Does anyone know why they used a different PDA voice from the first game?

[hindlet]

I mean, it just seems harder to understand and alot more in your face than in the first game. Is there a reason why it was changed?

[Jackerino]

Originally posted by admiral1018:

It's never established that Robin likes other cultures. She's a biologist who happens to focus on alien life. And going by the context of the game, it doesn't seem like there is much (if any) other intelligent, sentient life in the Subnautica universe that had been discovered before the precursors. Thus, no culture. An Earth-based scientist today who studies marine life doesn't necessarily have a fascination with other cultures. The study of culture is anthropology, not biology.

She literally says it multiple times; are you sure? She even has a spiel about how excited she is to learn about an Alien Culture when she finds the ruins and interacts with Al-An and stuff

[admiral1018]

Where does she say that? When they meet, she's frustrated with AL-AN for violating her by entering her mind and just goes along with him to get him out. She considers it a burden, not a learning opportunity. Even after some time has passed, it's remarkable how little she asks AL-AN about his species and culture given what a unique chance she has to study alien life. Instead we get nonsense where she recites middle school poetry to him in place of a real conversation about science. And from all their conversations, about the only thing we really know of AL-AN's culture is that they function as a collective. If you learned much more about the precursor culture than this, I'd love to know.

Robin does agree to travel with AL-AN at the end, which is very stupid based on AL-AN's comments that his people may regard her as a pet and experiment on her. However, even in that case, it's not stated it's because she's culturally curious; it's because she has no family or ties back on Earth, nor does she have any other place to go. It feels like it was copied from the end of Prometheus, and I'd be surprised if it actually ended up any better for her than it did for Shaw.

However, this is far from the original point about Robin being curious about other Earth-based cultures, which is definitely not established.

[lopessam]

Originally posted by hindlet:

I mean, it just seems harder to understand and alot more in your face than in the first game. Is there a reason why it was changed?

I wouldent say about Alterra's tech matches blah blah blah, i would say, the PDA has multiple voices options, Robin just may have chose another voice, just like your Iphone you change your ring tone.

[Jackerino]

Originally posted by admiral1018:

Where does she say that? When they meet, she's frustrated with AL-AN for violating her by entering her mind and just goes along with him to get him out. She considers it a burden, not a learning opportunity.

You're right about this, yes. But her being fascinated with aliens doesn't mean she has no boundaries regarding them.

Originally posted by admiral1018:

Even after some time has passed, it's remarkable how little she asks AL-AN about his species and culture given what a unique chance she has to study alien life. Instead we get nonsense where she recites middle school poetry to him in place of a real conversation about science. And from all their conversations, about the only thing we really know of AL-AN's culture is that they function as a collective. If you learned much more about the precursor culture than this, I'd love to know.

This is-.. Strange. Are you sure? They talk all the time. They discuss things like philosophy and what it means to be a human or what it means to be AL-AN, as well as what things AL-AN's race does, and she asks about them quite a bit, and vice-versa. I'm not sure how you missed that.

In regards to what we do know about them, they're a Collective, they don't dream, they don't have any sense of individuality, and their sense of selves are extremely specific. It's seen as immensely rude to the Collective to do things like clone yourself for example as it's terrible to them. They also utilize artificial bodies so that they can persevere longer than their biological bodies allow them to do so. They see biological bodies as inferior, and limited. There's quite a lot that we learn about them.

Originally posted by admiral1018:

Robin does agree to travel with AL-AN at the end, which is very stupid based on AL-AN's comments that his people may regard her as a pet and experiment on her. However, even in that case, it's not stated it's because she's culturally curious; it's because she has no family or ties back on Earth, nor does she have any other place to go. It feels like it was copied from the end of Prometheus, and I'd be surprised if it actually ended up any better for her than it did for Shaw.

To be fair, it was dumb that she traveled with him to their planet. But also, like I said, they really did talk a lot and get a close bond and were willing to discuss these things quite a bit. I don't necessarily think it came out of left field, but it definitely was an impulsive decision that she shouldn't have made. I liked seeing the Precursor's home but like, that was a very dumb decision on Robin's part

Originally posted by admiral1018:

However, this is far from the original point about Robin being curious about other Earth-based cultures, which is definitely not established.

She's a Xenologist who is fascinated with alien life and other races as well as alien cultures. This really has been explicitly established and I'm not sure why or how you missed that. Otherwise, I never said she explicitly is fascinated with other earth-based cultures, I only said she seems like the type, because of her established personality, and the way she listens to various music from different places, collects things from all over, etc.; I did say she has an interest in other cultures but that doesn't mean it's her primarily fascination, it just means she's more adventurous and indulges in other cultures quite a bit.

If she is fascinated with alien life, and finds alien sentient life to be particularly interesting, it really isn't a stretch to assume she would change the voice of her PDA to something she likes from other cultures or that she would find cultures from other planets interesting (remember, she's a Xenoworker). It wouldn't even have to be because she likes that particular culture, it could simply be because she likes the voice, in the same way that someone may change their Alexa to have a different voice.

[Drizzt]

ok - i didn't read 80 posts over two years for this one - but since i mentioned it in my thread about the game i thought i would mention it here since it is the topic

my only gripe with the new PDA voice is the "humorous" tone that they added to the writing - the previous voice was deliberately "computer-y", particularly using weird intonation and pronunciation to emphasise it - as well as being entirely clinical in its explanations

i'm fine with them having a more human voice here - but i would have preferred if they retained the more clinical tone of the explanations, and avoided any sarcasm or jokes - especially since there is enough humor in the rest of the writing, whether it is voice logs or company documents etc

but it is not a big deal - each explanation only happens once - and some of them don't even play due to what appears to be an audio streaming bug

i still found it to be a pretty great sequel - just about to have another run through after completing it for the first time :-)

[Vanguard]

There's a mod that changes PDA voice to a different synthesized female voice: https://www.nexusmods.com/subnauticabelowzero/mods/290 (google "PDA Female Voice - Emma" if the link got filtered out).
Installation is simple: find the Player.bank file in the archive and put it in ...\SubnauticaZero\SubnauticaZero_Data\StreamingAssets (you'll have to overwrite the original file so suggest you making a backup copy of the original, but you can always verify the game cache on Steam itself).
I didn't scroll through all 6 pages of this discussion so not sure if it was mentioned, sorry if it was.

[Vanguard]

https://youtu.be/zrGBtBvXsj8

[Devoras]

Originally posted by Vanguard:

There's a mod that changes PDA voice to a different synthesized female voice: https://www.nexusmods.com/subnauticabelowzero/mods/290 (google "PDA Female Voice - Emma" if the link got filtered out).
Installation is simple: find the Player.bank file in the archive and put it in ...\SubnauticaZero\SubnauticaZero_Data\StreamingAssets (you'll have to overwrite the original file so suggest you making a backup copy of the original, but you can always verify the game cache on Steam itself).
I didn't scroll through all 6 pages of this discussion so not sure if it was mentioned, sorry if it was.

Thank you! I found the pda voice so annoying that I wasn't going to play it without a voice mod to change it, I didn't think it would happen. Now I'll be able to play the game.

[Crusader3773]

I personally LOVE subnautica 1 and am having a hard time with the pda voice... I honestly hate it which is just a shame I can barely stand to play below zero because of a bad voice actor... here's to hoping subautica 2 will go back to the better voice actor!

[admiral1018]

Originally posted by Crusader3773:

I personally LOVE subnautica 1 and am having a hard time with the pda voice... I honestly hate it which is just a shame I can barely stand to play below zero because of a bad voice actor... here's to hoping subautica 2 will go back to the better voice actor!

The PDA in Below Zero doesn't use a voice actor, it using a text-to-speech program with an Indian accent. It makes no sense to me why UWE went that route when many people reported having a hard time understanding it. Would have been nice if there was at least an option to use the original voice (which was used during much of the EA period).

If you are having a really hard time with it, there is a mod to change the voice.

[©.VorteX]

The answer is politics, plain and simple.

Same reason we got an annoying, joyless s**tpail of a diversity quota protagonist that never shuts up and that no sane person would ever identify with.