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[SeriousConcentrate]

The shitty remake

FTFY

But seriously, the original MGS audio was superior even if borderline racist on some characters. Chinese Mei Ling a best.

[Rolan7]

I didn't have the opportunity to play the original version of MGS1.  I did on one occasion play MG 1, NES, where the dialogue was hilariously poorly translated.  Much later I enjoyed LPs of MG1 and MG2 as the ridiculous nonsense they were:
Metal Gear 1:  http://zarla.livejournal.com/230920.html
Metal Gear 2: http://zarla.livejournal.com/300069.html

I was satisfied with the translation in The Twin Snakes (MGS 1 & 2), despite how crazy the events were.  Was there really much meaning lost, in the retranslation?  Was MGS1 as batshit as 2, but a retranslation ruined it?  Because it was still pretty crazy.

Heh, MG's deadly poisonous Zanzibar hamsters...  For me, MGS1 was more serious than that.

[itisnotlogical]

It wasn't the translation at all, in fact the lines are untouched AFAIK. It's the performances. Mei Ling's accent is the most noticeable change, but there's tons of little things. In general it feels a lot less passionate and emotive than the original performance. Also, Grey Fox got a stupid gravelly voice that removed any and all emotion from his lines.

The robot filter I mentioned before editing this post was apparently a thing I imagined at some point, huh.

EDITEDIT: Compare the original Grey Fox with The Twin Snakes version of the same scene. Massive spoilers, but I feel like it's the best scene to illustrate my point.

[SeriousConcentrate]

Also the original Fox had a great voice and sounded genuinely regretful when the script called for it while the new guy, iirc, went with 'i'm crazy lol' for his performance.

In any case I will never, ever forgive Twin Snakes for Liquid casually doing no-handed front flips while balancing on a hand railing. I've seen a lot of stupid things in video games and that's still the dumbest scene in the entire MGS canon. Bar none.

[Reelya]

It wasn't the translation at all, in fact the lines are untouched AFAIK. It's the performances. Mei Ling's accent is the most noticeable change, but there's tons of little things. In general it feels a lot less passionate and emotive than the original performance.

In general it feels a lot less pationate and emotive than the original performance

Yeah they do that. My theory is that it's to do with the size of the investment and return, for both games and anime.

e.g. just for the sake of pricing consider an anime, where they spent $500K on visuals for every episode. They have a lot of money already invested in graphics, so they don't want to skimp on something cost-effective like sound. Audio is cheap compared to graphics, so they don't mind spending money there to make the series pop out more, e.g. by hiring popular voice actors. The voice actor has a vested interest in doing a good job, since they have a fanbase and are getting good paid work which enhances their profile. Putting in a substandard performance jeopardizes that.

But then you get the importer/dubber. They're usually a small outfit trying to keep costs down, and most of their costs are actually the dubbing itself. The series is already likely to sell a fair amount based on what the Japanese already put together, regardless of the English voice acting they use. So for those sorts of localizers, there's almost no financial incentive to go "above and beyond" with the dubbing.

And voice actor fandom is different too. In Japan, a new show is announced with a role planned for a specific voice actor. So they play off whatever known quirks that person has in how the role is delivered. So there's a synthesis e.g. Kugimiya Rie and how she often plays irate lolis. Even if those roles were from another source, their anime incarnation was planned as a vehicle for her, because she's known for a certain type of delivery for that type of character. So the roles are partially built around who's playing them. But in America they hire unknown people to reprise roles that were built for someone else.

[wierd]

You can just skim thou text for the usefull parts about where magic sword is, your not force to listen the entire thing.

Skim all I want, poorly written overly verbose tripe is still poorly written and overly verbose tripe and it's annoying to have to bash through so much of it to get to the important bits. Especially if the game designers have the bright idea to not highlight the important parts of what is being said.

A lot of my problems with text-based dialogue are most often circumvented by the devs just hiring an experienced dialogue writer who knows when to chew and more importantly when to trim the fat.

Oh no, some of the dialog is definitely worth it.  Baldur's Gate Dark Aliance had a GREAT scene that had my sister and I in stitches when we binged on that game in the early 2000s. A ghost NPC begs us to kill the last remaining members of his once noble family, because, and I quote:

"They had devolved into rabble of incestuous hedonistic cannibals."

It was certainly NOT what we had expected an NPC quest giver to tell us. It was hilarious.

[Neonivek]

A Divinity Original Sin 2 one today. Yes it is in EA... But does it make this less of a Pet Peeve?

Non-stop Indirect Dialog

Indirrect dialog is when the dialog choices are something like "Talk to them about a ferret", "Express distaste in cooking ferret", "Tell them the Ferret deserves its fate", "Passionately compliment Ferret". It is something that implies dialog but never actually puts down dialog.

Ok once in a while indirect dialog works especially if you are trying to simulate a long drawn out conversation or backstory or something along those lines. I am not going to complain in those situations because those are precisely what they are for.

Yet there is something so impersonal and disconnected about using it non-stop. It is like you are on the computer telling some bloke what to say... Ohh wait that is exactly what it is.

Divinity Original Sin 2 does nothing but indirect dialog as a way to make all dialog character neutral so it seems like it could have come out of anyone's mouth... Which is kind of funny because it exists so that the dialog isn't dry (and has the appropriate gender pronouns, because NO game has ever had to deal with that )... Yet in many ways this is far worse, the dialog is so dry it doesn't exist.

[wierd]

^--- Boolean; Is speaker male? Use dialog branch A.  Is speaker female? Use dialog branch B.
Oh so hard to keep track of!! /s

There is another reason to use indirect dialog-- Actions.

Things like "Pet ferret", which imply the "dialog choice of remaining silent, and just doing something instead"

Eg, "Flip them the bird"

[CABL]

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned "Ubisoft-y" side missions. Okay, I'll do it:

"Ubisoft-y" Side Missions:

Those side missions are pretty much "kill/steal/climb/hunt down/collect/destroy 200 people/golden pieces/towers/bears/miniatures/outposts, which almost always bore me after doing some of them. Riddler trophies are probably the only thing which I don't like about Batman Arkham dilogy. "Why you call them "Ubisoft-y"?" Because from what I know about Ass's Creed, is that it's full of such objectives, and that franchise pretty much popularized that stuff.

[muldrake]

I have to admit I'm actually fond to some extent of grinding in games.  Just escaping reality and having to hunt down 50 orcs or whatever for no particular reason to collect whatever dumb points are involved to level up doesn't cause me any grief.

[itisnotlogical]

I don't mind it as long as it's expected (JRPGs, MMOs, idle games). I'm often playing those games specifically cause grinding sounds good. But get that shit out of my sandboxes.

[CABL]

I don't mind it as long as it's expected (JRPGs, MMOs, idle games). I'm often playing those games specifically cause grinding sounds good. But get that shit out of my sandboxes.

True, pretty much every sandbox game of recent years suffers from "Repetitive Side Mission Syndrome" aka RSMS. Even Terraria has annoying fishing quests (I still haven't got Golden Fishing Pole despite 3 full playthroughs). It's also a pretty grindy game, but it's Metroidvania, so grinding is expected.

[SeriousConcentrate]

I wouldn't call Metroidvanias grindy. A lot of backtracking to get previously inaccessible power-ups, yeah, but that's more exploration than grinding.

[Krevsin]

The Modern Sandbox is pretty much entirely those missions. Sometimes they can be really fun tho, like in Assassin's Creed 4 Black Flag where despite just being "Hey blow up this fort!" etcetera it's genuinely so much better than 90% of the actual story missions.

[Virtz]

I don't mind generic missions so long as there's either something else to do (so it's optional), or you enjoy the basics enough not to tire of them after 5 goes. Usually it comes down to how much work was put into the combat system.

I can still occasionally go around and happily murder generic dungeon stuff in Fallout 4 (although with mods). I could even play Mafia 3 for a couple hours thanks to how satisfying the shooting felt even though the storyline was awful to nonexistent. What I can't do is play Watch Dogs 2 for more than 15 minutes.