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CDProjektRed games have strong scripts. How do they localize?

Doktor Best

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Feb 2, 2015
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He's not absolute garbage-can tier, but I get the feeling that either the direction or how the actor is taking the direction isn't so great. He sounds like he's a professional voice actor, but comes across the same way Bateman did in Batman: silly. And considering Bateman is a really good actor, it's a natural comparison of what happens when a good actor does something silly. He was probably told to sound gritty and detached, took it a little too far, and the VA director either thought it sounded great, or was too timid to correct it.
Do you mean - Christian Bale in Batman? What an interesting way to refer to him.

I've always wondered if Bale is even a good actor.

Watch American Psycho, the Machinist, the Fighter, the Prestige. This will answer your question.

Bale had some shitty movies but when he is given the opportunity he will bite into the role like a rabid dog. Hes a maniac, and an A-grade actor.

Played all three games in three languages: Kwan, Potato and Putinski. I think Kwan VA has been excellent, especially Geralt. While he is grave spoken, his acting is actually very subtle, but very fitting the character. In fact, I feel the other two actors overplayed him. They seemed to have approached VA from a more stage centric perspective, with stronger intonation, which I don't think works for Geralt.

Disagree Polish VA for Geralt imo is perfect. In english version they made him basically Dirty Harry while in Polish version he is subtle in his speech often talking low key nearly whispering.

Then there is whole use of language. They did awesome job with english version but polish version is clearly superior here as language is often complex and used well in situations while english lines are often simple and sometimes fell off the point.

Polish VA of other characters though is sometimes bad and English VA work better.

Cant agree with that Dirty Harry comparison. English Geralt is much softer most of the times and also more nuanced. He is far from being onedimensional and he displays the character described in the books very faithfully.

I was put off at first by him when i heard his voice in Witcher 1 as it indeed comes across as "wannabe gritty" when you hear it first, but when you grow into it you hear the small differences between angry Geralt and normal/cynical Geralt and you start to view his VA from a different perspective.
 
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Carrion

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I love Doug Cockle as Geralt. His style is pretty minimalistic, but there's definitely some subtlety to him, and the criticism about him sounding like a generic gritty tough guy or whatever seems completely unfounded. He can be either relaxed or intense when required, and he delivers Geralt's dry sarcasm and stiff humour absolutely perfectly without coming off even a little bit cheeky or annoying. The only instance where he was a bit of out his depth as a voice actor was in Hearts of Stone where he had to pull off that double role in one quest, but as Geralt he's always been really damn good and likeable.

For me his highlight came in the prologue of TW2, where the king's men are burning down a house with civilians still inside. Geralt walks up to the soldiers and says something like "let them go, they're innocent!", which is probably supposed to be a serious line, but he says it like he was some total asshole doing a parody of Don Quixote, almost like he was mocking the script for having that particular line. It's kind of awful but also funny as hell at the same time, and for Geralt's character it somehow seems more appropriate than delivering that line as intended would've been. I love it. The directing for TW3 was noticeably better than for the first two games, so you don't get such moments anymore — he's just consistently great throughout the game.
 

Perkel

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Mar 28, 2014
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Cant agree with that Dirty Harry comparison. English Geralt is much softer most of the times and also more nuanced. He is far from being onedimensional and he displays the character described in the books very faithfully.

You know dirty harry doesn't always drop one liners in his style. When i said Dirty Harry i meant whole character not just one liners.
 

Paul_cz

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Jan 26, 2014
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Played all three games in three languages: Kwan, Potato and Putinski. I think Kwan VA has been excellent, especially Geralt. While he is grave spoken, his acting is actually very subtle, but very fitting the character. In fact, I feel the other two actors overplayed him. They seemed to have approached VA from a more stage centric perspective, with stronger intonation, which I don't think works for Geralt.

Disagree Polish VA for Geralt imo is perfect. In english version they made him basically Dirty Harry while in Polish version he is subtle in his speech often talking low key nearly whispering.

Then there is whole use of language. They did awesome job with english version but polish version is clearly superior here as language is often complex and used well in situations while english lines are often simple and sometimes fell off the point.

Polish VA of other characters though is sometimes bad and English VA work better.

For me the english version is the better one, because I get the nuances of the original from czech subtitles (which are incredibly well done, translator is super witcher fan who had both polish and english available when working) and then english voices just sound distinct, plus I can actually understand english...polish I can understand maybe one word out of twenty. Plus "Search for Ciri" is "Szukaj Cirilla", which is the same word that in czech means "To Fuck Ciri" so that alone would make polish pretty unbearable for me :D
 

DramaticPopcorn

Guest
I really like Rus localization and VO for Triss, Yen and Geralt, but base game on release had those annoying slow-downs / speed ups of the voice entries that made it really annoying.

Couldn't stand English one-emotion-batman Geralt, "nuanced and low key" LMAO
 

Perkel

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Overall imo TW3 has the best localization in several languages. Which is crazy considering how much there is voice in game.

Hell they have even foll VO for Japanese along with Priscilla song:

 

Sam Ecorners

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I suspect that most of the people who don't like English Geralt don't live in english speaking countries and don't have
I really like Rus localization and VO for Triss, Yen and Geralt, but base game on release had those annoying slow-downs / speed ups of the voice entries that made it really annoying.

Couldn't stand English one-emotion-batman Geralt, "nuanced and low key" LMAO

Some of the intricacies are completely lost in RU translation.

As of the VA, sorry if you can't pick up on very well placed slight inflections that Doug Cockle uses. IMO it's one of the best VA jobs I've seen.

Here's a great Russian video about VA in TW3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St30WeBz_m4
 

DramaticPopcorn

Guest
I suspect that most of the people who don't like English Geralt don't live in english speaking countries and don't have
Yeah, literally only native speakers can pick up on intonation, it's not like movies, audiobooks or songs exist too providing plenty of audio content to learn nuances of the language, that and actually talking to native speakers. But nah, that's too crazy of a thought.
And btw, there's plenty of english speakers who are unhappy with Geralt VA, what's the rationale there?

Some of the intricacies are completely lost in RU translation.
That's bound to happen with literally anything that is being translated.
The entire folklore and atmosphere is lost in english version :M, almost every place, creature or event have generic fantasy names, thus having much less of an impact, for me.

Either way, you hear what you want to hear, maybe there is some nuance to english Geralt, it's just that his edgy, tired-of-this-shit delievery of most of the lines make the experience way less immersive and much more tiring.
 

Sam Ecorners

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I suspect that most of the people who don't like English Geralt don't live in english speaking countries and don't have
Yeah, literally only native speakers can pick up on intonation, it's not like movies, audiobooks or songs exist too providing plenty of audio content to learn nuances of the language, that and actually talking to native speakers. But nah, that's too crazy of a thought.
And btw, there's plenty of english speakers who are unhappy with Geralt VA, what's the rationale there?

Some of the intricacies are completely lost in RU translation.
That's bound to happen with literally anything that is being translated.
The entire folklore and atmosphere is lost in english version :M, almost every place, creature or event have generic fantasy names, thus having much less of an impact, for me.

Either way, you hear what you want to hear, maybe there is some nuance to english Geralt, it's just that his edgy, tired-of-this-shit delievery of most of the lines make the experience way less immersive and much more tiring.

Funny, i wasn't gonna post the first sentence - didn't have time.

I got a sense that more people want theatrical, intonation heavy performance. IMO it sounds fake af, so RU VA pulls me right out of the game. As of Geralt, he comes off calm and reserved, as he should be, imo. Actually, that video I posted does a great job comparing two VAs, around 33:30
 

Konjad

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I suspect that most of the people who don't like English Geralt don't live in english speaking countries and don't have
Yeah, literally only native speakers can pick up on intonation, it's not like movies, audiobooks or songs exist too providing plenty of audio content to learn nuances of the language, that and actually talking to native speakers. But nah, that's too crazy of a thought.
And btw, there's plenty of english speakers who are unhappy with Geralt VA, what's the rationale there?

Some of the intricacies are completely lost in RU translation.
That's bound to happen with literally anything that is being translated.
The entire folklore and atmosphere is lost in english version :M, almost every place, creature or event have generic fantasy names, thus having much less of an impact, for me.

Either way, you hear what you want to hear, maybe there is some nuance to english Geralt, it's just that his edgy, tired-of-this-shit delievery of most of the lines make the experience way less immersive and much more tiring.

Funny, i wasn't gonna post the first sentence - didn't have time.

I got a sense that more people want theatrical, intonation heavy performance. IMO it sounds fake af, so RU VA pulls me right out of the game. As of Geralt, he comes off calm and reserved, as he should be, imo. Actually, that video I posted does a great job comparing two VAs, around 33:30
Geralt is anything but calm and reserved - that's the point in the books - he's a failure as a witcher. He has learned superior combat skills and endurance, but he is too emotionally engaged with everything around him. It has its pros and cons, but usually the latter. This is why a "hardcore badass" voice acting fucks up his character, in my opinion at least. Geralt gets drawn to all the shit happening around him, gets used by women and powerful people, because he can't just sit on his arse and think everything through. Yes, everyone around him isn't better than him and also act due to emotions, but it doesn't make him a stoic philosopher if once in a while he does something moral or thinks what he does - most characters also have their reasons, often not limited to being dumbasses driven by greed but actual well-thought reasons. Geralt is just one of many people and he isn't any other than another fellow human being, he was supposed to be a emotionless killing machine (actually, this isn't even very much the case, as witchers are just normal well-trained people and are all susceptible to emotions like everyone else, but the training should make them "colder", think of them like special forces guys or something), but turned out to be a disappointment chasing skirts and moralizing instead of just helping people. Yeah, it's a bit more complicated than that, but that's the thing in twitcher - it's a real world with fantasy, with a strong focus on real world, where everything is shit, with a strong focus on shit. Geralt shouldn't be a stone-cold buddy or even close to it, because he is actually worse in controlling emotions than average witcher, and average witcher is still likely to lose it at least at some point, because they are just normal guys with an aura of mysticism around them because they have magicks and fight monsters, albeit even that isn't very much important, because average knight or soldier fight monsters too (although they don't specialize in that specifically), and there is no shortcoming of wizards and sorceresses in the world either, who have way more powerful magickal abilities.

Geralt should sound like a guy who is generally calm but loses it a bit when the shit is coming, not like a comic-book character with balls of steel. It totally doesn't suit him. I base my opinion on the books. I understand those who did not read the books might get different thoughts based only on games, but I think the game should stay true to the books (although the sole idea of continuing the story was already fucking it up, because Geralt died in the last book, derp)
 

Carrion

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What "hardcore badass voice acting"? He sounds relaxed and laid-back a lot of the time. He just has a low voice.

Geralt should sound like a guy who is generally calm but loses it a bit when the shit is coming, not like a comic-book character with balls of steel.
But that is exactly what the English VA manages to convey — Geralt's annoyment when he faces minor obstacles or people that are not to his liking, his anger when someone acts like a dick towards him, his disdain for total scumbags, his poor attempts at suaveness in the company of a beautiful woman, even the slight forcedness when he actually tries to act like a badass and intimidate some random asshole that he couldn't care less about. It's very much in line with the books, and it gets even better when you throw a character like Dandelion into the mix and have them talk about something else than the size of his reward for a cockatrice head or something.
 
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Paul_cz

Arcane
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Jan 26, 2014
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Never ceases to amaze me how different people can perceive the same thing in a completely different ways.
 

Cabazone

Educated
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Dec 12, 2007
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66
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France
Me two cents on the French localization.

The quality of the French script has impressed me. The language is rich, the forms of the sentences feel elegant and french... If I had ended up playing it without any information concerning the language in which the game was written first, I may have guessed French. You can't have a much stronger compliment for a translation.

Sadly, the voice acting is not that good. The actors are not bad. Some are great, most at least descent ; but all of them speak without accents. It's a shame, given their preponderance in the English version (and, I guess, in the Polish one), plus the fact that French have tons of them (regional ones, social ones, etc.). I don't know if it is because French people tend to see them as unfit for drama (you don't hear a lot of them outside comedy. Even shows who are supposed to take place in Marseille have most of their cast speaking in a "neutral" accent) or because to find actors who can do accents is too difficult and thus too expensive (but, really, I'm not convinced, how hard can that be ?). In the first case, it's pathetic ; in the other, weird and disappointing, in view of all the efforts made to have a great translation.
 
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