KickStarter Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pre-Release Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[bataille]

bataille people make typos.

It's not the point. Nobody is perfect, but having a non-native English speaker writing the game is a pretty serious concern.

OK, but the fact that the guy made a typo is entirely irrelevant. It's not supporting evidence for your claim. If they made 80 typos, it might be.

At the end of the day, 90% of natural English speakers are shitty writers as well. And whether with Russians or Brits, the only way to really tell is to read their writing, not look at their PhDs or ask them to spell pulchritudinous.

Yeah, well, having the instrument of your craft as your modus operandi from the cradle helps immensely, just saying. Especially when we're talking about Russians, who are not exactly Dutch-level proficient in English; even if they happen to be writers (in their mother tongue). Speculations aside, the lead writer seems to have penned a single pulpy sci-fi novel in Russian. So we aren't talking Joseph Conrad here.

Anyway, somebody should have asked that during the ama. Now we'll have to wait till 25th to see for ourselves!

 

[pomenitul]

however arbitrary they are

 

[Shadenuat]

Especially when we're talking about Russians

Trust me, russian writing usually sucks not because of bad translations.

 

[bataille]

however arbitrary they are

Now, now, let's not evoke the spirit of Wittgenstein, Frege, or any other philosopher of language here. We need to stay positive for the next 3 days...

 

[pomenitul]

Analytic philosophy aside, I was snidely pointing out that 'however arbitrary they may be' is the more correct construction. Not to belittle Lacrymas's English (I myself am ESL, strictly speaking), but such mistakes tend to be rarer among native speakers. When they suck at writing (which most people do anyway), it's generally for different reasons.

 

[Shadenuat]

it is a mystery

not a mystery at all.

Kingmaker already suffers for one of the main reasons many new RPGs do: developers trying to somehow find a correlation between the legendary "old school" concept and writing. The result leads to the idea that "old school" RPG should have 15 million words, all characters should be super detailed and tell you of their lives and, of course, walls of text everywhere.

And since russians are ones of the most oldskool of them all, they'll shove their baldersgate into your throat till you scream. It is already somewhat occurring in the game, with NPCs going on long rants about their plans, feelings or history, even if said NPCs are not very interesting to begin with.

The biggest one are letters and other types of correspondence, which are either long just for the lulz of it or because they were copy pasted from pnp module. Not sure on that.

Then there is shit like trying to be funny but that not just translating well into other languages etc.

Then again, after Dragonspear and last Obsidian game, I am not even sure russians write that poorly as I thought, lol.

 

[Tigranes]

bataille people make typos.

It's not the point. Nobody is perfect, but having a non-native English speaker writing the game is a pretty serious concern.

OK, but the fact that the guy made a typo is entirely irrelevant. It's not supporting evidence for your claim. If they made 80 typos, it might be.

At the end of the day, 90% of natural English speakers are shitty writers as well. And whether with Russians or Brits, the only way to really tell is to read their writing, not look at their PhDs or ask them to spell pulchritudinous.

Yeah, well, having the instrument of your craft as your modus operandi from the cradle helps immensely, just saying. Especially when we're talking about Russians, who are not exactly Dutch-level proficient in English; even if they happen to be writers (in their mother tongue). Speculations aside, the lead writer seems to have penned a single pulpy sci-fi novel in Russian. So we aren't talking Joseph Conrad here.

Anyway, somebody should have asked that during the ama. Now we'll have to wait till 25th to see for ourselves!

Yes, we will see for ourselves, because although English proficiency obviously matters, nationality is a poor predictor of the eventual quality of the writing in an RPG. That's all we're trying to tell you.

 

[Lacrymas]

Analytic philosophy aside, I was snidely pointing out that 'however arbitrary they may be' is the more correct construction. Not to belittle Lacrymas's English (I myself am ESL, strictly speaking), but such mistakes tend to be rarer among native speakers. When they suck at writing (which most people do anyway), it's generally for different reasons.

When the New York Times make the same "mistake", I'd think both are correct. Citation needed, basically. Even if you find the Ultimate Authority on this, I doubt most people would notice it, including native speakers.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Analytic philosophy aside, I was snidely pointing out that 'however arbitrary they may be' is the more correct construction. Not to belittle Lacrymas's English (I myself am ESL, strictly speaking), but such mistakes tend to be rarer among native speakers. When they suck at writing (which most people do anyway), it's generally for different reasons.

When the New York Times make the same "mistake", I'd think both are correct. Citation needed, basically. Even if you find the Ultimate Authority on this, I doubt most people would notice it, including native speakers.

new york times is fake news

 

[aweigh]

Yep, plenty of times. Lolita comes to mind, especially with all the word play that comes up in that novel. The kinds of plays-on-words that Nabokov uses in that novel, with double entendres, etymological puns, et cetera, make it a masterful piece of literature (and a very disturbing, very misunderstood one).

Language also changes the way that we perceive our surroundings, so reading a book written in English by a non-native speaker may allow me to read through an entirely different lens. Translated works often lose meaning in the process (or have to try to figure out how to shoe-horn those in, like “Tom Marvolo Riddle/I am Lord Voldemort/Flight of death” pun in Harry Potter). If it’s in the book naturally, as the author intended, I’d like to read it. As a huge fan of magical realism, I hope to be fluent enough to read and write about the genre in Spanish, because I know I will get the truest experience by reading it in Spanish; however, books written by Spanish authors in English have their own perspective and interpretations of the world.

If you want more examples read about Joseph Conrad, Agota Kristof, Sholem Aleichem, Samuel Beckett, Anna-Kazumi Stahi.

EDIT:

Joseph Conrad (Polish pronunciation: [ˈjuz̪ɛf ˌkɔn.rad]; born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski; 3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924) was a Polish-British writer regarded as one of the greatest novelists to write in the English language.

It also says there that he didn't speak English fluently until he was in his mid-20s, but "he was a master prose stylist who brought a distinctly non-English sensibility into English literature."

EDIT 2x: Of course the chances of one of the overweight ruskies on Owlcat being the second coming of Nabokov are zero, but I wanted to point out that having someone non-native to the language writing the game is not necessarily cause for concern.

EDIT 3x: Also, this is a budget russian RPG... why would anyone expect good writing?

 

[Shadenuat]

What does make you expect good writing? An AAA RPG? A California-Irvine RPG?

 

[santino27]

Of course the chances of one of the overweight ruskies on Owlcat being the second coming of Nabokov are zero, but I wanted to point out that having someone non-native to the language writing the game is not necessarily cause for concern.

I know this is more in response to bataille than me, but I just wanted to clarify that I don't question someone's ability to write well in English purely because they aren't a native speaker. I went to school with a couple of Russian-born writers and their prose was fantastic (and their imagery definitely was helped by the fact that they were non-native speakers who as a result used different idioms and avoided some of the standard phrasings).

My concern is more that what I've seen so far from the campaign and kickstarter updates makes me worry that the text we get will be rife with grammatical errors and typos. I'm not expecting gorgeous prose--it's a video game--but I hope that between their writers and their editors, there is sufficient mastery of the English language to at least make the final product clean and polished.

(Side note: I do also recognize that it's a very western/American viewpoint to complain about English text from a Russian developer when there are so many countries in the world that never have any choice but to put up with whatever garbage translation they're given by a western dev.)

 

[Cael]

It looks like Most of SJW rot is coming from Pathfinder

Obviously. Far-left weirdos like this self-described "Spooky Queer Psychopomp" work on Pathfinder. https://twitter.com/FWesSchneider

Don't be surprised if Paizo double-downs on the far-left SJW garbage in a potential sequel if this game is a success.

I skimmed through that lot of anime and 9-year old kid ravings, and saw the part where some twat describes herself as part black, part Chaldean. Seriously, girl, if you have to reach that far back, you're trying too hard.

So what's the general consensus? Does the game have SJW stuff in it or not? I haven't really been following the development of this game, I'm on the fence, I seriously doubt a (Russian?) developer are into that, but have seen a few post that suggest the Pathfinder publisher have a diversity mandate of some kind and there are mandatory boxes to be ticked.
If there is I wont bother, if not I might even buy this.

Judging from the NPC backgrounds that was published as well as the possible romance options, I'd say SJW stuff is in. To what extent and whether you can stand the extent is really up to individual tastes. Personally, I won't touch it with a bargepole.

 

[aweigh]

What does make you expect good writing? An AAA RPG? A California-Irvine RPG?

When I see a project like Kentucky Route Zero or No Truce With The Furies, though obviously we can't yet judge NTWTF since it hasn't come out; games that show an obvious literary aspiration. We also have to seperate "pretty prose" and "etymological wordplay" with "good quest design that is informed by the area and level design". I much prefer having the latter over the former two; I'd much prefer a game with only 200 words which are all perfectly placed than one with 100,000 words which are all descriptors or explications.

One game that had "good writing" of recent KickStarter-warez was Shadowrun: Dragonfall, though not because it had pretty prose but rather because it had competently written characters with proper motivations and the story managed to convey stakes to the player even though it was a game about finding a talking dragon all while managing to clearly bring forth the setting, and having almost every single quest dovetail with the world created for the player. Certainly no witty wordplay to be found in the game but plenty of good video game writing.

 

[bataille]

Yep, plenty of times. Lolita comes to mind, especially with all the word play that comes up in that novel. The kinds of plays-on-words that Nabokov uses in that novel, with double entendres, etymological puns, et cetera, make it a masterful piece of literature (and a very disturbing, very misunderstood one).

Language also changes the way that we perceive our surroundings, so reading a book written in English by a non-native speaker may allow me to read through an entirely different lens. Translated works often lose meaning in the process (or have to try to figure out how to shoe-horn those in, like “Tom Marvolo Riddle/I am Lord Voldemort/Flight of death” pun in Harry Potter). If it’s in the book naturally, as the author intended, I’d like to read it. As a huge fan of magical realism, I hope to be fluent enough to read and write about the genre in Spanish, because I know I will get the truest experience by reading it in Spanish; however, books written by Spanish authors in English have their own perspective and interpretations of the world.

If you want more examples read about Joseph Conrad, Agota Kristof, Sholem Aleichem, Samuel Beckett, Anna-Kazumi Stahi.

EDIT:

Joseph Conrad (Polish pronunciation: [ˈjuz̪ɛf ˌkɔn.rad]; born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski; 3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924) was a Polish-British writer regarded as one of the greatest novelists to write in the English language.

It also says there that he didn't speak English fluently until he was in his mid-20s, but "he was a master prose stylist who brought a distinctly non-English sensibility into English literature."

EDIT 2x: Of course the chances of one of the overweight ruskies on Owlcat being the second coming of Nabokov are zero, but I wanted to point out that having someone non-native to the language writing the game is not necessarily cause for concern.

EDIT 3x: Also, this is a budget russian RPG... why would anyone expect good writing?

Using wikimancy like that after wittgenstein has been namedropped is kinda reductive. I get it, it's an aesthetic position--one that hits very close home; again, it's not the point whether to aesthetize the linguistic peculiarities that are born of prominent writers using their non-native tongue. The point is whether we'll get serviceable text written by some guy for an, god forbid, RPG. It is a mystery right now, because I hadn't had a reddit account to ask that question when I had the chance. So we'll have to speculate. Or simply wait since there's not much point in doing so without any information whatsoever.

Besides, you should read up on how Russian nobility used to be brought up circa nineteenth century to them being butchered by bolsheviks: by who, in what languages, and why. It'll become clear why nabokov doesn't belong in this list. Good old bi- and trilingual times.

 

[Shadenuat]

When I see a project like Kentucky Route Zero or No Truce With The Furies

NTWTF thread anyway has a lot of witty wordplay and I'd say game have quite a chance to fall flat on its themes and bore people to tears with a lot of, well, заумь.
Shadowruns had some nice writing but were also linear as hell, with dialogue leading to same stuff a lot and NPCs dumping their whole life stories on you everywhere.

So idk about you people, but I prefer to turn my expectations towards not what I will read, but what I will do. In Kingmaker I know I get to rule and hang peasants, and that makes me think it might be more fun than NWN2 OC.

 

[aweigh]

but were also linear as hell

...? and?

Oh, I also forgot to mention Fallout New Vegas! That game had the best video game writing I've seen in the last decade.

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

Oh, I also forgot to mention Fallout New Vegas! That game had the best video game writing I've seen in the last decade.

kotor 2 was better

 

[2house2fly]

...and was made more than a decade ago

 

[Moink]

Oh, I also forgot to mention Fallout New Vegas! That game had the best video game writing I've seen in the last decade.

kotor 2 was better

That was 14 years ago friendo

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

lmao i knew u redditors would fall for the bait

go back to reddit and autistically fact check everything

jajajaj

 

[Moink]

Shit I've been found out

 

[2house2fly]

Damn... trap sprung. I know what year a game I like came out. My secret's out.

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

pwnd

 

[HoboForEternity]

Hahahaha lmfao