That moment I understood Tunic’s manual and unlocked one of those doors, I was so mind blown. One of the best games I’ve played must because it gave me the space to learn without forcing me to.
Totally agree! I think that manual is one of the best tutorials I've ever seen in a game. It gives you all the tools you need without tell you how to "use them" and when you do figure out how to use them it just feels really great. I hope more games in the future do something similar to this.
You should check out Chants of Sennaar, it’s pretty new but its entire game is centered around deciphering a language based on context clues and it’s really good I love it I love linguistics and I love themes of linguistics in games it’s so cool Hell it’s even in Venba where you’re parsing through a damaged recipe book trying to figure out how to make the food come out right when important steps are blurred or ripped and you need to figure it out with the information you have and that’s just. Really, really cool. It’s such a cool thing to explore in video games. Auch, ich lerne Deutsch! Hallo!
I checked out the demo just before it came out, actually. I'm going to try to make time for the full game soon! It was INCREDIBLE (and makes me want to add it to this video lmao)
The game that comes immediately to mind with a brand of conglang is the English word-replacement of No Man's Sky. One of the primary side activities I do when playing NMS is collecting words of the alien languages. It's very straightforward, but actually ties into some game mechanics! Like, an alien will say something in their language (translated as much as you have words!) and the game will sort of narrate afterwards like "This lil guy seems like he needs something!" to give you a sort of general sense of what's going on if you don't know enough of the language. Then you get a few options for what to do or say to the alien. BUT!!! If you have enough words learned, the alien will actually *tell* you what they need, and you can be assured to get a good reward! :D (btw this video is lighting a fire under me to want to play both Sifu and Outer Wilds thanks lol)
I appreciate substantial discussion being done here about video games and conlang, because most of what is available online as of me writing this consists of surface-level articles. Conlangs have some amount of discussion in books/movies/TV, but not as much in video games, where they have the potential to shine. I really enjoyed Tunic's case of it, it's probably my favorite. I also strongly appreciate games which do not necessarily use the conlang as something the player must decipher, but as a tool to make the world more colorful, such as Stray. This video includes examples of conlang in games that hadn't occurred to me! And I agree on machine translation. While it may be masked as a tool to help people, it's usage makes people underestimate the work of translators and localizers alike. Great video overall!
Whoa this video is amazing!! It gave me a sense of comforting nostalgia I don’t often feel and the info was presented so well 😌 Instant love, and perfect timing because I’m on holidays and made up my own language taking influence from English, Chinese and putting a personal spin and slang on it! It really made me appreciate the influence of language more
I just happened to stubble upon this video and I am blown away by your writing and editing but more so your lack of attention! Great stuff man will be a long time watcher for sure
I really enjoyed the faux proto-indoeuropean language used in Far Cry Primal. I loved the way it made my brain itch, like I knew what they were saying because it all sounded vaguely familiar, and I started to pick up on words and phrases over time. It's not a game mechanic at all but it still sticks in my mind.
Not gonna lie, I haven't tried out Primal yet but maybe I should. A triple A title that plays with that concept of proto-language actually sounds pretty unique!
They actually had a team of linguists develop three dialects as a reconstruction of proto indoeuropean! You get subtitles from the very start, but they commit to keeping all VA in the conlang, which is pretty rare. I haven't played any other Far Cry games but Primal was pretty fun, albeit a fairly standard open world action/adventure game.
That’s why knowing the practices of language learning in a video game helped in designing a learning plan for mandarin. Video games sure teach great lessons and help you get comfortable with being in a foreign environment before immersing yourself in one in real life.
Loved the video! This is a topic that has always interested me, and I think you definitely make a good point about how Metrodivania games tap into this same sense of discovery. Some constructive criticism: the final section of the video on "mechanical fluency" (Sifu/Hades) feels out of place to me here. I think it is it's own entirely separate discussion, warranting its own video (in the spirit of Razbuten's 'Gaming for a Non-Gamer' series). There's definitely some cool, related topics you can touch on like mastery, "flow states," accessibility, etc.
I played FEZ way after it came out and the language had been solved, but I still figured out the conlang on my own and it was so rewarding. Also, Return of the Obra Dinn is INCREDIBLE
Well, someone clearly has a boyfriend who does translation for a living. 😂 Also, here is your award for best use of the word "diegetic" in a video essay 🏆, good job.
Lmao! He mayyyy have inspired it. Maybe! 😆 And thank you. I mostly hear that word in the context of sound design because... hi, film school. Figured it fit here too!
My first experience with this was Ultima VI. Not only does the game use archaic English (which isn't my native language and thus, as a kid, was hard enough for me to decipher), but it also features a runic alphabet as well as another language (Gargish) with it's own alphabet. I was blown away by all of this, and it really made the game feel magical to me, and helped to ignite my love for language learning.
I love this video man like a lot. I'd live to recommend a few games to you I think you might like. The last campfire, The Last Tree, Before your eyes, and Cloudpunk. I also just finished binging your essays you make great videos.
*I'll admit I have an affinity towards quiet games with little to no dialog. INSIDE is a major favorite 👍 much of Control is just you roaming around this eerie dark vibe location without much talking. games that don't need to tell you anything but tell you Everything are the definition of Art* 👌
I love games where there’s “knowledge checkpoints” It just makes me feel smart ^w^. Praying in tunic was absolutely my highlight with that game. I INSTANTLY ran to a “suspicious point” when I got that information because I just knew it had to be something. And when it did something I got so excited Also not your fault, but playing through FEZ right now, so I had to avoid certain points JUST in case there were spoilers haha
I'm actually using video games to advance my German. I think video games are an important way to learn another language, and see how videogames are in Germany through videos such as GermanPeter. It also helps I have a really good friend that lives in Germany. But language really helps you open new doors you didn't even know were closed. Meinen Deutsch schlecht ist, aber, ich liebe learnen Deutsch auf videospielen.
I love Monster Hunters conlang of mechanical languages, mainly in the weapons and armour. Instead of each button universally translating to the same type of word (like B = light attack) that alot of games with large weapon variety do, every single one has very different languages. B with a hammer is a single light hit which can be chained repeatedly, but B on a charge blade is a single press-and-hold chargeup attack which you can't use repeatedly. To pull another Skyrim comparison, the controls for a two-handed axe are the same as a one handed dagger, just different speeds. MH goes to the opposite extreme, and even weapons that are extremely similar (i.e. heavy bowgun and light bowgun) still beg very different playstyles and strategies. Then level of fluency comes into play and the exact same weapon plays wildly different in another person's hands; I'm very fluent in chargeblade, I can do all but the absolute hardest hunts in the game with relative ease, but cannot hold a fucking Candle to a certain team of speedrunners. We both have the same information, we both know the weapons language, the games language, and the monsters language, but one knows it all 'more'. The armour language is an entirely different beast, and not the 'numbers go up' department, but in skills. Sure, you can win a fight by having really big damage and defence numbers, OR you could win through various immunities, conditional buffs, and *bomba*. You don't need good defence if youre fluent enough to never get hit, or are a ballsy motherfucker that plays Heroics skill. When I was trying to get past one of the endgame bosses, a player with full final boss gear and maxed out attack boost tried to help me out; he took 2 of the 3 carts four attempts in a row, ending the quest in 15 minutes when I could make it to nearly 25 on my own, because I spend two hours just studying the boss and learning it's attack patterns and hit boxes first before even trying to fight back. He kept blaming the monster for his performance, clearly frustrated by the lack of understanding between him and the monster. He also was refusing to learn and adapt to it, and after some chatting I learned he originally got past it by just brute forcing it with damage rushing, instead of learning it's unique mechanics; the final boss afterwards doesn't have a mechanic as complex as that, which also explained his equipment and build. Semi unrelated, I always see helpers in near-identical builds as that guy, and wonder how they're having fun anymore. It you're not adapting yourself to the monster you're fighting, and just using the same overpowered endgame gear for everything, then where's the fun of it?
I feel like I need to get way more into Monster Hunter tbh. It sounds like such a great time all around. I started Rise and then got distracted by a million other things.
@@filmotter honestly same, I'm finishing up my third playthrough of World while Rise sits sad and alone at 5hrs playtime in my steam library lmao (also I hope you like menus)
Ever play Gravity Rush? It has an invented somewhat-French-sounding language that all the characters speak, but there's also a written language used all throughout the game that you don't *need* to figure out, but you *can*, and everything becomes infinitely more rewarding when you do. Not just as part of the game experience, but also figuring out how the creators used an algorithm to generate it from real-life Japanese and English. Also it's a beautiful game even aside from the language!
I figured out how to translate the entirety of Tunic's language, and it felt so rewarding. The only downside was that Ending A was a bit hollow due to me already knowing the lore from the manual. Whoops.
i wonder if you have any examples of a game with its own language where it doesn't hit the mark? like it attempted mystery but didn't really do it for you?
Is it a cop out to say Dark Souls? I would also say Undertale? I like both games but the idea that you're dropped into an "unfamiliar world" but can perfectly communicate with everyone there feels a bit odd to me.
Tunic's conlang stood out to me so much especially since I was so in tune for the game's development for a long time like back when it was still called Secret Legend and I was so confused why it looked like that since a lot of that wasn't really explained, but oh my face it turned out to be such a blast figuring out the manual and getting each piece. The sense of mystery I had looking at a location in the manual I haven't been in and seeing a bunch of the conlang in there and not even knowing what to expect until I got there surprised me so much. The world was so fun to explore because of that.
Thank you for watching the video! Giving it a like and sharing it would mean the world. Thank you. 😇
That moment I understood Tunic’s manual and unlocked one of those doors, I was so mind blown. One of the best games I’ve played must because it gave me the space to learn without forcing me to.
Totally agree! I think that manual is one of the best tutorials I've ever seen in a game. It gives you all the tools you need without tell you how to "use them" and when you do figure out how to use them it just feels really great. I hope more games in the future do something similar to this.
You should check out Chants of Sennaar, it’s pretty new but its entire game is centered around deciphering a language based on context clues and it’s really good I love it
I love linguistics and I love themes of linguistics in games it’s so cool
Hell it’s even in Venba where you’re parsing through a damaged recipe book trying to figure out how to make the food come out right when important steps are blurred or ripped and you need to figure it out with the information you have and that’s just. Really, really cool. It’s such a cool thing to explore in video games.
Auch, ich lerne Deutsch! Hallo!
I checked out the demo just before it came out, actually. I'm going to try to make time for the full game soon! It was INCREDIBLE (and makes me want to add it to this video lmao)
Venba Is such a great game !!!! And yeah, you need to translate and learn to use some words in Tamil xd
man Tunic is so great. it has so many WOW SO THAT'S HOW IT WORKS moments and it continues to surprise you until the very end
Right? Same here! That and Outer Wilds are some of the rare games that actually make me feel like I solved an ancient mystery. Such a rush!
The game that comes immediately to mind with a brand of conglang is the English word-replacement of No Man's Sky. One of the primary side activities I do when playing NMS is collecting words of the alien languages. It's very straightforward, but actually ties into some game mechanics! Like, an alien will say something in their language (translated as much as you have words!) and the game will sort of narrate afterwards like "This lil guy seems like he needs something!" to give you a sort of general sense of what's going on if you don't know enough of the language. Then you get a few options for what to do or say to the alien. BUT!!! If you have enough words learned, the alien will actually *tell* you what they need, and you can be assured to get a good reward! :D
(btw this video is lighting a fire under me to want to play both Sifu and Outer Wilds thanks lol)
Play Sifu and Outer Wilds ASAP!
And yeah No Man's Sky is a great example of language integrated into game mechanics well. Can't believe I missed it! 😆
wow this has no views!!!! So underrated!!!! you deserve more subscribers!!!!!!!!!
OH YEAH, GO SHARE THE VIDEO. THANKS! 😆😆
WOW THANK YOU FOR THIS SINCERE COMMENT, STRANGER
@@filmotter I’m not going to share it though I’m doing the BARE MINIMUM 😤
@@FauxRetro 🤠 yeeeeehaw sounds like you're a good old fashioned YT commenter lol
@@filmotter true, no suggestion of even having *watched* the video
You are so underrated
I appreciate that haha
As a gaming youtuber who studied linguistics in college this video was practically made for me lol. Excellent work :)
I didn't realize you studied linguistics! Have you ever made a video about language in games at all? I would love to see your perspective.
@@filmotter Ya know I cant say I have! Hasnt really been relevant to any of the games Ive analyzed so far. Someday though!
I appreciate substantial discussion being done here about video games and conlang, because most of what is available online as of me writing this consists of surface-level articles. Conlangs have some amount of discussion in books/movies/TV, but not as much in video games, where they have the potential to shine. I really enjoyed Tunic's case of it, it's probably my favorite. I also strongly appreciate games which do not necessarily use the conlang as something the player must decipher, but as a tool to make the world more colorful, such as Stray. This video includes examples of conlang in games that hadn't occurred to me! And I agree on machine translation. While it may be masked as a tool to help people, it's usage makes people underestimate the work of translators and localizers alike. Great video overall!
Whoa this video is amazing!! It gave me a sense of comforting nostalgia I don’t often feel and the info was presented so well 😌
Instant love, and perfect timing because I’m on holidays and made up my own language taking influence from English, Chinese and putting a personal spin and slang on it! It really made me appreciate the influence of language more
I just happened to stubble upon this video and I am blown away by your writing and editing but more so your lack of attention! Great stuff man will be a long time watcher for sure
I really enjoyed the faux proto-indoeuropean language used in Far Cry Primal. I loved the way it made my brain itch, like I knew what they were saying because it all sounded vaguely familiar, and I started to pick up on words and phrases over time. It's not a game mechanic at all but it still sticks in my mind.
Not gonna lie, I haven't tried out Primal yet but maybe I should. A triple A title that plays with that concept of proto-language actually sounds pretty unique!
They actually had a team of linguists develop three dialects as a reconstruction of proto indoeuropean! You get subtitles from the very start, but they commit to keeping all VA in the conlang, which is pretty rare.
I haven't played any other Far Cry games but Primal was pretty fun, albeit a fairly standard open world action/adventure game.
@@MouseTC Oh that's really cool to know! Now I definitely have to look into that game.
5:24-5:37 I hope you're proud of this music transition!
I AM lmao
That’s why knowing the practices of language learning in a video game helped in designing a learning plan for mandarin. Video games sure teach great lessons and help you get comfortable with being in a foreign environment before immersing yourself in one in real life.
man you deserve SO much more views and subs, these videos are amazing
I appreciate it. I work really hard on these, so all the likes and shares make a world of difference. 🥰
loved this! Lotta great game recommendations in this video too...very excited to eventually check out Tunic and Heaven's Vault in a few weeks
Yes! I hope you enjoy them both!
As usual, great work man 👍🏻
Thank you so much. I'm really happy with how it came out.
Loved the video! This is a topic that has always interested me, and I think you definitely make a good point about how Metrodivania games tap into this same sense of discovery. Some constructive criticism: the final section of the video on "mechanical fluency" (Sifu/Hades) feels out of place to me here. I think it is it's own entirely separate discussion, warranting its own video (in the spirit of Razbuten's 'Gaming for a Non-Gamer' series). There's definitely some cool, related topics you can touch on like mastery, "flow states," accessibility, etc.
There's never a missed opportunity for you to drag Dark Souls lmao
It's a tradition at this point!
I played FEZ way after it came out and the language had been solved, but I still figured out the conlang on my own and it was so rewarding. Also, Return of the Obra Dinn is INCREDIBLE
Oh I played FEZ after it was figured out as well, I don't think I could have solved it on my own to be completely honest. 😆
Well, someone clearly has a boyfriend who does translation for a living. 😂
Also, here is your award for best use of the word "diegetic" in a video essay 🏆, good job.
Lmao! He mayyyy have inspired it. Maybe! 😆
And thank you. I mostly hear that word in the context of sound design because... hi, film school. Figured it fit here too!
Schöne Grüße aus Deutschland. Heute deinen tollen Kanal entdeckt und direkt abonniert.
Danke schön! 🥰 Freut Mich!
My first experience with this was Ultima VI. Not only does the game use archaic English (which isn't my native language and thus, as a kid, was hard enough for me to decipher), but it also features a runic alphabet as well as another language (Gargish) with it's own alphabet. I was blown away by all of this, and it really made the game feel magical to me, and helped to ignite my love for language learning.
You are marvelous when you mention the non-diegetic language.
I love this video man like a lot. I'd live to recommend a few games to you I think you might like. The last campfire, The Last Tree, Before your eyes, and Cloudpunk. I also just finished binging your essays you make great videos.
*I'll admit I have an affinity towards quiet games with little to no dialog. INSIDE is a major favorite 👍 much of Control is just you roaming around this eerie dark vibe location without much talking. games that don't need to tell you anything but tell you Everything are the definition of Art* 👌
my favorite gamer conlang is the minecraft-optimized Votgil
i’m a bit excited
I love games where there’s “knowledge checkpoints” It just makes me feel smart ^w^. Praying in tunic was absolutely my highlight with that game. I INSTANTLY ran to a “suspicious point” when I got that information because I just knew it had to be something. And when it did something I got so excited
Also not your fault, but playing through FEZ right now, so I had to avoid certain points JUST in case there were spoilers haha
I'm actually using video games to advance my German. I think video games are an important way to learn another language, and see how videogames are in Germany through videos such as GermanPeter. It also helps I have a really good friend that lives in Germany. But language really helps you open new doors you didn't even know were closed. Meinen Deutsch schlecht ist, aber, ich liebe learnen Deutsch auf videospielen.
I love Monster Hunters conlang of mechanical languages, mainly in the weapons and armour.
Instead of each button universally translating to the same type of word (like B = light attack) that alot of games with large weapon variety do, every single one has very different languages. B with a hammer is a single light hit which can be chained repeatedly, but B on a charge blade is a single press-and-hold chargeup attack which you can't use repeatedly. To pull another Skyrim comparison, the controls for a two-handed axe are the same as a one handed dagger, just different speeds.
MH goes to the opposite extreme, and even weapons that are extremely similar (i.e. heavy bowgun and light bowgun) still beg very different playstyles and strategies.
Then level of fluency comes into play and the exact same weapon plays wildly different in another person's hands; I'm very fluent in chargeblade, I can do all but the absolute hardest hunts in the game with relative ease, but cannot hold a fucking Candle to a certain team of speedrunners. We both have the same information, we both know the weapons language, the games language, and the monsters language, but one knows it all 'more'.
The armour language is an entirely different beast, and not the 'numbers go up' department, but in skills. Sure, you can win a fight by having really big damage and defence numbers, OR you could win through various immunities, conditional buffs, and *bomba*. You don't need good defence if youre fluent enough to never get hit, or are a ballsy motherfucker that plays Heroics skill.
When I was trying to get past one of the endgame bosses, a player with full final boss gear and maxed out attack boost tried to help me out; he took 2 of the 3 carts four attempts in a row, ending the quest in 15 minutes when I could make it to nearly 25 on my own, because I spend two hours just studying the boss and learning it's attack patterns and hit boxes first before even trying to fight back. He kept blaming the monster for his performance, clearly frustrated by the lack of understanding between him and the monster. He also was refusing to learn and adapt to it, and after some chatting I learned he originally got past it by just brute forcing it with damage rushing, instead of learning it's unique mechanics; the final boss afterwards doesn't have a mechanic as complex as that, which also explained his equipment and build.
Semi unrelated, I always see helpers in near-identical builds as that guy, and wonder how they're having fun anymore. It you're not adapting yourself to the monster you're fighting, and just using the same overpowered endgame gear for everything, then where's the fun of it?
I feel like I need to get way more into Monster Hunter tbh. It sounds like such a great time all around. I started Rise and then got distracted by a million other things.
@@filmotter honestly same, I'm finishing up my third playthrough of World while Rise sits sad and alone at 5hrs playtime in my steam library lmao
(also I hope you like menus)
Oh gawd. I will say Rise was fun for the movement options I saw. And that is pretty much what makes me want to get back to it.
ClongCraft is something you might want to look into :3
Nice!
this is a really cool video, i didnt know there were so many language games!
also does anyone know the game at 5:17 ?
Ever play Gravity Rush? It has an invented somewhat-French-sounding language that all the characters speak, but there's also a written language used all throughout the game that you don't *need* to figure out, but you *can*, and everything becomes infinitely more rewarding when you do. Not just as part of the game experience, but also figuring out how the creators used an algorithm to generate it from real-life Japanese and English.
Also it's a beautiful game even aside from the language!
I haven't but a few of my friends have mentioned that I should give it a shot!
Great video as always uwu I've never heard of diegetic language before but the way you explained it was super cool!
Thank you thank you uwu, Aware
I figured out how to translate the entirety of Tunic's language, and it felt so rewarding.
The only downside was that Ending A was a bit hollow due to me already knowing the lore from the manual. Whoops.
i wonder if you have any examples of a game with its own language where it doesn't hit the mark? like it attempted mystery but didn't really do it for you?
Is it a cop out to say Dark Souls? I would also say Undertale? I like both games but the idea that you're dropped into an "unfamiliar world" but can perfectly communicate with everyone there feels a bit odd to me.
@@filmotter oh i meant ones that actually have a language made for the game, but still a good answer
ive been thinking about this and somebody already made a video about it !?!?!?
I was thinking about it too! 😄
Tunic's conlang stood out to me so much especially since I was so in tune for the game's development for a long time like back when it was still called Secret Legend and I was so confused why it looked like that since a lot of that wasn't really explained, but oh my face it turned out to be such a blast figuring out the manual and getting each piece. The sense of mystery I had looking at a location in the manual I haven't been in and seeing a bunch of the conlang in there and not even knowing what to expect until I got there surprised me so much. The world was so fun to explore because of that.
I totally agree! The game's conlang made the mysteries in Tunic feel so much more rewarding when you finally figured them out imho
oh hi
Hewwo!
tu hesmo tridu
Ich bin eine Berliner
I am also a donut! Well met, fellow donut. 😄