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Mortifera.6138
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Story for international players?
Mortifera.6138
Member ✭✭✭✭
Ive noticed that Guild War 2’s story is not as “complex” as that of other MMOs. I have also noticed a lot of players for whom English is not a first or easy language. Is that why the story is simple? To be accessible to all players, regardless of their location?
International players: What do you think about the story?
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First, the game is available in more languages than just English.
Second, not being fluent in English does not necessarily equal low intelligence.
I find that hard to believe. It’s surprising enough that they have English voice actors, as they don’t like to put money into this game.
I play the game in french with french voice, and the story is pretty good.
Edit : and to be fair, it's one of the very few game i put in french, but here, the voice acting in french is amazing.
What do you mean, believe? Just change your settings and check for yourself.
I don‘t get how „it is hard to believe“ either. Checking the settings is simpler than the story, after all
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From the looks of it this thread wasn‘t created to discuss the story though, but more to bash the game.
Hence the „simple story“ and „[Anet] don‘t like to put money into the game“ arguments.
*...the biggest challenge in creating more is the small audience they attract.* - Andrew Gray, February 3, 2020
Yes, that too.
Also, third wrong assumption: Players with really low English language skills won't read this forum, let alone actively discuss here. So asking them about their opinion and experience right here is useless.
If OP was interested in an honest discussion about the topic, they'd maybe want to go to the other official forums, not the English version of all things...
It's another wonderful post where we get assumptions, outright lies and an opinion presented as a fact. Then drawing some completely irrelevant conclusion. You can change the game dialogue's language at any time and there are a few to choose from.
As for the question at hand, obviously the story is simple so people without a high level knowledge of the English language can follow it, just listen/read what the Asura are saying. Words we use every day, like "Exuberant" and "Rambunctious". Or are they?
First, there are already multiple languages available, as has been pointed out. Also I wouldn't consider the Guild Wars 2 story simple or "easy to follow" although granted this probably isn't because it has an overly complex plot, but more just issues with telling a coherent story through the content delivery system of an MMO like GW2. The lore is pretty expansive and interesting, but without out-of-game discussion and fan sites I wouldn't know most of it.
For players who do not have language support, generally they are in a guild with bilingual players. For example, I am in a small Japanese guild. Some of the bilingual members will actually translate some dialog and a short synopsis of the plot in a text file and share it on the guild discord server. Don't underestimate the power of fan translations.
There is even a Japanese GW2 wiki, however plot details haven't been updated since PoF. I do know that these players would love to hear the voice acting in their language, but alas, I don't think a language like Japanese has the player base to even begin making economic sense to begin translation.
Okay, so they have French, probably Spanish and all the other “popular” languages.... What about the rest of the international players?
Actually, they do read these forums. Their posts are how I realized there are a lot of international players in this game.
The storytelling in my opinion is "simplified" (for want of a better term) for other reasons.
It's this latter which almost certainly drives the depth and quality of the story and prevents exploring the narrative and characters in anything more than a surface level of detail. They try too hard just to keep things at a speed to match the action and demands on fast releases and we end up with a basic level of story level more often than not.
I have always believed the game would be better off releasing on a schedule that worked for the story not that was dicated by an arbitrary time frame
We do need to bear in mind that whatever criticisms are laid against the writers, they are clearly skilled and talented with great pedigrees in writing all sorts of things in game and media. This is why I think the structure of the game releases and the fast paced action focus of the gameplay restricts what the are able to do. Which is a shame because there enough glimmers of what they can do to be really excited about the story if they were essentially unleashed and not as tightly constrained by the release schedule and episodic structure like they are
I wouldn't rule out having to write for a global audience as having its own challenges, but I don't think it is tied to simplicity - because as others have said, being international is no reflection of someone's ability to appreciate complex storytelling. It might affect scripting and dialogue choices to ensure legibility, but that is about it
What sleep is here? What dreams there are in the unctuous coiling of the snakes mortal shuffling. weapon in my hand. My hand the arcing deathblow at the end of all things. The horror. The horror. I embrace it. . .
No, it's just a case of lack of inspiration and classical diction.
♀ Gallery: Guild Wars 1 Memories
No more LW episodes, only Expansions and Side Stories, please!
It may also be because GW2 really only lets you have one story (quest) active at a time. So while other games may have side quests that flesh things out, GW2 is very linear - do A, then do B, then do C, etc. GW2 tries to get around some of this by local map events, which since they repeat on a regular basis don't real feel much like story, and by making use of collections. For example, the skyscale collection is would be a side quest in any other game, but in GW2, it is formulated as a collection as a way to get rid of the 'one active story' at a time problem.
English is not my native language.
Well written, enough plot-twists and changes to keep you busy guessing what is really going on. In most cases, you end up guessing wrong and be surprised about yet another twist in the story. The lose ends keep piling up, while playing a story/season and sometimes clear up way later (e. g. Human Personal Story => Caudecus' notes in LW3). This makes the story interesting and people enjoy discussing it - as I noticed it.
Our story-telling is more linear compared to our competitors. We do not have real decision branches, our class and race do rarely matter. This appears to be boring at first, but it offers a couple of advantages:
I used to play story together with a french player. Each of us on their own client. Whenever there was an inside joke, pun or ironic/sarcastic dilalogue, we both giggled at the same time. In most cases we told each others what happened and were surprised, how close the translation actually was. They have put a lot of attention to detail to make the story work in the different languages.
So I think the "easy" story was mostly a design choice, with the whole process in mind. English is used, because it is learned in many countries around the globe, especially by the young ones. We are Pegi 12 after all. Some of the previously mentioned jokes do use expressions, which are not always the same in every language. If you want to make your stuff easy to understand, you have to remove those stylistic elements and rely on things like Simplified English.
The best approach I have seen so far is the Thing Explainer (by Randall Munroe xkcd). It is a book written with only 1,000 words, the most common used words in the English language. It explains stuff like the solar system, nuclear reactor, space-shuttle ... etc. with the most basic writing. I have a bad habit of writing too long texts with too complicated chain-sentences, using expressions and special vocabulary. It does read nicely, but it is quite confusing sometimes, especially when I talk to players with more limited English vocabulary. The book is quite inspiring, in terms of keeping explanations simple. It also shows the limits and what happens if you overdo the task. In some cases, it is better to look up a single word in a dictionary than writing three paragraphs around it.
Personal History had lots of old slangs purposely put to give some "sensation" that these characters are of other culture/background. I like it, its give some "style" specially charr.
main pvp: Khel the Undead(power reaper).
Look at those goal posts move!
"Games only in English...trash game"
"Ok games not just in English but its not in every language? Ha...trash"
100% this.
I haven't played that many MMOs with a more complex story than Guild Wars 2, tbh. MMO stories aren't single player game stories, after all. The exception's I can think of off hand are TSW and SWTOR, which was designed specifically with a Bioware storyline. I don't find most other MMO stories to be complex. I've lost count of how many times I've heard the phrase if you want a story play a single player game.
I thought that one factor for making a "simple" story was due to the target audience being 13+ ?
I am a very casual player.
Very.
Casual.