, which is very expensive to localise.

[Tal]

Originally posted by Nova:

Part of the reasons it's only in one scene is due to the nature of the game. It'd get extremely boring if you had to deal with the same introductory ordeal every time you enter a new city if, for example you had killed everyone in the first village.
Not only would it get really dull, having to establish the same level of understanding every time, it would also significantly increase the word count, which is very expensive to localise.

Ahhhh, ok.

[Jonas]

It would've been really cool to have a language skill you could level up or something, but damn... I'm not even sure a AAA-budget could justify that kind of excess :P

We'd have had to make essentially two completely different games for the Britain part: one for player characters who can understand the locals and one for player characters who can't. That's like... Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines levels of squandered development resources.