Darkath

I don't think it's a real issue. You translate Smith into Dupont in french. This is the cultural equivalent. Hightower can be translated into Hautetour easily because it sounds ok and can be a name in France. What is difficult is to translate totally imaginary names from one language to another because you are not sure of what was the expected sound impact of the name. But even for that, professional translators can manage good jobs. If you look at translated books, outside of poetry and songs, translations are ok, at least in french. But french and english are quite close in sounds, so it's not that hard. German or polish into french is more difficult. Yeah but take the map of Project Eternity's world on the Kickstarter page, you see that there is lot of english words that are used, but how do you translate Dyrwood ? Dyrbois ? Dirbois ? Or the Blizzard way and try to translate "dyr" even though it's not a word (and come up with something like "Sombrebois" just for the sake of translating everything) ? Same with Pearlwood i can't imagine something that don't sound silly like Bois Perlé (kinda gives a My Little Pony vibe). Godhammer => Dieumarteau ? Marteau des Dieux ? Come on this is really awful. Now i have nothing against translating places which names are whole sentences (good luck with Court of Bowing Ashes, tho, it even sounds weird in english), but when a Name is just 2 english words stuck together and the translation is those 2 same words stuck together in german, french or whatever, it can't help but sound really silly.

It really depends what the authors of the Names wanted them to be in the first place. In english there is a fundamental issue because most of the english last names are translatable, especially in fantasy settings, authors love to give people surnames that gives a hint of where they were born, or about their status, personality, whatever. In the Witcher, to follow your example, i don't think many last names were in polish from the beginning, of course Geralt z Rivii was translated into Geralt of Rivia in english and Geralt de Rive in french, but that's ok, because "z Rivii" is polish, Geralt is not, and Triss Merigold was Triss Merigold in Polish, English and French. The name was never intended to be translated whatsoever, same as most of the places in the game, i'm pretty sure they were fantasy names and not Polish names. So often europeans settings can easily be translated into english without issue because Names can't be translated in most cases, but when you translate an english setting with its boatloads of Smith, Hightower, Coldstone or whatever. You'll run into translations issues. Should you preserve the original names or translate to give foreign readers the same hints as english readers ? As a general principle, if you're going to write a book or make a game, and expect it to be translated, don't give your places, items and characters names that can be translated if you don't want your translators to come up with awkward writing. I think that's an important point you should consider Mr Sawyer, Cain and Avelonne

You've never been to china have you ? I'm in shanghai right now. The english taught at school is very bad, most of the young chinese I meet still are far below the required level to read somewhat complicated texts (as in a book or RPG). Now it is true that most of the upper-class chinese speak english well enough, because often their work require them to do so, but if you venture into mainland china alone and not speaking chinese, you'll be in trouble. If you stay in rich coastal cities like Shanghai you'll be fine but even so, with my limited chinese most of my daily interaction with chinese people is reduce to body language. Anyway, i don't think chinese are in the target audience of hardore isometric RPG. Most of them never had the chance to play games in the isometric golden era, or were not interested, and this project is tailored to attract nostalgic people like us. Russian, Polish, Spanish, German and French are more likely to yield results.

Right i took the wrong picture, i'll change it, but nevertheless, it looks really similar to me, true we see some more polygons and less crisp details, but that's really ok for me.

Like a mock-up concept art that doesn't even feature 3d models? O_o' Those are 3D models actually. (edit probably not the passers-by with their umbrellas, but the shining NPC are 3D, they showcased the dwarf model in a video for instance)

This is how a modern 2D isometric game with 3D character can look like : Or like this :