Can't change to English

[Fhantom]

The game is supposed to be in English. Never once did I tell it to change languages. I tried changing the language to everything else and it is still not changing the language. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling. I tried everything and now I'm just going to request a refund. Guess I'll go back to playing Oblivion.

[Fhantom]

I should clarify that even on fresh install it seems to default to a foreign language. It will sometimes start in English. Then I close the game and on reboot it is in foreign language again.

[fauxpas]

Did you do a proper clean install, nuking any leftover files Steam missed, both in the game directory as well as your documents folder?

[deckerdave1973]

What about mods?

I downloaded a house mod, that turned my whole game german. Too bad, cause it was a nice house.

[Morgan Fun Gamer]

Does it switch languages do you start the game and it is in one language the language speficied and then you start it again it is another language that is not the language you selected or the same non selected language all time except when its in the specifed language?

[Fhantom]

No mods. Just bought the game all settings say it should be in English but it will not stay in English for anything after first boot. I'm stumped. Can't even refund cause took too much time troubleshooting lol. Can only think of if I have to delete the cloud data somehow.

[Death Approaches]

hmm well something messed up, so since it's what morg said, since setting languages is done by Steam not within the game, and steam pulls from windows language settings unless you chose differently intentionally... so if I were you I'd try changing it there, change it to something you understand (enough to change it back, anyway) like spanish/french/italian/etc latin-root romance languages, and then back to english...

but it sounds like you're already doing this, and it's not sticking... can you explain the one boot thing... so you mess with languages, fire up the game, works in english, but then secondary startup and any subsequent startups, it's in <what language btw?> so you do it again, and it does it again, just one time?

[Fhantom]

It doesn't tell me what language it is. It always says that the game is in English. For some reason it won't stay in English. I can play in English for one sitting then the next time I open the game it has reset to a foreign language again. In the setting it will always say English. I have deleted all files and reinstalled multiple times. I can only speculate that for some reason the cloud files are messed up.

[Death Approaches]

yeah doesn't work that way, the depots are the same for everyone, so everyone would have this problem not just you, it's very likely config... either steam's or skyrim's...

wait you still haven't said what language it is, so you don't know? everyone knows enough of every language I would assume in our global world to be able to identify polish from japanese from french... so are you sure it's even a language? it is just random-looking gobbledegook characters, like it doesn't have the right font installed?

you sure you have no mods? AE content is definitely mods, CC content is definitely mods, etc.

[Fhantom]

I'm not sure what the issue was and I'm probably not going to find out. Seems like I fixed it but I don't understand how it was an issue in the first place. I started messing with some mods and while I don't understand what I did at least the language doesn't reset. It looked German but there were also broken text boxes. Only time will tell if it continues to be an issue.

[Death Approaches]

well, just know this - if you DID "start messing with some mods" without a mod manager, then there's probably mods in your game directory; Steam does not know about these; you MUST follow a guide for a "clean install" to get it back to sticking to English, if you're not technical; you have to nuke the game directory, not uninstall it, and you have to nuke the skyrim subdirectory under AppData\Local\ too, or this stuff will linger through every single uninstall/reinstall attempt you do... all you're doing is wasting time and bandwidth, it puts it right back the way it was before. you gots to kill it. kill it dead!