I see many people here prefering the Polish dubbing in Witcher, which amuses me. As a potato, I find it amazingly bad - just like most Polish dubbings. I'll try to explain why.
I understand for non-Polish people it will sound interesting and indeed better than English (or other) to which they are so used to. However, when Poles say they prefer Polish dubbing in games it's either because they do not or only barely understand English and it's a requirement for them to know what the game is about. Of course, there are many cool things the characters say, like kurwa, chędorzyć or references to real life things and events, which I also like and which are gone when switching languages.
But the way the actors sound is... weird and artificial. All characters, including the lowest scum who should barely be able to form sentences, do it with all the proper rules of grammar, pronunciation, punctuation. It sounds like an over acted theater play. All characters' voices must have an obligatory hoarseness and many of them sound like characters from a cartoon like "Maya the Honey Bee", just as if everybody involved in recording the voices, CDProjekt people also, were convinced they are making an animated story for children. A dwarf in Polish Witcher sounds like a beetle from Maya. Female voices are bad too, often sounding the most artificial. Also, when a female character is supposed to be sexy and alluring, she sounds like a woman who's reading 50 Shades Of Grey for an audiobook. If all that is not enough, the audio dynamic range is so compressed all voices sound like in a TV commercial. There's no variation in loudness, the breathing is too loud, etc.
If anyone in Poland would go to a store to buy potatoes and speak like any character from The Witcher, they would not buy anything. The seller would either laugh her/his ass off and be incapable of doing anything for at least 15 minutes or look at you as if you just escaped from a mental institution and ask you to leave or call the police.
When I started speaking like Witcher characters with friends once, to prove the point I'm making here now, they were rolling on the floor laughing at how ridiculous it sounded.
When switching to English version, suddenly all the voices are natural, sloppy when needed, they also sound softer due to lower dynamics compression and there's more variation in tone and loudness.
Unfortunately, all cool Polish things like swearing, multiple meanings of words, references to current real life events and Polish culture are gone and it does indeed suck. It's much better to hear the vampire say "To spierdalać!" than "So fuck off" in the trailer, but I'm afraid The Witcher 3 will be the first Witcher game I will play in English version first and perhaps Polish for a secondary playthrough.
The video posted by
bonescraper a few posts up is not an example of Polish voices superiority. For me it proves my opinion of inferiority.
Of course, other Poles will attack me now and insist that I'm the only one who feels this way, that I'm weird, unpatriotic, ungrateful and deaf (even though I have experience with audio engineering and shit... but of course, there is a notion some audio engineers are indeed deaf, otherwise modern albums would not sound so pathetic, but I digress).
PS:
Here's a good comparison video from a different game:
http://gamezilla.komputerswiat.pl/p...nujemy-polska-i-angielska-wersje-jezykowa-gry
First, the Polish dubbing, then - English. I assure you no one in Poland speaks like this. It sounds funny, overacted, etc. When they show the English version in the second half of the video... well, it all sounds right, like actual people talking, not actors.
English dubbing in games sounds rather realistic. Polish does not or does very rarely.
