Accents in place of foreign languages?

From everything I've seen, the Rikti can't speak at all. They don't have mouths, and all their native communication is psychic in nature. They do seem to have voice synthesisers, but their thought patterns are so radically different (less different the more of their dialogue we get, as it seems like whoever's writing it is getting closer and closer to English grammar with the articles removed) that they end up speaking only barely coherently, but it's there. The Mark 3 translator that makes Buddika... Sorry, Bu'Dekka sound like a ditz appears to be both a voice synthesiser AND automatic translator, but the one most Rikti use seems to just dump their thoughts into audio with no interpretation.

On that note, it's incredibly jarring and out of character to hear Rikti speaking to each other. In fact, I believe it is a capital mistake to have them to do that. Back in the day, the Rikti were silent. They didn't say anything, they didn't taunt, they didn't leave clues. From level 30 where you start seeing them, all the way up in the upper 30s to possibly lower 40s, you don't actually hear a single Rikti speak AT ALL. When you finally do get a bit of dialogue, it comes as a shock and it's interesting. Back in the day, the Rikti had this strange, alien feel to them, where they look sort of humanoid, but they're completely hostile and you have NO way to communicate with them. If you see any Rikti, you're in trouble. In fact, they were so obscure, monolithic and silent that the Division: Line revalation came to me like a bolt of the blue. "Hey, an insight into the Rikti! I don't know ANYTHING about them!"

Now... "Bomb preparation: Schedule: Inquiry." "Excitement containment: Suggested." "Plan comes together: I love it." "Mua: Ha: Ha." Ugh... They took what was an almost completely alien enemy, and they turned them into jokes. "Nette: Sup." Really? REALLY?!? They were cool, badass aliens that kept their moth shut and their fingers on the trigger, whom you couldn't reason or bargain with. The ultimate threat that Earth has ever faced. And now they're almost worse off than the Freakshow, in that almost no-one can ever take them seriously.

Frankly, I know the Rikti can talk. I still wish they didn't. That scene where you rescue Buddeka from the other Rikti Chief Soldier? That one shouldn't have had any dialogue at all. They should have just had the aliens looking at each other and occasionally gesturing. They're aliens. They're speaking their own language that not only can you not understand, but you can't even PERCEIVE. The inability to speak with them or hear their own speech is part of what made them scary. We really should stop treating them like chatterboxes. Rikti bosses don't need to taunt, Rikti ambushes don't need to announce themselves, Rikti patrols don't have to chatter. It's what made them scary, and it's slowly being trampled completely.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

To be fair, I prefer subtitles and I feel the same way. With the advent of digital video, I'm often finding myself rewinding or pausing movies so I can read a complicated, long subtitle, or so I can see an action stunt I missed. Granted, a lot of the time that's because whoever timed the subtitles was complete idiot, giving me 5 nanoseconds to read two lines of text, but occasionally, with conversations during action-heavy sequences (anime is notorious for this), it is a serious distraction.

On the other hand, I still prefer subtitles over dubs. Actually GOOD dubs are rare, and dubs better than the original almost don't exist unless a movie or series was recorded in multiple languages by its creators. For instance, Oban: Star Racers came out in English, French and Japanese, each with a separate voice talent crew, each directed by original director. Those rare instances aside, dubs tend to take far too much away from the dynamics of the original, and more often than not cause dub voice actors to act like idiots to match the quirkiness that comes naturally to the original voice actors. Part of the reason Naruto constantly says "Believe it!" is because Junko Takeyuchi constantly adds "dattebayo" to the ends of a lot of what he says. It means absolutely nothing, but it's her quirk that the English dub chose to represent by "Believe it!"

I actually CANNOT STAND dubs even in my own language. Now, I'm biassed, since I clearly understand English well enough, so the translation holds exactly no merit for me, but even dubs from languages I don't understand irritate me. Our voice actors are good in what they do, but most of them are comedians with lots of impressions, so when they dub, say, Shrek, they devolve into something like 10-year-olds doing bad impressions of vaguely famous people. And I recently saw this FlashForward series, where one of the dub actors just made me laugh out loud every time I heard him speak. He sounded like how people sound when they pretend to be acting badly, that stilted, unbelievably corny speech. And I can't keep a straight face while listening to the guy. It's a serious series, yet I'm constantly making fun of that dub actor. He is that bad.

Simply put, I've rarely, RARELY heard a good dub of anything at all, and I don't believe I've ever heard a dub better than the original. Ironically, I liked the 4Kids dub and adaptation of Shaman King, because all the voice actors are actually pretty good. Yes, even Rio, the resident stupid accent guy, and even the offensively British Tao family. They're all good actors, but the "adaptation" just butchered the show itself. Watching it in its original incarnation, the story is only barely the same.

And you know what the worst part is? Dub quality always sucks, at least here. Dub translators are NOT talented, producing Bulgarian phrases that I need to translate back into English word-for-word before I can understand them. Guys! You don't translate language by translating each word individually! You translate language by comprehending it, then reproducing the meaning in your own language. I shouldn't be reading Bulgarian with English grammar, sentence structure and the occasional mistranslated word. I actually saw the word for "manager" translated as something which could only mean the head of a "menagerie," which is more like a zoo. And the intent was to address the manager of a software development firm O.o

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Heh, and I've heard so many people who are the exact opposite. I guess people think that if they are on the phone in public, the public is involved in the conversation too, and deserves to know what's going on. I myself am kinda 50-50, depending on the subject matter.

I recall going to the theater to see a certain movie, and it turns out some teenage girl and I were the only audience. Her cell rang from several rows behind me, she apologized, I said "No problem, this movie sucks", and she proceeded to have a conversation that was far more interesting than anything on screen. Some friend of hers had a falling-out with her boyfriend, and had called up a verbal shoulder to cry on. At least that problem, minor as it was, was really happening.

Them. And sword and sandal pictures from the preceding fad.

There is a big difference between the two. Han talks to Chewbacca without considering outsiders as friends do, while C3PO IS a translator Droid and it is its job to make sure that people understand what the conversation is about. C3PO is programmed to talk that way.

I think Lucas did a great job there.

Don't forget about the hundreds of indiginous languages spoken there. I am sure many Mexicans know both Spanish and Nahuatl, for instance.

Overreacting much?

While the most reasonable and truthful reason why people in movies use accents is because it draws the viewer in more and makes it seem more "authentic"(whether it really is or not), there are other ways to explain it. For instance, you seemed to simply dismiss the "dialects" aspect completely, but that could be a real reason.

If I'm talking to someone from the country, or the northeast or the southwest, they could certainly be speaking my language down to the same slang, but they usually have an accent. (Of course it works the other way around, too - when I speak to them, they think I'm the one with the accent.) So in a movie where everyone's speaking French, perhaps they're speaking with an accent to denote other dialects or being from another part of the country. Whatever dialect the movie is projecting onto its viewers as English is not the same dialect being used by the majority of the cast.

Or perhaps as others have said, it's the result of a magical(or technological) translation device that isn't perfect. In this case the non-existant device is somewhere between the cast's mouths and the viewer's ears. In other cases it is - on-screen - an actual device, as is the case in many sci-fi and fantasy films. Or for a more vague, abstract version of this, it could be that for the duration of the movie, the characters are actually speaking English for the benefit of the audience, and thus have the accents.

As to the Rikti, indeed they cannot talk as they don't have mouths or vocal chords(anymore). The colon-separated talking most people associate with the Rikti is the result of a translation device that picks up their psychic forms of communication. My guess is it only aurally emits thoughts that the Rikti user is actively projecting, IE wanting to communicate to other people/Rikti. However - and this has been stated somewhere in-game, in one of the RWZ arcs I think - there have been multiple versions of these devices, each one better at translating to English than the last. And that includes approximating English slang.

Your complaint about the "Nette: Sup" line assumes that the Rikti don't have any slang greetings. How do you know that what the Rikti projected wasn't exactly that in Rikti-ese? How do you know that the Rikti don't have a form of "sup" and aren't able to shorten names? Every language has its own slang, and to assume the Rikti don't strikes me as a bit foolish.

Of course the stuff with the Rikti also brings up the question of why it seems like every single soldier, general to grunt, has the translators in the first place. But that's a different discussion.

Oh, and I know it's already been said, but in AC2, the accents and lapses into Italian and Latin were indeed explained by a "laggy translator" in the animus device. There's a short, optional scene where Rebecca(the computer chick) mentions it to Desmond, and he tells her that yeah, he noticed it, but he's really liking the subtitles. I liked that scene.

Even though I didn't have the subtitles turned on.

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

I was going to read the rest but got to this bit

Someone saying 'Good Moaning' has always and will always be funny!

I didn't try to choke them, just shut them up This usually happens to me when I hear someone who CANNOT speak English trying to say a complicated sentence and getting every single word wrong. This just... Ugh! That isn't even an accent, that's TORTURE!

Dialects within the same language are rather different from accents from a DIFFERENT language, though. A language may have many dialects, some so abstractly different that they may as well BE a different language, but none of them have the connotations that the person is from a different country. For instance, a "Southern Gentleman" may speak English that is grating to many people's ears (or not, but for the sake of the example, let's say it is), but that still paints him as an English speaker, just from a different English-speaking place. But if you give a person English with a French accent, you're immediately painting "the Frenchman." If he is indeed French and speaking English as a foreign language, I can deal with that (even though the fake accents have nothing to do with reality), but if that "Frenchman" is supposed to be speaking HIS OWN language, it makes no sense that he'd have an accent.

Yeah... I can see a magical or technological translator not being perfect, but I'd expect such a device to be unable to translate language accurately (like the Rikti-to-English translator), rather than strike a comically bad French or German accent. That's the big thing for me - aside from being horrible, fake accents aren't used to represent inaccuracy, but more so to represent STEREOTYPE. And even when these stereotypes aren't insulting, and even when they're JUSTIFIED by technobabble, they're still stereotypes and still a terrible thing to put in. Why fake accents when you can have people speak proper English and just say it's really actually Cantonese?

I don't mind the slang, really. What I mind is making fun of the Rikti, which is something of a recurring trend with the War Zone and the Midnighters' arc and... Actually, pretty much any place they have dialogue outside of Division: Line. It's like what happened to the Freakshow. They started out as a quirky, yet deadly serious gang who commit wanton murder, murder for hire, gang violence and who are generally a real, pressing threat. Somewhere along the way, their "crimes" got downgraded to vandalism, bullying and pirated TV, and they got ret-conned into metal-armed clowns who are only there for us to laugh at. Their sinister, malicious nature and the actual, horrible consequences of their actions are constantly downplayed or ignored so we can laugh at their antics. In the process, this has completely destroyed what could have been a really cool group by making them the butt of every joke.

Same for the Rikti. Once upon a time, they were a major threat and a huge mystery that you uncovered little by little. They were scary, because it felt like they could not be reasoned with. You could talk, but they would ignore you, and they would never talk to you. It seemed like all they wanted was to see us all dead and they were not interested in even bargaining with us. Back then, they were cool and scary. They've been turned into quirky chatterboxes now, and that just takes so much away from their mystery and their sinister nature. The "Nette: Sup" is just the final nail in the coffin, after which I'm not sure I'll ever be able to take them seriously again. Their FEEL is what suffers here. And if it were once or twice, I could see it, but every damn Rikti feels the need to broadcast his thoughts out loud.

If there is one faction who shouldn't have ANY dialogue at all, but for a few brief encounters, is the Rikti. They simply should not speak outside of extraordinary circumstances. To be honest, I feel the same about the Devouring Earth. Why are trees and rocks talking to me? Devoured I could sort of see, but the trees have neither the intelligence nor the VOICE BOX to speak. They're mindless monsters, and it'd serve them better if they didn't hold conversations with each other. I'd actually say the same about the Soldiers of Rularuu, but their trademark speech is just too precious to give up. "Hunt. Kill. Rularuu."

More than that - why are they using these translators to speak with each other? It's like if I speak English and another Bulgarian speaks English, we won't just spontaneously break into an English conversation so that the English-only speaker listening in can understand us. I'll speak Bulgarian, and if he can't understand, well tough. This is something which also really bothers me in movies. An illegal Russian immigrant is in the hospital, and his criminal brother comes to visit him. Would you think they'd speak in Russian, being that that's their native language? No, of course not! They both speak in English with a fake Russian accent. Because... That happens, right? Or the Yakuza boss speaking to his first lieutenant will speak in English, despite there being no reason for him to do so.

Really, as far as the Rikti go, just don't have them speak to each other. I have, as of yet, heard NOTHING from a Rikti-to-Rikti conversation that was actually important, so all that does is break my sense of immersion. It's like watching two people try to communicate in a language neither of them actually speaks.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

It didn't have subtitles on mine, but maybe I had them turned off. It's not a good enough movie to watch twice, so I'm unwilling to check. Either way, I liked it better without subtitles.

The voice and voice actor were good. The generic evil mastermind metallic echo and voice effects were not. I've always much preferred an actual VOICE that sounded evil or menacing, over a voice that's been edited to sound evil and menacing. A person speaking in unaltered voice has a much better control of inflection, impetus and overall speech techniques than a person who's heavily modulated. Just think back to Mark Hamil's Joker and the other villains he's played and you'll know what I mean.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Funny story: Back a few years ago, Dr. Zeus was making a fan video for the game, and recruited me as a voice actor for Captain Mako. He even said he liked the accent. I don't believe that was ever finished, or if it was, I didn't hear about it. Pity, he seemed pretty good at this.

Not only are they unheard of, decent voice actors can single-handedly MAKE a game. Take, for instance, the Soul Reaver series - a series of games with sub-standard gameplay and a story that's so outlandish it's actually difficult to follow, let alone take seriously. Yet Michael Bell's Raziel, Simon Tempelton's Kain and Tony Jay's Kain simply sell the game just on their own sheer talent. As a matter of fact, very much anything Michael Bell voices instantly becomes cool, even absurd characters like Johnny Quest's Ezekiel Rage. And despite no-one ever having played Advent Rising, I still keep bringing it back, because Michael Bell just steals the spotlight every time he speaks up as Enorym, despite how ridiculous that character looks.

On the flip side, BAD voice acting can KILL a game. I've had more than a few point-and-click adventures that I simply shut down and deleted from off my hard drive because I couldn't stand to listen to the damn protagonist. One of them was a non-English production where the lead actress REALLY tried her best to manage, but she had such a thick, grating (though natural) accent that I just couldn't imagine myself playing the whole game like that. And Resident Evil clones (as well as the original series) REALLY suffer from this a lot of the time, though luckily characters there don't spend a lot of time talking.

I really wish something more were done with them. They're anarchistic monsters and cold-blooded killers, the kind who would break into a family home and murder everybody just for laughs and a bottle of gin. Far as I'm concerned, we should HATE them, not find them adorable. Do people forget about Mike Swartzwald, and how they out and out killed him and intended to slaughter everyone in the building just to cover it up? That arc is very much their shining moment, AND it has an interesting idea for Dreck that seems to lead into a plot which never existed.

I'd like to see the Freakshow represented a little less quirky and cute and a little more like the cut-throats they actually are.

Boris the Russion is stupid, offensive and completely unrealistic. It's like watching a Cold War cartoon or some such. Dimitri Krilov, on the other hand, is actually very well done. Sure, he lapses into the occasional bout of stupid accent, but by and large his language is plagued by mistranslations which are actually quite common for Russians and Slaves in general speaking English. That's less an accent and more just poor grasp of the language, and in a very natural way. Him I like, even if occasionally he comes off as more "stupid" than "Russian."

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

This. It worked out well enough for Babylon 5, which did the exact same thing with the alien races. When they were speaking to each other alone they would "speak English" so we could understand. When they were around others they would speak English if they WANTED the rest to understand and speak their own language if they didn't. Unless they COULDN'T speak English in which case there was usually a translator.

It's worse when they change voices...
There was a trilogy of games where the main female character had three different voices each damn time. Her first voice was french (I think) accented which was, on the whole, pretty good. The second game gave her a more American accent which was, IMO, the best of the bunch, also because the voice actress really gave the character the...well, character she deserved. The third one was some sort of latino/spanish/italian hybrid which sounded bloody horrible, and annoyed me no end. -sigh-

The thing I don't get is why they use gangs like the Hellions and Skulls as low level 'cheery' enemies...Lets take a closer look, shall we?

The Hellion are a sect of fire obsessed satanists who worship demons and general cause all sorts of unholy havoc. They steal artefacts, they kidnap people, they consort with dangerous demonic enteties...There is so much potential there that dies at level 5!

The Skulls are even better. They're a bunch of death obsessed sociopaths who wear the freaking SKULLS of the first person they killed as a trophy and gang passage. They are psychotic killers who get a paltry 3 enemy types and also die off incredibly early. We barely even see the Petrovic brothers, the big Daddies behind the whole gang. They dont even have unique models or powers or anything, just named Bone Daddies...lame much?

I really hate how shallow they leave the early mobs, especially Heroside. Redside you get the whole Marcone/Mook war as soon as you hit Oakes, you get the Scrapyarder/Cage fighting in Sharkhead, all throughout you have all the powerplays of Arachnos and kicking Longbow and Wyvern around.
Blueside's first taste is the Hollows arcs, which I still think are really good. You could still get a better feel of the Outcasts and Trolls (And GOD do they need a makeover! Blandest models in the game much!) but then it peters off with the blooming Cavern TF. And then nothing.

Wandering off-topic, but it sort of ties in with the character that voices give NPCs and stories.

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

For some reason, this made me think of a Christmas song idea: Jingle Bells by the Barking Rikti.
Much better video potential than the barking dogs version.

That's why we need animated faces - so we can see that even while they're talking English, their lips aren't matching the words

??

Doesn't this come to DVD/BluRay on Dec 22...

Subtitles are AWESOME! don't let anyone tell you otherwise. nothing like having the original language. Though it really funy to watch something like Trigun and listen to them butcher english [western] names. which in a way I suppose is a twist on this question.

of course I abuse bad accents all the time and worse yet I mimic them without thinking, being arouns some one with an accent will cause me to develop one.

For Canada most people have some understanding of either language not speak it but many can read it, and know some phrases. I really good ant hello and how are you in French, to the point that those phrase have little accent but everything else is so bad that it make Defendbaker sound good. it no Biligualism but it not quite English only!

Interestingly Richmond British Columbia is bilingual but it English and Catonese. The North West Terriories I belive has five Official languges, Nunavut hgas three, New Brunswick [A German name] is the Only Offically Biligual Province. Quebec is franch Only and the other provinces are English.

Doom/Batman in 2012

The Resistance has boobs too, and better hair!

Which would put his release date at December 28, 2009...

If you have to ask, you know what I'm going to answer.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Yo ho! Yo ho! A pirate's life for me!