Using different Languages
6 years ago
New Hampshire, USA

Someone commented on the [F]WR video suggesting that I should use the Spanish Language cause its faster. I am a bit skeptical about this as I feel that the difference will be in how long the characters talk, which sounds close to the length of the English dialogue. If anyone (cough StiWiiRage cough) would like to test the different languages then go right ahead.

Without doing extensive testing I think that we should keep using our native language, unless using a specific language is magically faster.

Edited by the author 6 years ago
Sweden

I can see this being true... Maybe some dialogue things may even be skipped like in Super Mario 64 where Peach skips reading the letter at the beginning. Sorry to whoever is gonna test this but you should probably test every other language too, as there's probably one faster than Spanish :P

TrenttheN642 and WiiSuper like this
England

The easiest way to figure this out would be to average out the length of several cutscenes on different languages and see which one has the shortest average, and the smallest variance.

(If a language was 5 seconds shorter on average over say 4 cutscenes, but had one that was 20 seconds longer, you'd want to compare extra cutscenes with the other 1/2 lowest)

Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany

You guys are really trying everything :D I like it. Maybe I will do some tests on PC since there are 12 different lasnguages but for the 9 of the WII U it should be the same on PC...

Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany

I just did a little test course of the first 10ish minutes of the game until Frank stops talking when you have to build the cabinet in the basement to get your police outfit.

  • I did my test on PC
  • I have 5 timezones which are defined by parts in game where you as a player can't influence the time.
  • First timezone was the first cutscene until the "Chapter 1" screen appears.
  • Timezone 2 is the second Cutscene which pops up when you reach the police station
  • Timezones 3 and 4 are the little dialogues between Frank and Chase when Frank shows Chase the different areas in the basement. Those dialogues were quite important for me bewcause you can mve around freely during them but you can't trigger the next part of the "story". So everything relies on how long they are talking. -Timezone 6 is the "Cutscene" where Frank runs against the 3 boxes on the stairs until he stops talking.

Conclusion: I only tested German, English, French, Italian and Spanish so far but I'm not planning on doing all the other languages as well because those 5 gave me a quite good overview. The "real cutscenes" are always the same length. Timezone 1 always took 3:29min and Timezone 2 2:45min. I would make sense if every cutscene has the same length. Those are videos just with different voicelines. For the other timezones: There are little differences in times. There might be a certain margin of error and they were always in a range of 1second over a timespan of 15seconds for timezone 3 and 4 and 26s for the last timezone.

For me this will mean that I will keep playing in German. I'm sure there might be differences in languages but most of the times it takes longer for you to go to the next area than it takes for the call or dialogue or whatever to end. With the right language you can save at best 30s or something so I would say it is more efficient to perfect your run and your route through the levels. Also you would really need to measure a majority of phonecalls and dialogues which are slower than you to really find the best language. For me not worth it until you really did a perfect run with your native language.

Good luck and have fun if you want to try it.

TrenttheN642, WiiSuper and 2 others like this
Sweden

What do you mean by timezone?

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Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany

I took 4 measurements and the part I measured is a timezone for me. I hope it gets clearer.

TrenttheN642 and WiiSuper like this
Sweden

I'm still confused, do you mean like dialogue?

TrenttheN642 and WiiSuper like this
Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany

Yeah. A part wich is precisely defined and should be always the same length in the same language.

What version will you be testing?

England

I did try to contact the devs about language differences but I didn't get any response back from them.

TrenttheN642 and WiiSuper like this

How much faster exactly is Danish? Is it really 18 sec just in the beginning?

Edited by the author 6 years ago