xzar_monty

This is not true. Although I agree that it is generally best to translate into your first language, this is by no means a rule. I, for instance, have translated quite a lot of stuff into English, which is not my first language. Just think of writers like Joseph Conrad or Vladimir Nabokov who happen to be some of the most remarkable users of the English language of the past 150 years. They were not natives. Or, just think of any internet forum and how they demonstrate to you that a stunningly large proportion of native English speakers have a very tenuous grasp on the only language they know. Besides, it's not as if PoE represents ambitious, extremely well-written English that is demanding to translate. I am happy to admit that there are good ideas there and the writing is by no means bad, but in terms of challenge and literary quality, it's fairly straightforward and easy stuff.

I very seriously doubt the translator gets paid well. Of course we will have to define what "well" means here. Is it well for Tokyo, Reykjavik, Helsinki and London, or is it well for Delhi, Mogadishu, Lima and Hampton Roads, Virginia?

English-speaking people tend to be particularly poor when it comes to learning other languages. The funny side of this is that a shocking number of English-speaking people speak very, very poor English. So, they are fluent in no languages at all. But anyway, I don't think foreign-language markets are that big a deal for a company like Obsidian, so the honorable thing to do would be to refrain from these godawful translations altogether. It would reflect much better on the company.

What you said last is precisely the point. A very poor translation is a waste of time and money, for everybody, and it frustrates the player an awful lot. Really, if the choice is between making an awful translation and not making one at all, surely it is best not to make one at all. Unfortunately, we are unlikely to hear Obsidian's view on this, I suppose.

Google translate understands nothing about context, so it is bound to produce terrible translations. If you worked in a context where quality of translation matters, relying upon google translate would mean instant career suicide. Apparently it doesn't matter here.

As a professional translator with twenty years of experience on this, I feel qualified to comment. Mind you, this is speculation, not fact. My hunch is that Obsidian, being a North American company, understands nothing about languages other than English. Therefore, it is absolutely not qualified to make any judgement about whether the translations it receives are worth anything. Also, translations are likely to be extremely unimportant to Obsidian. Thus, whoever does them is paid next to nothing and needs to work in a terrible hurry. What you get, as a result, is a shambles, and nobody at Obsidian knows enough about languages to notice this. Also, they don't really care. It is extremely sad, but the likelihood of the situation getting any better is realistically zero.

I am only going to comment on the itemization question, because my experience with PoE2 is extremely limited, as I am still waiting for the game to be properly balanced (it'll be no problem if this takes six months, I have other things to do). I loved much of PoE1, but itemization was frankly very poor. As I recall, there were essentially just two items in the game that were really something you wanted to work for and keep: Persistence and Tidefall. I am perfectly willing to accept that there are/were more, but this is how it looked to me. Conversely, there were tons and tons of unique items that were completely mundane, and once you earned shedloads of money, you also learned that although there were many stores in the game, none of them had anything you wanted to buy. (What I did buy, in the end, were the figurines that allowed me to summon nasties to combat.) This was a major shock. A game absolutely brimming with unique items that you couldn't have cared less about. Somehow, the concept of "unique" lost quite a lot of its meaning in the process. So, what you said about feeling sorry for the designers really hit home here.

Ok, so there is a reasonable logic to it. Good, thanks. In the two screens I tried this, there were no important people to make me aware of the distinction.

In PoE1, when you entered a new location and pressed the tab key, it highlighted all the characters on screen, thus enabling you to see who was a Commoner, a Peasant, and so on, and who had a unique name and was therefore worth talking to. But in Poe2, this does not happen. You have to move your mouse cursor individually to each character, and only then can you see who is who. Why? I don't see any benefit in making this more complicated than it was. Is it like this in everybody's game? It seems unlikely that it is a bug only existing in mine.

I did reload an Auto-save and managed to get through it that way. I was able to bring both of us through. So that was that. Strange, though. I went back for Eder because I thought it would be a better idea not to go alone and because the air pockets wouldn't disappear, so there was really no reason not to go back.

I did send someone ahead to scout, and I was informed that there were enough air pockets. Then I came back to pick up Eder, after which the "Watcher Only Check" is the only thing I get. Dang, is this a bug, then? Did I ruin it by swimming back after scouting ahead, or something? (Surely it shouldn't go like that.)

In the very first area, there's a sea cave, which contains an underwater passage. Clearly, Athletics is needed to swim through. I've got 3, Eder's got 3, but apparently that's not enough. This would be fine, if the game told me clearly that that's not enough. What I get instead is a "Watcher Only Check" tag which I will have to remove (by clicking the X on it), after which I can press "Leave". Is this really how the game tells the player that his stats aren't good enough? I'm baffled.

Ha, I had (sort of) the opposite in PoE1: loading times were abysmally slow, but the game itself ran really well with everything maxed.

Ok, I did try turning everything as low as possible, and things suddenly became very manageable. (Actually, I did keep the original resolution.) So, thanks! I might start enabling things one at a time in an attempt to see which one causes problems. If there indeed is one.

So, after the patch, I finally decided to give the game a go. My computer is a bit old, but it had no difficulties with PoE1. And judging by the System Requirements, it shouldn't have major difficulties with PoE2, either. But the fact is, it's slow as heck. And I mean really slow. Like everything is running at 25% of PoE1 speed, maximum. Obviously, the game is unplayable like this. I tried toning down the graphics (from high to medium), but nothing changed. Has anybody else experienced something like this? Feedback would be much appreciated.

I'm expecting to play the game in, say, August, something like that. (Nothing wrong with this, incidentally. Except, of course, the state of the game as it is now.)

D'oh. Now that's disappointing. (I haven't played the game yet, as my first try of approximately ten minutes proved that it's clearly not ready.)

Ahh. If that's the case, then it's more like bad writing and not a bug. What a shame (if what you said is true).

You said "through no fault of mine". Are you implying this is bugged, then? Otherwise I'm not sure what you're talking about.

Yeah. I've spent a total of less than ten minutes on the game so far. Will possibly try it after patch 1.1.

I simply wish to say that not having played the game yet (because of the save import and general difficulty problems), I am absolutely astonished that it's like this. If the OP is correct in what he lists, it could be a long wait before we have a thoroughly functional game.

I get that, but we all know Obsidian has limited resources and this really isn't something that should be worried about right now IMHO. Adding the option to leave the narrator out sounds approximately the easiest and quickest fix imaginable. Like, you add a tickable "Skip narrator" option, and if it is ticked, the narrator's sound files won't be run.

@Multihog: PoE1 was a great game when I did my playthrough approximately eight months after it was released. We do have a precedent.

For me, it has nothing to do with the actress. The problem is in the implementation. Personally, I got completely fed up with the narrator in the introduction. (And given what I have since learned about the rather serious difficulty and save import problems in the game, I have not even tried to move further.) If a narrator comes along every once in a while to describe a scene, a chapter start or whatever, that's perfectly fine. But this is not what happens in this game. The narrator speaks. You must click to move further. The narrator speaks again. You must click to move further. The narrator speaks again. You must click to move further. And so on. This simply does not work. The reason it doesn't work is that the narration is so much slower than anyone is likely to be reading the same stuff. Now, if you want to follow the narration, there's nothing wrong with that. But if you wish to proceed at your own tempo, like I want to do, then the narrator is a terrible distraction, because you can't turn it off. While you're reading the material, there is someone speaking that same material aloud, only a lot slower than you're reading. It's an utter mess. It absolutely doesn't work. There most definitely needs to be an option to turn it off.

The fact is, the game DOES start really badly. Here's why: 1) When you import your save from PoE 1, it doesn't work. 2) When you start a new game to check if #1 was a one-off of some sort, you will have to do the overlong intro again. You can't skip it. 3) No. It wasn't a one-off. I mean, seriously. These are very, very serious issues.