Review No Love for Winter Voices at Games Radar

[Jason]

Tags: Winter Voices

<p>Episodic indie RPG <a href="http://www.wintervoices.com/" target="_blank"><strong>Winter Voices: Avalanche</strong></a> was saddled with a score of 3/10 over at <a href="http://www.gamesradar.com/pc/winter-voices/review/winter-voices-avalanche-review/a-2010120218156257000/g-20101027164611381078" target="_blank">Games Radar</a>.</p>
<blockquote>The story, characterization and general setup are all fairly difficult to piece together from the nebulous cutscenes and dialogue, but the game emphasizes two primary things: the main character is depressed, and the place where the game takes place is cold. Cold, cold, cold. Other than that, it's difficult to tell what's going on. Part of the reason for this, clearly, is that the game's writers want to hide the ball as much as possible to get you to purchase continuing episodic releases of the game, and another part is due to the script's often poor translation to English from French. But most of the opacity is due, simply, to the designers, writers, and programmers not knowing what they were doing. Winter Voices has, above everything else, a heavily amateurish feel &ndash; as if the design team simply bit off more than it could chew.</blockquote>
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[Kaanyrvhok]

Just now hearing about it. Maybe the 'tough love' will make them circle the wagons.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Check the LP on playground.

 

[Trash]

Check the LP on playground.

Thanks, I will. Game looks like it might be indie heaven, emo shitfest or jrpg wannabe or an unholy union of all three. I wonder...

 

[poocolator]

Nice. The screenshots look impressive.
I like the direction they're taking.

 

[mondblut]

Ah, it's that very french game where you are supposed to run away from every encounter? Serves them right.

 

[lisac2k]

indie heaven, emo shitfest or jrpg wannabe or an unholy union of all three

The devs took the path of experimenting a bit over the top, including the "release of the game slices every now or then" policy.

For other indie developers, this a perfect opportunity to learn something out of it, since such occasions are scarce nowadays - not because there is not enough of indie projects, but due to the fact they are being rarely finished/published (especially cRPG).

 

[MisterStone]

Why do game developers always get stingy with the translation? HIRE A NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKER OR SOMEONE COLLEGE EDUCATED IN ENGLISH MORANS, NOT ONE OF YOUR DUMBASS WRITERS WHO COULDN'T TRANSLATE THE DIRECTIONS FROM A LIGHT BULB CARTON

 

[FatCat]

Combat is very very very slow and retarded :/

 

[Yeesh]

Why do game developers always get stingy with the translation? HIRE A NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKER OR SOMEONE COLLEGE EDUCATED IN ENGLISH MORANS, NOT ONE OF YOUR DUMBASS WRITERS WHO COULDN'T TRANSLATE THE DIRECTIONS FROM A LIGHT BULB CARTON

What I don't understand is why they don't just make it a two step process. Like do the first shitty translation that they always do, and then send that along to a native english speaker. I don't even need to know your stupid moon language in order to clean up your terrible, terrible translation. I mean, they could export all the writing to a text file and find somebody on the internet to go through it for like $100 and just fix all the glaring mistakes and clean up the completely erroneous idioms and phrasing and there, now you have a translation that doesn't look like shit and it cost you all of $100.

I'll do it, in case any devs are reading. I was an english major and I could use a hundred bucks.

 

[Deneidez]

I'll do it, in case any devs are reading. I was an english major and I could use a hundred bucks.

Would you trust just some guy on codex? Btw translation work is usually very expensive. Well eventually I will need someone to translate 'dialogue' in my game.

And about winter voices. Idea is nice, but combat is way too slow and tedious. Its like crawling in tar.

 

[Abelon Blanchetourbe]

Sadly the retardness has nothing to do with bad translation, it's really just a piece of pretentious, pseudo-cryptic shit.

 

[poetic codex]

From a purely game design perspective, I found the game quite fascinating.

For one, I liked that the fact that (at least in the early parts of the game), combat is more about surviving rather than slaughtering everything on screen or popping moles as you guys like to call it. This alone did away with some of the game design cliches that I got tired of in RPG's which I brought up in my previous threads: 1) the idea of your character being a mass murderer, and 2) the idea that you either win the encounter or die and reload and reload over and over.


There are no healing potions to chug (at least in the beginning) and destroy the balance like in Dragon Age.


Since the emphasis is on survival rather than slaughtering everything on screen, the tactics you have to employ are different from what we've been conditioned to expect in a game. Some of the skills you gain as you level up are quite unique since they are focused around surviving rather than killing. I see this as a good thing too.


It also helps to approach the game as you would an adventure game rather than a typical RPG. If you did it that way, you would focus on the setting, art-work, atmosphere and the story rather than going in expecting a combat engine. (The same approach can apply to games like Arcanum).

There is one more thing which is subtle, but I think it's significant. The fact that you have to survive the encounter rather than slaughter the enemies, actually gives the game a more realistic feel. If you encountered a weird shadow creature in other RPG games, you would be expected to punch it to death or stab it to death with a dagger. In this game, the best you can do is use your willpower to survive the encounter. To me this makes the enemies more fearful and gives them more weight and impact. You can't just punch a non-physical entity to death, you just try to survive the encounter with your wits and willpower. In any other game, you would encounter swarms of these shadow creatures and you would kill them just the same way you would kill a pack of rats

---------------------------

That said, the game's writing is hopelessly flawed and I don't think I would be getting any more episodes.

The translation is horrible, but I suspect that even in the original french, the writing is just as obscure and cryptic. I would have loved that stuff back when I was in highschool, but I'm at a point in life where I prefer clear, simple (not simplistic) writing that efficiently gets the point across to the reader. This is also one of the main reasons why I did not like Planescape Torment. The great Russian short story writers often used the common folk idioms from their rich language to clearly get across profound truths to the reader. There's no need to mask your thoughts under cryptic language that sounds intellectual but means so little. That is the mark of an amateur writer.

 

[MisterStone]

Why do game developers always get stingy with the translation? HIRE A NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKER OR SOMEONE COLLEGE EDUCATED IN ENGLISH MORANS, NOT ONE OF YOUR DUMBASS WRITERS WHO COULDN'T TRANSLATE THE DIRECTIONS FROM A LIGHT BULB CARTON

What I don't understand is why they don't just make it a two step process. Like do the first shitty translation that they always do, and then send that along to a native english speaker. I don't even need to know your stupid moon language in order to clean up your terrible, terrible translation. I mean, they could export all the writing to a text file and find somebody on the internet to go through it for like $100 and just fix all the glaring mistakes and clean up the completely erroneous idioms and phrasing and there, now you have a translation that doesn't look like shit and it cost you all of $100.

I'll do it, in case any devs are reading. I was an english major and I could use a hundred bucks.

Here's the thing: pro translators hate this shit, because if someone asks them to do a job like this and the English is mangled really badly, they'll want to see the original foreign language version, and before yuo know it they're basically doing their own translation and getting paid at the rate a proofreader gets paid for it. I guess if it's a typical French to English translation and it's not all that bad, just a bit unpolished, a proofreader could do the job cheaply... but if it's the kind of thing you need to re-check the source language for, then it's going to cost the price of a real translator.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Could've been a playable game without the combat. Seriously, what the fuck was up with that?

There is one more thing which is subtle, but I think it's significant. The fact that you have to survive the encounter rather than slaughter the enemies, actually gives the game a more realistic feel. If you encountered a weird shadow creature in other RPG games, you would be expected to punch it to death or stab it to death with a dagger. In this game, the best you can do is use your willpower to survive the encounter. To me this makes the enemies more fearful and gives them more weight and impact. You can't just punch a non-physical entity to death, you just try to survive the encounter with your wits and willpower. In any other game, you would encounter swarms of these shadow creatures and you would kill them just the same way you would kill a pack of rats

But you aren't encountering shadows per se. The shadows don't represent enemies, they represent feelings. It's the equivalent of you walking down a road and then suddenly you feel depressed, and you try to fight it off. The shadows are only physical from a game mechanic stand point, they representations of your negative feelings.
Have you played X-COM? Each mission you are trying your best to make sure your troops survive, but you also have to eliminate the enemy. You can't hide or run from them. You have to hunt them down before they hunt you, and that makes it much more dangerous and interesting. In Winter Voices I just stacked all of my stats in the tank stats and basically stood there pressing "Next Turn" and waiting for the combat to end. With other builds it might be more interesting, but it's still bullshit. Survival combat is nothing new, and it's not well done in this game.
As for the uniqueness of the skills, sure, I suppose, some of them may be. But most of them felt pretty samey just by reading the tool tips. Also, the skills I used were fucktarded. They did not work as intended.

Face it, other than "ooh it's different and indie" the combat is fucking shit. There is nothing good about it. Nothing.

 

[Melcar]

I'll do it, in case any devs are reading. I was an english major and I could use a hundred bucks.

Would you trust just some guy on codex? ...

Specially a fat old dude that solicits sex on the internet and posted pics. on /gd/ of some small titted whore giving him a bj.

 

[lisac2k]

It also helps to approach the game as you would an adventure game rather than a typical RPG.

After playing it for an hour or so, I agree with the statement. A question, if I may: why is the game marketed as a RPG then? Do you (or anyone else around here) have any theories or clue? Did they aim for adventure-cRPG hybrid (assuming that hitting the cRPG market and naming the game genre RPG shall bring a bit more revenue than releasing the game as an adventure)?

If you did it that way, you would focus on the setting, art-work, atmosphere and the story rather than going in expecting a combat engine. (The same approach can apply to games like Arcanum).

Disagree. The core of Arcanum was definitely more refined and closer to a cRPG concept than WW currently is. Maybe it's just your overall impression based on a subjective experience, I dunno.

 

[Needles]

I was an english major

Which qualifies you how exactly?

I could use a hundred bucks.

The of game translations in a nutshell.