Oh yeah, I forgot about the train scene, that was a good one. I guess the part that stuck out as boring to me was the protagonist. And his love interest? I can barely remember if there even was a girlfriend (wife? fiancee?) but I seem to remember being bored to death by a bland main character and his love story.
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I dislike it when you have a bilingual character that makes the type of mistakes in English that speakers of their native language typically don’t make. Or alternatively they insert words from their native language into their sentences when speaking English. Like for some reason saying yes and no in their native language instead of yes and no in English.
For me this almost always comes across as either the writer having no idea what it’s like not be monolingual, or the writer is lazy and couldn’t come up with an organic way to tell the audience that X character speaks Y language. It also just takes me out of the game completely if I have to pause to consult google translate to figure out what a character just said. Or better yet, when an npc says a whole ass sentence in their native language, and the voice actor doesn’t speak the language at all.
I remember this Norwegian npc in a game that made me cringe so hard when I encountered it I had to take a break. Ain’t no Norwegian person saying “ja” and “nei” when speaking English, get outta here!
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I mean, it’s not entirely unheard of for some people to use words from their native non-English language as an exclamation or interjection, or if they’re really struggling to find a word in English, and they’re with another bilingual speaker who shares the same languages.
It also generally can make a difference if they’re a bilingual native English speaker, or a bilingual ESL speaker.
That being said, if the game is written in English, any foreign words should either be translated or able to be easily translated through context/tone.
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True, but they aren’t really the type of characters I’m talking about here.
If the context is that the Mexican PC is talking in English to their also Mexican friend and inserting Spanish words into the conversation, then that’s not an issue.
But when characters insert words like yes and no into their sentences when speaking English to characters they have good reason to believe does not speak their native language. That’s just comes across as incredibly lazy to me.
For example the Norwegian character I briefly mentioned had perfect diction and grammar, with the exception of a fairly thick (and fake) Norwegian accent, and that he said ja and nei instead of yes and no. To me as a Norwegian person, he just came across as a cringy and lazy attempt to make it easy for players to detect that he was Norwegian. Despite the fact that it had come up very organically earlier in the game that he was from Norway.
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“Couple questions. How do you value your what you contribute of to at the workforce? Eh, second part: which do you most can’t the least?”
“…”
“Skwisgar?”
“Huh?”
“Did you write these questions?”
“Ja, I did.”
Probably not actually an example of what you mean, since it’s meant to be comedic, but still reminded me of it.
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If it was already established that the character in question was Norwegian, then yeah, it definitely doesn’t make sense especially when they’re speaking to a native English speaker. There’s also an element of poor writing in there as well on top of the laziness though, seeing as someone being from Norway and speaking the language is already assumed; it’s only relevant to mention if for example they don’t speak the language.
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not necessarily, it could be just easier flow.
The amount of languages I know often leads to a mess - I’ve kept trying to talk in Mandarin instead of German and I occasionally think in English instead of, well, Russian. I can somewhat hold a conversation, but I often forget english words and get a blank space instead of a desired thing.
But I’m not really anyone professional, so this showcase would only work with a learner or someone who doesn’t talk well in his target language. If we go into a setting where the knowledge of multiple languages is a professional requirement, it will be easier to show their knowledge of multiple languages through other details.
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…what if the character is just outright trolling the person they’re speaking with?
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I think the Main point in the critique was, that the foreign speaker does not use the easiest words of the foreign language. I mean yes and no are the first Things you learn, it would just make more sense If they struggled with other words. Like more complicated ones, or with substitutions like having a “,ne.” at the end of a sentence ( filler word in some german regions) than using “ja” or “nein” instead of yes and no. Like a German would rather say Kindergarten than kindergarden.
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It can be a thing that some words just sound pretty. I can end up with a lot of disjointed Japanese in my speech just because I like the way it sounds. If a character likes a particular language, it might be an interesting characterisation trait that depends on the way the author uses it.
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Just to give a bit of input for the language thing, my girlfriend speaks Spanish and Leonese primarily, then English (and then a bunch of other stuff she’s varying levels in), and when we’ve talked she’s caught herself having random nouns or sometimes like whole phrases and groups of words in Spanish (and sometimes she only notices she did it well after saying it). This is with the caveat that she doesn’t speak English very often, but it does happen based on this experience, just nowhere near as nice and clean as authors will tend to make it. And since like language is one of her special interests, it’s not limited to people who are kinda bad at it or anything.
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As someone bilingual in English and Mandarin but raised in a native-Hokkien household, I sometimes mix Hokkien into my speech just to practice the uncomfortably little I know. I try to keep it to phrases that are easy to understand through tone or body language. Hokkien swearing is particularly useful when instructors hand back course grades during class.
Though I’ll admit, sometimes I mix Mandarin and Hokkien into English conversations just to annoy people.
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When the game gives you the option of being the good guy or the bad guy BUT it definitely wants you to be a good guy and forces you to pick that path.
I get it if the story MUST go that way but… don’t give me the other option then.
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Just thought of this because someone mentioned in the Wayhaven thread how they theorize that N might have ‘multiple personalities’ to explain for their in game power level ranking. My initial thought was “Please god, no.” Don’t get me wrong, Wayhaven is a fun series to read and it does what it sets out to do quite well (obviously because it’s so successful), but I cannot see D.I.D. being handled in the proper, tactful way in those books. This isn’t just for Wayhaven, but when anything uses the disorder as a scapegoat or a ‘plot twist’ to reveal that someone was the psycho killer or is super violent but ‘it’s not really them after all!’ type of deal, it makes me cringe a good amount.
That disorder gets so much misrepresentation already and it just irks me so much, because the majority of the time, in real life, the alternate personalities aren’t even violent. There are a multitude of different alternate personality types, yet all that gets shown are the persecutor and protector types, and often it’s just a very violent, bastardized version of the protector type. It’s just a bit annoying that a mental disorder can be handled with such ill-care in so many stories.
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If it helps, I think what N is going to end up being is a Dark Phoenix situation. I don’t THINK that qualifies it as “multiple personalities”* except in a very layman’s use of the term, though now I’m curious to know your opinion. In a similar vein, if you read the webcomic Dumbing of Age, I’d also be curious to know your take on the DID representation there.
*the mutants resident multiple-personality dude is Legion, because it wasn’t enough to saddle him with a deadbeat dad, no, have a mental disorder to go with it
I haven’t saw/read either of those, unfortunately 
I heard Dark Phoenix was a pretty big flop, but it was on my watchlist for a while, so I should probably do that. Essentially though, the use of D.I.D. in a character is okay if they give it the respect of treating it as a mental disorder rather than a major plot point. It can be part of the plot, but to have it be the entire gotcha moment of the story is lazy and hurtful I feel.
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There’s also how games with choices always seem to have this issue where a sequel needs to pick which choices are canon, and either you need to invalidate half the game or leave things painfully vague.
Usually, canon just says the good route happened, and honestly, that’s ok most of the time, but annoying if the evil route was more fun or satisfying. That is pretty rare for me these days though.
It’s actually the Subversive Exceptions™ that bug me more. Where you have a golden ending that you unlock if you did everything right, and then the game says “lol no actually, we thought it’d be interesting if the REAL ending was the one where you fuck up and half the cast dies!” They do it in sequels sometimes but it’s also huge in Visual Novels. It’s weird with VNs too bc sometimes the story is a one-off with no plans for a sequel. Why label one of the endings as canon if you’re not gonna do a sequel? The fuck is the point of the others then? Why even have gameplay at all? Why not just make it a kinetic? What, is the author gonna drive over to my house and pick the options for me too? There’s this one horror VN, The Letter, where it’s actually possible to save everyone and have a happy ending, but the true ending is bittersweet and has several people die and the ghost get what she wants. Why? What’s the point?
Being vague CAN work sometimes too, but there’s a few examples where it’s just puzzling. Like, in the Metro series, there’s a character named Pavel in the second game who works for one of the enemy factions. He’s very likeable, you work together for a bit, he goes back to his comrades, you fight, yada yada. But there’s a sense of comradery with the guy that adds a bit of tragedy to the situation. He’s one of my favorite characters. In the final battle, you can either kill him or save him, and saving him is the good option. Pick enough good options, good ending. Too many evil options or not enough good ones (you can miss some), bad ending.
In any case, he was going to appear in the third game, but his content was cut. Only speculation I saw was that the devs didn’t want to invalidate the “kill him” option. If that’s true though, that’s really stupid. The bad ending is already non-cannon. It ends with you and everyone else DYING when your base blows up! The sequel already has the good guys alive from the last game, and it starts in said base. Why leave it ambiguous exactly which choices you made that got the good ending?
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I don’t actually remember any good bad choices (that’s a weird phrase but you get it) in games. Maybe in neverwinter nights 2. Not the choices but the bad ending. (A good bad ending 
)
I played the letter, didn’t like it. That game doesn’t want you to have happy endings i guess since it’s a horror thing. Tho it’s possible.
You’re right so many visual novels can be just kinetic novels because choices just doesn’t matter. Author have a specific idea? Fine then, do that. Don’t give me choices. If it’s good story i will enjoy it anyway.
If there’s a “canon good ending” and a “non-canon bad ending” (I hate the idea that there’s objectively “good” and “bad” choices/endings in games, but that’s another topic), why? Why even let the player make a choice or set of choices if the next game is already planned and invalidate any choices they might make? It’s just silly.
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