Excellent game, but the swearing is not very well done and rather childish.

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Excellent game, but the swearing is not very well done and rather childish.

Excellent game, just bought the EE version, already have the original, well worth it... BUT..........I know you have aimed the game at a 'mature' audience but WHO IN GOD'S NAME is deciding what constitutes 'mature' content? Quite frankly, your choice to throw 'fukk' (imagine my surprise when your forum actually censored what I said... effectively you are saying is.. " we can sell you swearing, but you can't do it for free".. lame!!) and 'nudey' pictures in to the mix every so often simply comes off as an immature attempt at "being mature".... being an older player myself, to me your clumsy attempts at showing 'maturity' in the dialogue is pretty piss poor and just comes across as an attempt at sensationalism that is pretty much wide of the mark. As said, I do like the game, and have nothing but admiration for the accomplishment and the obvious care and attention that has crafted this game, however your dialogue writers should be beaten and sacked for not realising that the word 'fukk' DOES NOT equate to mature content, and DOES equate to a bunch of 12 years old sitting around giggling like girls.I'm certainly willing to admit that something may be lost in translation.. but if this is the case, THEN GET A BETTER TRANSLATION TEAM.. or at least one with an actual and real vocabulary and a sense of dark dialogue.Love the game.. but grow it up a bit guys.
 
Well if you read the one book that is in English, you would see its quite fitting to the game world. The game is also rated mature because of the language. They didn't put it in there just to get a M rating. Also note that other version have full nidity.As for the forum thing, anyone can access these forums and read them, but you have to buy the game to get to see/hear the swearing, which you may or may not get IDed for.
 
Considering how badly the dialogue is written.. if it actually DOES fit the world, then it's a pretty poor picture (however, I have to say that personally I feel that it doesn't fit the world).Yes, there is going to be profanity... but it's bloody well not going to be 'fukk' all the time.. that's just shoddy writing.. as said, it's just been put there, either to make all the children go "ooo, aahhh", or quite simply because the translators have such a poor range of words to choose from.. the translators REALLY need to consult with the actual dialogue writers in a more comprehensive manner.. either that or expand their reading material, because it's pretty obvious that their influences of what counts as dark dialogue (and remember that it's the dialogue that conveys most of the atmosphere of the material)... is mostly at the trashy end of the scale... Less Jackie Collins and more Dean Koontz.
 
Given the dark and gritty world, I'd be surprised if swearing were NOT rampant. I thought "Your mother sucks dwarf c*ck," as fighting words was brilliant, and I actually thought that there wasn't that much swearing in the game, given the setting and characters.
Ramsmeat is the boss of the local syndicate, Coleman is a drug pusher, and most of the people in the slums are labelled "Thug" or "Bandit." Salamandra is performing genetic experiments on kidnap victims, and Yaevinn and the Grand Master are conducting a war over the rights of nonhumans. I wouldn't expect ANY of those people to talk as if they were in church.
 
Please do keep spoilers in spoiler tags since this is not the S&Q forum :)Also, remember that while there is profanity in the game, there should be a limit to that on our boards considering that not everyone here is of age and may thus be exposed to such language reading this thread. We wouldn't want concerned parents suing CDPR now would we?If your sentence can be written without the insertion of a particular expletive, do so. Otherwise I will see myself forced to remove all expletives from the posts here.
 
As said.. of course there is going to be profanity.. I'm not complaining about swearing in general, I am, however, pretty damn miffed that it's been handled in such a childish and lazy manner.There are some notable exceptions.. but on the whole it all comes off as rather clumsy.. something a focus group would put together... just strings of generic cursing.. the whole thing could have been managed better if the translators (or the actual writers, whoever is to blame) had a better grasp of dark and dangerous language, as opposed to just falling on the tried (or should that be 'tired'!) and tested "yeah, let's throw in a 'fukk'.As far as I'm concerned, it's the lack of depth in the dialogue (not the storyline itself) that is the weakest part of the game, and because it hasn't been handledd very well it changes the tone of the experience.As for having to protect the 'innocent'... it's a mature product for mature people.. the 'young' shouldn't be here, and if they are, then it's their fault if they come across something they aren't comfortable with.
 
in books there's is heavy swearing but much less of it and it perfectly suits the situation. in game the language is not the actual problem but how frequently you hear it. also when we think of a thug or even a dwarf archetype we imagine a coarse, direct man who wont abstain from using hard language. try to define the personality of each of those npcs. you'll expect them swearing but when you actually hear it, plain and uncensored, you are shocked. generally i dont have anything against swearing when its justified by the situation but when i hear someone swearing and i dont know the context it seriously hurts my ears. there must be a reason to swear. only a boor or unmature person will randomly throw curses. we should remember that we dont know the mood of those npcs or context of their discussions. its just a game so it limits us in this matter.i believe this disappointment is just an initial reaction when you first play through act 1 and visit act 2 slums. too many simple peasents and thugs in there. later you'll encounter higher social classes and dialogues will change radicaly.
 
Do you have a specific example of poor use of expletives in mind? There are parts of the UK where the use of swear words amounts to punctuation in language rather than what I would consider legitimate use of 'the F bomb' and 'C word'. Now if you are complaining that these modern swear words are anachronous at best and at worse expressions from a literary universe entirely seperate from the world of The Witcher, then fine, I might perhaps agree. However, it is notoriously difficult to trace swear words etymologically as the majority of surviving sources were not produced by those likely to use such expressions. That said, most modern English swear words date back to at least the high to late medieval period if not earlier.Frankly, coming from playing Oblivion I was quite amused the first time a character told me to 'F off', so unexpected was it. As for the usage of expletives in the language, well, if you consider modern use of swearing amongst those of relatively little formal education, soldiers and dock workers etc, then swearing is rife. Historically, it has been suggested by some historians that amongst pirates of the Golden Age of Piracy (1713-1726) that swearing was used as a language of sorts in order to differentiate the pirates from everyone else and was even used as a test for those who wished to join a crew (If you didn't swear then you were considered untrustworthy). Ergo I have no problem with high levels of profanity used in the game by 'gritty' characters, as to my mind it seems entirely plausible and 'in character' for them to do so. I rather fail to see what all the fuss is about.
 
TheWalker said:
Considering how badly the dialogue is written..
When you say the dialog is poorly written, are you referring to the structure of the dialog and the way the story is told, or simply to the swearing? I would agree (especially in v1.3) that some of the conversation seems stilted and unnatural (Berengar's repeated, "that so?"... Thaler's humerously cryptic, "that a problem?"), but charmingly so :) I would imagine brevity and translation may have worked a little against the writers there, although I find it to be more polished now in the EE.To be honest, I don't find the swearing in the game to be over the top or immature. In fact, I would find a plethora of lesser language to be horribly out of place and a big disappointment, so if I imagine myself in that situation, I understand how you're feeling now. Do I think swearing is necessary to pull this story off? hmmmm... not quiet. I just think the game world would be a far lesser experience if there were little or no swearing.To my imaginings, Vizima isn't the prettiest of places. As much as the noblemen and women might enjoy swanning around pretending it is so, there's a very dark and nasty streak just below the surface. As the book blurb says, "not everything monstrous-looking is evil, and not everything fair is good." And I think that's part of what the devs/writers were shooting for. When trying to create a dark, seedy underbelly or violently oppressed ghettos, it would seem to me to be hopelessly out of place and completely non-sensical to have the people there saying things like, "oh darn! Drat! Oh curses!" if only to simply break up the type of curses used. Hence the repeated use of your more traditional curses :)If you want to portray a class of oppressed, lesser-educated and/or thuggish people, well, they don't usually have the dazzling vocabulary skills of someone like Dandelion. Nor would they have an air of grace to keep up :D I don't know, maybe I'm the immature one, but I actually appreciated that the game writers and devs didn't try to water down the language. I think it adds a layer of grittiness and desperation to the surroundings and makes the game experience on the whole more believable, and I can't see what you mean by lazy? Your creed and mine differ, and that's cool :)
TheWalker said:
There are some notable exceptions.. but on the whole it all comes off as rather clumsy.. something a focus group would put together... just strings of generic cursing.. the whole thing could have been managed better if the translators (or the actual writers, whoever is to blame) had a better grasp of dark and dangerous language, as opposed to just falling on the tried (or should that be 'tired'!) and tested "yeah, let's throw in a 'fukk'.
I'd be interested if you could provide some examples of what you mean by lazy and clumsy language? Likewise, an indication of what consitutes dark and dangerous language would be helpful in order to understand the argument you're trying to make. At the very least, I may learn a new phrase or two to use at work :D
 
TheWalker said:
I know you have aimed the game at a 'mature' audience but WHO IN GOD'S NAME is deciding what constitutes 'mature' content? Quite frankly, your choice to throw 'fukk'...and 'nudey' pictures in to the mix every so often simply comes off as an immature attempt at "being mature".... being an older player myself, ...showing 'maturity' in the dialogue is pretty piss poor and just comes across as an attempt at sensationalism that is pretty much wide of the mark. ....however your dialogue writers should be beaten and sacked for not realising that the word 'fukk' DOES NOT equate to mature content, and DOES equate to a bunch of 12 years old sitting around giggling like girls.
I haven't read a more immature post since a long time, an its topic is "how immature is the game"... ;D
 
Myself, I find it hilarious how you can walk into a tavern in a not so good area, and hear just about anything... Not everywhere do you hear about what your mom sucked.
 
UlteriorModem , please mind our forum rules and don't mock this topic, thxI don't mind the swearing even if its undemanding and beneath our understanding of treasury of words. Those swearing poeple don't have education and cultivation. I don't expect them to express themselfs like scholars ;DThe Walker, nevertheless it would help if you could name a few examples which are worse.btwThere was a div diary about this topic from the translator for the EE http://www.gamedaily.com/games/the-witcher/pc/game-features/the-witcher-dev-diary-enhanced-edition-dialogue--exclusive/
 
Petra Silie said:
I don't mind the swearing even if its undemanding and beneath our understanding of treasury of words. Those swearing poeple don't have education and cultivation. I don't expect them to express themselfs like scholars
Exactly. What are you expecting The Walker? These are common street thugs (or in the case of Thaler, someone who's impersonating one) we're talking about. It makes perfect sense that people like them would resort to the overuse of swear words. Contrast them to a more "refined" character like Princess Adda who can talk graphically about sex without using any swear words, or Lauvarden or De'Wett who have their own way of expressing themselves. More conservative characters like the nurses never come close to swearing. Then you have the in between, like Garelt or Zoltan who aren't afraid to throw down the F bomb or other words on occasion, but only when it adds to the meaning of what they're saying. If you give the game a fair chance, you'll find that the dialog is quite deep in that every character or character type has their own unique speech patterns.As for the sex cards, that's artwork like any other graphical part of the game that's chronicled in your journal. They're erotic because they're SEX cards. If you find them immature, you probably find Geralt's sexcapades immature anyway, so you should just avoid that part of the game since it is optional.
 
Hmm, I didn't notice anything over done with the curse words. Some lines were repeated too much, but thats just because many lines are repeated too much.Maybe you live with very high class and respectible people. I on the other hand experiance way more cursing on a day to day basis then this... at my work place alone.
 
From an interview done in August, 2007 with Michal Madej:"After hearing about the difficulty of translation, I wanted to know how much of the original was actually retained. Languages that belong to different groups are harder to translate to and from each other. Since English is a Germanic language, while Polish is a Slavonic one, I was sure that the humor and finer points would be lost, so I asked Michal about that.What I learned was that swearing, not humor, was the biggest challenge. Polish has a rich palette of various curses. Apparently one can even invent words on the fly and they would be immediately recognizable to the audience. English is lacking in that sense, because we only have six or ten expletives. One of the problems the team had to face was the conversion of Sapkowski’s rich and very politically-incorrect language into something that would retain the meaning without being vulgar. Michal told me that a lot of wordplay is based on strong language without it being too harsh, and the CDProjekt’s translator and the one who was working on the novels both agreed that the swearing was the most difficult part." (From http://www.realworldgamer.com/article.php?cat=&id=73&pagenumber=2)I had no idea that in Polish, one can make up new curse words, and people would understand. That sounds very cool. I thought the thing about mothers and dwarves was funny, but it sounds like it's nowhere near as rich and varied as it could be in Polish. I've heard people mention that they want to learn Polish so as to be able to read Sapkowski in the original, but here's another motivation: you'll be able to swear much better! :)
 
I like a good curse myself but it's one of the most difficult things for an actor to pull off and make it sound realistic and convincing. I think this is where it sometimes falls down.Nothing to do with the translation, it does sound a bit lets put it in for the teens at times and does not sound very realistic or particularly belevable.It often does not have the hard edge and strong emotion behind the words that you get in real life and ends up just sounding rather naff to my ear.Some of the acting is ace some is terrible. I wish games would pay more attention to it as it affects youre immersion in it to such a large degree.Still the storyline in the Witcher is among the best I have come across in a game and the most adult.
 
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