So does any game ever use different languages as a mechanic?

Way of the Samurai 4 has foreigners as a big plot point, and you can't talk with any of them unless they're a trader or an interpretor, until you help them set up a language school and attend English class.

That's actually awesome.

This was actually given a fantranslation/romhack that let you use English.

Eternal Darkness uses the "runes" of Old Gods that in practice work as some sort of language - you summon shit by making short sentences.

I know about the fan translation and you're right, it does let you use some English words but I was thinking of offensive spells like, for example, 'TEO' which hits all enemies when you alter it into 'TEONA' and things like that

In Splinter Cell Chaos Theory, there's an option you can toggle to make enemies speak to eachother in their native languages, which makes it a bit more difficult.

Is that the PC version? I don't remember seeing anything like that in the Xbox version and I played that a few weeks ago

What did he mean by this?

Somewhat relevant but not quite a gameplay thing; the original MoH had enemy soldiers speak in German, unless you unlocked the cheat "American Movie Mode" which made them all speak English with hammy accents.

Actually that sounds like a really cool MMO mechanic, wish other games would do shit like this.

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God damn that's hilarious

The majesty of autism turned toward an inconsequential end is something to behold.

There's nothing like that in Chaos Theory.

Anachronox had aliens in early game that couldn't speak the same language, complete with their own funky text. However somewhat early on you get a translator, and then it also gets upgraded later.

The story at least mentions that before the invention of translators, the police would just beat up whomever

Yeah, PC version. The console version didn't have that feature, for whatever reason.

Yes it did, look it up.

Huh. I never knew that. I wonder why they would put it in one version but not the other?

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Also, it's not a mechanic, but Nioh had an interesting way of getting around the language barrier between the English-speaking protagonist and most other characters. The cat guardian spirit that follows you around in the first half or so of the game uses magic to make it so that William understands the Japanese and vice versa. It's only mentioned in an offhand line of dialogue somewhere iirc but I thought it was cool all the same.

Yeah, it's a weird decision. I was going to guess that the PC version came out later than the rest or something, but it came out at the same time as the Xbox and PS2 versions apparently.

It's even weirder given that the game isn't localized in Korean or Japanese. Yet apparently they already had Korean- and Japanese-language barks for NPCs?

Glittermitten Grove culminates with a really cool puzzle where you have to figure out and have a conversation with a frog in a language that uses symbols you've found around the game world. Not really any language stuff in the rest of the game though.

MGSV kinda did. You needed to find and kidnap recruit interpreters in order for enemies who speak a specific language to be given subtitles.

Having the enemy shout out a few generic lines isn't the same as replacing all the storyline VA, particularly when you consider how much of Sam's character was reliant on Ironside for his likeability (Grimsdottir and Lambert also, to a lesser extent, were good characters as a result mostly of the voice acting).
No idea why it wasn't on console versions though, I doubt it was a space issue.

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The NPCs have conversations with each other, not just a couple barks.

Are the full conversations also in the proper language though? It's possible they only replaced the ones that would be warnings for gameplay. Also I'm reasonably sure certain dialogue between NPCs gives you keycodes and objective updates if you sit and listen, locking that off would probably make it a lot harder to ghost levels. Come to think of it Fisher also interrogates them in English so you'd have to account for that too. Next time I play through the game I'll test this and check.

That's the impression I got from the other user's post. But I haven't played it myself to test it, since I only have the Xbox version of Chaos Theory.
It does, and you're right. Now I'm getting more and more skeptical.

I'll begin this with a warning this was the only decent crysis game and all others are shit so give up after this except for its expansion maybe.
On the harder difficulties they made all enemy coms from the DPRK soldiers in Korean(norther dialect) with no subtitles so you could no longer easedrop their movements and plans which made it a bit harder,

go on, make a third post faggot

If I recall No Man's Sky has a system where you have to learn the alien language somehow to get translated subtitles, otherwise you're just presented with tone subtitles. A good mechanic wasted on a shit game.

I'd go more with isolationist tbh

Yeah, a mechanic stolen directly from Out There.
In fact a lot of mechanics from No Mans Sky were stolen from Out There.

It is in fact entire conversations.

Neat.

Daggerfall had language skills.Your character could try to pacify certain enemies, if he spoke enough of their language.

Cool. How far things have fallen. I note the base commander interrogation is in English though, then again that's believable if he's high-ranking.

La-Mulana, though it's just a cipher and you only have to learn the numbers.

Oregon Trail 2 has characters that speak Spanish. There's a skill in game to understand it, but you don't need it if you already know the language in real life.

GENERAL SCALES

Everquest. After a while they even implemented a roleplay server that had no "common" language, you only had each races language, that you'd have to learn. Of course it became a grind that people would pay to be powered through quickly, but it was there.

Actually, that isn't just the base commander, only interrogations do not translate.
Otherwise, everyone has a universally changed language.

In Red Orchestra 2 languages are by default set to accented-English for your teammates, and Russian/German for the enemy. One of the lines for the Soviet troops is actually a panicked "Does anyone speak German?!"

Too bad they couldn't replicate the same thing for Rising Storm since burgers speak English always.

They could make enemy American players speak in a gibberish pseudo-language. Actually, why don't more games do something like this?

While looking for Sourcemods, I found this possibly abandoned one. The whole focus is learning an alien language.

moddb.com/mods/from-earth

Ar Tonelico had Hymmnos which was basically a language to ask the servers everyone lived on for power to use magic. There ended up being like four dialects and two character sets for it depending on who, where, and why it was used.

Ar Nosurge had Keihan and Reon the latter of which was formatted like a scripting language for largely the same purpose as Hymmnos.

These languages were always apart from whatever people normally spoke, though

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It works. You just have to sneak and remain undetected until you can activate the monster, and then get a successful language roll.

In Aion, there are 2 player factions. If you encounter the opposing faction, their text is jumbled to resemble a foreign language, alienating them and preventing coordination across lines. In PvE, you can learn monster races for more quests.

Because they're made by fucking idiots. Want to make not-English? Find which sounds are most common in English, sort them by commonality, then stitch the sounds together somewhat randomly. Then you get stuff like rak mo laran dibay tet kayrol, tet fosh fen gashel or some shit.

pretty much every MMO since EQ did this.

And what if the person playing the game speaks Japanese? Or german? Or Russian? Would they not have to make gibberish versions of those too?

Sure, as long as it still sounds like the language. What pisses me off is that in scifi games with sapient species of humanoid aliens, there is FUCK ALL for font styling. All signs and businesses have GENERIC SCIFI FONT 1, 2, or 3. Look at the titles of Japanese games, manga, and anime. Stylized to hell and back. American comics, movies, cartoons, and games, too. Now imagine that in an alien language. Low energy bullshit is all we can get sometimes.

God, Crysis was so cool.
feels so terrible man

It is sort of out now, although it's inexplicably locked behind Steam.

This indieshit had an interesting mechanic. Learn words and find note blocks throughout the world so you can communicate with others or find secret shit.

yo i gots a new idea here fam

>text adventure-esque interface for interacting with federal/military patrols

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Sounds like Papers, Please's fucked up cousin.

kek

Yes, there's a Zelda 2 clone called Finding Teddy 2 that involves learning a language that involves singing to decode clues and solve puzzles.

Banjo Tooie had a minor mechanic where you couldn't talk to the stonies unless you were a stony yourself.

In Nier you couldn't understand what the people of Facade were saying until you finished a miming quest with a cute loli and your magical book companion figures out how to speak the language.

this
There's also ancient tablets in the game that you can read only with an in game translator item, however the weird letters that appear if you don't have the translator are actually a language, there's a more ancient language that rewuires you to upgrade your translator item but it's actually the other one but mirrored, if you notice that and have enough autism, you can skip the translator items.
There is a puzzle that uses some letters of the language in the game.

Also this. Glittermitten Grove is a really good game, I recommend everyone to at least pirate it.

There's a similar mechanic in Ys II where you can talk to monsters once you transform into one. He keeps his red hair when he transforms if I remember right, it's fun.

Also out there is more of text quest and a lot of it comes from old text quests.

William also uses the one sided language barrier to talk shit.

Anyway, SotS required you to learn the language of each race in order to speak to them. Further research would allow you to form pacts and the like. Research into the Zuul gave you new ship section instead, because peace with the Zuul is a very, very bad idea.

Hymmnos proper only has two main dialects though (Standard and New Testament of Pastalie), as the other regional divisions only correspond to where each word originated. Carmena Foreluna and Ar Ciela are considered as entirely separate languages.