Leaders speak their own language

)Zarathustra( said:

That was impressive foe the least, Thormodr.

I would still cry if Cleopatra strarted to speak to me in latin or in greek. Although I think we probably have absolutely no idea whatsoever about how Egyptian sounded.

Click to expand...

That's true. Archaeologists don't know exactly how Ancient Egyptian sounded, since the Egyptians usually didn't put in their vowels (I think Arabic works the same today, if I remember correctly), so "Ramses" probably wasn't pronounced like "Ramses" (this is also the reason why you see different spellings like Ramesses, Ramses, Rameses, and so forth). In fact, "Ramses" was probably pronounced something more like "Riamessesa", as that was what the Hittites (or Assyrians, I forgot which) recorded his name as. The "common spelling" of Ancient Egyptian is actually just a way for archaeologists to more easily work when dealing with Ancient Egypt.

So I'm assuming Ramses will be speaking the butchered version of Ancient Egyptian in Civ5. Or he could speak Coptic, since we do know how that sounds like, even though that wouldn'e be the Ancient Egyptpian he would have been speaking.

They should have him speaking Coptic. Has a relationship comparable to that of Old English to modern English, modern Greek to Homeric Greek, and so on. Undoubtedly they'll have Cyrus speaking modern Persian too when he comes in, even though we know pretty much what Old Persian sounded like.

Ramses should be made to speak Goa'uld. This will make the Stargate fans drool for civ.

Btw, are there any Stargate mods for civ?

jprc said:

Has any one played Sid Meier's Pirates?
They do speak, but in a fantasy language !
It is not that bad, and it avoids misunderstandings.
English is not my language, but I always play the games in English as
1- playing the original language reduces the "original" bugs
2- it facilitates patching
3- it is 99.99% of the time the only language available when purchasing the game in some non English-speaking countries... so better to get used to it!

Pirates has everything written, and I was very fine wirh this.

My wife is Thai. She plays games in English as Thai speaking games are not very common, especially when you do not live in thailand! And it allows us to share the computer (I can't read Thai... can you?...)
However, playing games where characters speak (English) and no subtitle is close to impossible: she can't understand as they speak too quickly and with a US accent that is too "heavy" for her level of understanding.

I think uniformizing the language by simply letting historical people speaking what is supposed to be their mother tongue is not a bad idea. Subtitles will always allow defavorised or challlenged people to catch up with the story/topic.

Click to expand...

My girlfriend is Thai and I am learning to read Thai. It was much easier to learn how to read Korean and Japanese though.

Loppan Torkel said:

I want Jeanne d'Arc back

Click to expand...

Please no. I hated her, I think Napoleon is a lot better. Anyone but her.

Anyways, I think its nice that leaders will speak their own languages. I just hope it doesn't get repetative.

Hadrean said:

Please no. I hated her, I think Napoleon is a lot better. Anyone but her.

Anyways, I think its nice that leaders will speak their own languages. I just hope it doesn't get repetative.

Click to expand...

I like Jeanne d'Arc And she is the only female leader I can think for French, actually. You are not British, so why so much hate on her?

We all know that it will be funny for the first three games, and that we will all remove the sound after a week or so because of how annoying it will be.

)Zarathustra( said:

We all know that it will be funny for the first three games, and that we will all remove the sound after a week or so because of how annoying it will be.

Click to expand...

speak for yourself

I'd find it highly entertaining if Alexander spoke Attic most of the time, but lapsed into Macedonian when you pissed him off (as happened when he got drunk and angry).

The problem is that we don't know what Macedonian sounded like! There's only something like 150 known words. I had a brief look and apparently modern Macedonians have made a big psudo-historical hoo-hah about ancient Macedonian not being Greek at all. I was reading the websites and they were drawing the opposite conclusions from stuff they were quoting....

I personally could care less if all the leaders speak their own language,english,klingon or bumblebee!!! It's just eye candy and a gimmick that takes up a lot of game resources that could be better utilized on other aspects of the game.Its not like you'll be able to have a conversation with them anyways and after a couple of months you'll of heard everything they have to say apart from the odd easter egg that will turn up.It's cute but will grow old fast and really a waste of effort imo.

66th of Foot said:

I personally could care less if all the leaders speak their own language,english,klingon or bumblebee!!! It's just eye candy and a gimmick that takes up a lot of game resources that could be better utilized on other aspects of the game.Its not like you'll be able to have a conversation with them anyways and after a couple of months you'll of heard everything they have to say apart from the odd easter egg that will turn up.It's cute but will grow old fast and really a waste of effort imo.

Click to expand...

Wouldn't that be ear candy?

Count me in on hearing Bumblebee. Maybe the language of Klackons from Master of Magic?

66th of Foot said:

I personally could care less if all the leaders speak their own language,english,klingon or bumblebee!!! It's just eye candy and a gimmick that takes up a lot of game resources that could be better utilized on other aspects of the game.Its not like you'll be able to have a conversation with them anyways and after a couple of months you'll of heard everything they have to say apart from the odd easter egg that will turn up.It's cute but will grow old fast and really a waste of effort imo.

Click to expand...

I don´t really understand this negativity. Games are like movies, they are a visual and auditive medium. Would you prefer a Civ 5 that look and sound like Civ 1? They won´t grow any more old than reading the same lines over and over, and if you don´t like it, I´m sure it can be turned off.

It all sounds like gibberish to me.

)Zarathustra( said:

Everybody who has a little bit of respect for cinema as an art watch foreign movies with subtitles. I tried to watch Star Wars in french once, it sounded so gross that I stopped after five minutes.

This conservatism and this lack of opening/curiosity ...

Click to expand...

I don't watch a lot of movies, but when I do, I watch them for enjoyment, not because they are artistic. I'm the same way with the games I play. I don't play games because they give me history lessons (that's why read) or because they look pretty, I play them because they are fun to play. For me hearing some person try to speak some ancient language that's nobody really knows and they are just guessing as to what it sounded like is a waste of the Dev's time. Hearing all the different languages will be novel at first and then become just another feature that I ignore.

I'm not saying I'm not curious about what these dead languages sounded like, but you're kidding yourself if you think that game developers are going to spend a lot of money trying to make a dead language sound as "authentic" as possible. They will put just enough effort into it to make it sound plausible. For the modern languages there are plenty of places I could go if I wanted to hear those, and movies are games are not among them.

For all of the people out there just saying mute them. You're all awfully confident they will give the user the ability to just mute the voices, I'm not so sure of that. So most likely I won't only lose the voices I will lose some other aspect of the game that I might actually get enjoyment out of.

I suppose you people that complain about that leaders now speak also would prefer if your favourite movies had muted lines with the conversation displayed only through subtitles. I mean, wouldn´t it get annoying and repetitive to listen to all that talking??

Hmm. For me having an original language with subtitles is more movie-like since I can only watch english or french movies without subtitles. Everything else must be subtitled.

Anyway - I just want Washington to say: "our words are backed by nuclear weapons"

Honestly, I'm not optimistic about this.
Firaxis should do more researches before adding something that needs historical accuracy.
For me, It seems just a waste of time and resources.

I really like this new feature. I liked how the units in CIV IV spoke their native language (ohmygawd they speak Dutch! was one of my first reactions), it really adds to the atmosphere. I haven't felt the urge to turn it off even once.
It really adds to the game that they don't all speak English. For the same reason I like movies where the actor speaks the language his character is supposed to speak - like for example Der Untergang. Ofcourse, Fireaxis won't do everything completly right - maybe a leader speaks with the wrong accent, or in the wrong language because he was born in a different country that he ruled - but atleast they made a honest attempt and it's less strange than all leaders speaking American English.
I'm used to seeing subtitles as all our movies are usually in English/language they came out in with subtitles, so I can read them and still follow the action.

Sure it doesn't add to the gameplay, but I doubt Fireaxis is going to be heavily slowed by this. It's not that much more work than adding lines for all the units, is it?

WeaselSlapper said:

For all of the people out there just saying mute them. You're all awfully confident they will give the user the ability to just mute the voices, I'm not so sure of that. So most likely I won't only lose the voices I will lose some other aspect of the game that I might actually get enjoyment out of.

Click to expand...

Why not? They did so for Civ IV, Voices is amongst the options that you can mute in the audio settings.

Or, for muting, you could just turn the volume down.

Danielos said:

I don´t really understand this negativity. Games are like movies, they are a visual and auditive medium. Would you prefer a Civ 5 that look and sound like Civ 1? They won´t grow any more old than reading the same lines over and over, and if you don´t like it, I´m sure it can be turned off.

Click to expand...

I would prefer a game that simulates an alternate history possibility that is believable,entertaining,fun with sharp gameplay that challenges the mind.If I wanted to watch animations of long dead historical figures speaking in foreign tongues off a set list of replies then I wouldn't care about any other part of the game.Leaderheads are cutesy and add flavor but they contribute in no way to the gameplay.My contention is why devote time and resources to something that is not an essential element to the game overall?
Games are like movies?...Do you watch a game and play a movie?