Man, some of this dialogue.

[Irish Android]

The way some characters talk in this game can come off not only really anachronistic, but like a highschool boy conversing with his buddies. Amiri will, at two separate points, use the word "boobs" and "wussies". I feel like I'm watching an episode of Beavis and Butt-Head. That took me out of the experience, even hearing it from a barbarian.

A minor complaint, I know, but it struck me as out of place. It makes me worry a little about the competancy and general maturity of the developers, or at least some of the writers.

Great game, though.

[Lemming]

We've come a ways from Irenicus that is for sure.

[heh]

Originally posted by Lemming:

We've come a ways from Irenicus that is for sure.

Irenicus was carried by his VA. Guy is cringe incarnate.

[Meeky]

Originally posted by blood!:

Originally posted by Lemming:

We've come a ways from Irenicus that is for sure.

Irenicus was carried by his VA. Guy is cringe incarnate.

Yeah, his lines are actually campy. Really campy.

I still love BG2, but playing it today makes me cringe at some of the dialogue. A lot of CRPGs are like that. You either wear rose tinted glasses when dealing with older game dialogue or you take them off and say "Wow, that's... not how I remember it."

Icewind Dale avoided that problem by and large by not having recruitable companions, just PCs focused on murderhoboing. It's also my favorite of the old Infinity Engine games.

[Irish Android]

I thought of Irenicus, too. He could be cringey, sure, and I could tolerate that in a mixed, historically inaccurate, vague time period that is the crux of D&D campaign settings, but a lot of his dialogue was very sharp, and at least, creative. He had great lines, such as "a spell component slipped into your soup" to his response on asking him about his plans: "you will get no villain's exposition from me."

This speaks to the maturity level of these dialogues. Much of it is lost in translation, I'm sure. I've also been typo correcting screen shots I've taken for better clarity; wonder if any of the higher-ups want these.

[starkmaddness]

Yea, Amiri's dialogue is really bad. I understand the tone they were going for, which was fine, but the word choice just really makes you cringe. You're right, it is less barbarian, and more teenage boy.

[heh]

Originally posted by starkmaddness:

Yea, Amiri's dialogue is really bad. I understand the tone they were going for, which was fine, but the word choice just really makes you cringe. You're right, it is less barbarian, and more teenage boy.

She kinda is a teenage boy though, mentally.

But yeah, a lot of the dialogue is pretty weird. The walking tower shield especially annoys me, for some reason. She and everyone else makes a big deal about how she's obsessed with etiquette, but her dialogue makes her sound like a... well, not a common wench maybe, but definitely not someone with good manners. The things she describes herself doing aren't very polite either.

Honestly, her character seems very contradictory. When you're out talking to people and managing your kingdom with her, she'll be very 'lawful neutral'; keeping her personal feelings on a matter secondary to following the rules. She'll note that she may disagree with someone or something but it's the law so it's fine. But then when you talk to her about her time at the paladin order, she describes herself as someone who definitely isn't lawful. I guess that may have been fine if we were allowed to remark upon it (since it's so extremely remarkable), which could've led to some soul-searching of hers on her conflicted nature or whatever, but at least as far as I've gotten there's no option to talk to make any interesting remarks to her. Most you get it to tell her that she can stop following proper etiquette in conversation with you... even though she hasn't been doing that to begin with... and then she respoinds as if she isn't going to stop.

I don't know if the writers are bad or if the translators were bad but something is definitely off.

[Irish Android]

Originally posted by blood!:

Originally posted by starkmaddness:

Yea, Amiri's dialogue is really bad. I understand the tone they were going for, which was fine, but the word choice just really makes you cringe. You're right, it is less barbarian, and more teenage boy.

She kinda is a teenage boy though, mentally.

But yeah, a lot of the dialogue is pretty weird. The walking tower shield especially annoys me, for some reason. She and everyone else makes a big deal about how she's obsessed with etiquette, but her dialogue makes her sound like a... well, not a common wench maybe, but definitely not someone with good manners. The things she describes herself doing aren't very polite either.

Honestly, her character seems very contradictory. When you're out talking to people and managing your kingdom with her, she'll be very 'lawful neutral'; keeping her personal feelings on a matter secondary to following the rules. She'll note that she may disagree with someone or something but it's the law so it's fine. But then when you talk to her about her time at the paladin order, she describes herself as someone who definitely isn't lawful. I guess that may have been fine if we were allowed to remark upon it (since it's so extremely remarkable), which could've led to some soul-searching of hers on her conflicted nature or whatever, but at least as far as I've gotten there's no option to talk to make any interesting remarks to her. Most you get it to tell her that she can stop following proper etiquette in conversation with you... even though she hasn't been doing that to begin with... and then she respoinds as if she isn't going to stop.

I don't know if the writers are bad or if the translators were bad but something is definitely off.

If you listen to the creative director talk about the game, Alexander Mishulin, you can hear that he speaks in a very halting English, so I'm sure there's a cultural stop-gap, and like you said, translation problems, where idioms and common slang aren't brought across very well. But I had thought they hired a wide variety of writers to help them, so who knows.

I can definitely say that there were enough typos in the prologue that I accumulated over a dozen typo-screenshots (I'm a writer and anal about this stuff), as well as noticed several odd choices in sentence structure. Maybe it's them *trying* to cater to American audiences and they think a woman saying "boobs" in what's basically the Middle Ages is cool?

But yeah, I agree. Something is off-kilter.

Note: edited for cursing.

[Chimpandre]

tbh amiri is the worse character dialogue-wise.

it s a pity because combat-wise she's a truck early

[Irish Android]

Originally posted by Leader:

tbh amiri is the worse character dialogue-wise.

it s a pity because combat-wise she's a truck early

I can agree, and to be fair, maybe she's the only bad apple in the bunch. A lot of other characters raise an eyebrow, but don't make me throw my arms up and laugh like Amiri does.

[Pulzello]

Acctualy I like her, sure her conversations are very..... simplistic, but they are in line with her character and I always loving to have someone dumb in my party. For now I appreciated all companions dialogs, sure they could be better but also I saw worst

[McCloud]

I came here to make this exact post. Well said, now I don't have to. Not too sure if I'm keeping this game because of the writing no matter how great the combat may be--which I haven't got to yet. The voice acting and the writing is 3rd grade level at best.

[Irish Android]

Originally posted by Pulzello:

Acctualy I like her, sure her conversations are very..... simplistic, but they are in line with her character and I always loving to have someone dumb in my party. For now I appreciated all companions dialogs, sure they could be better but also I saw worst

I get where you're coming from. Personally, however, lemme say this. I dig simplistic writing. It gets your point across, the plot is driven forward, everybody moves right along. Look at Pillars Of Eternity, which is, incidentally, a worse example of bad writing in my opinion. It includes run-on sentences in overly long paragraphs a person dug into thesaurus.com for, like a first year college student inflating an essay. Bad writing all around.

Here? I don't know. You can do a "dumb barbarian" better than this. And I think the angle they were trying for is feminist, although I haven't progressed with Amiri much. Cool direction. I dig it. But the way she talks is counter-productive to that sort've character arc. I can't imagine a woman who was sexually objectified in her homeland openly remarking to people about her "boobs" and calling other people "wussies" -- or if you want her to talk like that, don't go the female empowerment route. One or the other.

[Otter in a scarf]

As a native speaker, the dialogue writing is actually better in Russian. I did a few reloads switching languages back and forth to compare a couple of companion conversations, and they just had a more natural flow in Russian. It's some minor things that are difficult to put your finger on, but overall impression is different. And there was at least one instance where the meaning of a line changed a lot in translation.

Not sure about Amiri though, I only saw her English version.

[Irish Android]

Originally posted by Yria:

As a native speaker, the dialogue writing is actually better in Russian. I did a few reloads switching languages back and forth to compare a couple of companion conversations, and they just had a more natural flow in Russian. It's some minor things that are difficult to put your finger on, but overall impression is different. And there was at least one instance where the meaning of a line changed a lot in translation.

Not sure about Amiri though, I only saw her English version.

*Thank you*, I was wondering about that and concludes a few suspicions. I figured it would flow better in their native language.

[McCloud]

When I was notified there are "villians" breaking in to the Hall I Exited the game. Some mustached villian with a cape and a generic black bomb that says "Bomb" on it, I pictured. Was done right there. ~laughs