SureAI

I actually found the German voice acting combined with subtitles to one of Nehrim's strengths. this is for a number of reasons:

1) The German voice acting was high-quality. This made for an engrossing experience as I enjoyed hearing professionals slide their tongues around the rough German consonants with ease. It was quite a therapeutic during the gentle moments, and rather frightening during the dramatic scenes, akin to Germanic berzerkers charging a bewildered Roman legion.

Which brings me to my next point.

2) In America, the German language is quite exotic and romantic, and thus lends itself to Fantasy. Think of the appeal of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen. Most Americans speak only English and/or a little of the Latin languages, so the faintly familiar sound of German has its own special appeal. It's more difficult for Europeans to understand the appeal when the border is a daily piece of life only a couple of miles away, but the US is so big that a great deal of people don't visit other countries until they are adults, and that country tends to be Canada, which is not much different. Consequently, other European languages tend to be romanticized, earning titles such as The Language of the Gods. Thank Wagner for that.

3) Mediocre English voice acting is painfully bad. This was one of Skyrim's mistakes; sometimes the voice acting did more harm than good when it came to world immersion, and at best did nothing to help. The Witcher committed this sin on an even greater scale; I literally skipped through half of the game's dialogue because I couldn't bear to listen to the disengaged, dispassionate voices assailing me.

So that's why I found Nehrim's top-tier German voice acting to be far more impactful than the voice acting in games like Skyrim and (god forbid) The Witcher.

Add on top of that the significant cost of English voice acting and you have yourself a win-win decision in favour of German voices.

Ahh I must agree on this one.
Instead of making an English voice acting make the landmass bigger !

How do the other people here think about this? Please tell us what comes into your mind concerning english voice acting and Defianc4's opinions.
P. S. We plan to offer a german version in any case.

Hi!

we've thought about this quite a lot. For now though, we've decided in favor of English voice acting. To me, it sounds like you're afraid that the quality of Enderal will suffer if we create an English version. I can assure you, though, that this won't be the case, since our translators are not part of the core team which builds Enderal. So, they'll be working on the translation at the same time we'll be working on Enderal. We'll try to achieve a similar voice acting quality like the quality we had in Nehrim, and the German version will probably be released a couple of weeks/months sooner than the English version - So, if you enjoyed the German-speaking voice actors, we might release an English-text only version of Enderal. Shouldn't be too much work.

And, you can be sure, that we'll try to achieve a similar quality for the English voice actors.

All the best,

Latiro

Hmm i must say that now that i think about i can agree with Defianc4. I dont speak german and im not american, and when i was playing Nehrim it came to me absolutely immersive and natural that those characters spoke a language i could not understand at all. Somebody here wrote a piece about it already so i wont go on too much about it, let me just say that it would be neat if you could choose from German or English voice acting (you are making both right?), and with adequate sets of subtitles so that everybody will be able to tune it to their liking

Perhaps this one?
http://www.sureai.net/forum/viewtopic.p ... 115#p51108

As an American, I can understand either the English voice or subtitles without a problem. Perhaps it would be useful to hear more from those in other countries who are not native speakers of English but who play the "English" version of the game. Is it easier for them to understand the spoken English or to read the written English? Of course, if you have spoken English and English text as well, it wouldn't matter.

Would it be possible to install the game with German voice and English text, or would English text only be available when installing the English voice version? Or perhaps there is someone who would like the English voice with German text?

Well that is a good thing to hear , I wish you a really good and fun process making Enderal , I hope the developers are enjoying it as much as the players do

And back to my old complain , BIGGER LANDMASS !

Well, you certainly are dedicated, but if/when it comes down to the wire, I hope that you will consider my suggestion and ditch the English voice acting.

One thing I want to emphasize is the economic law of opportunity costs; the cost of expending time and resources on one part of a project is the progress you could have made by expending your time and resources on another part of a project. For instance, writing and paying a German voice actor to do an extra side quest in German is going to be more valuable than simply paying a US voice actor to re-do an existing side-quest. To chose is to lose, and I think the English Voice acting is something that you can easily afford to lose.

Besides, I just want to hear the words "Für die Freiheit der Menschen!" again.

But what you will probably hear a few thousand times is "Ich bin im Dienst", unless the guards and soldiers learn a few new phrases!

And there won't be more than one line spoken by the guards if SureAI diverts its time and resources towards translation, which is part of the reason why I am writing this post.