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General text/language/proofreading thread (+ a few bugs)


9-Jack-9

Question

My main purpose for this thread is to provide a place to list errors and inconsistencies found in the game's text. I'm dividing those into actual spelling errors and separately the inconsistencies mentioned. I'll include a smaller section at the bottom that details a few bugs I've encountered that others may or may not have come across.

 

Before I continue, I should mention that I'm already enjoying the game! It's an incredibly exciting to see an Infinity Engine-style game looking nice and modern on my large monitor. Thanks for all the hard work you've already put into this, and please don't take the following as anything other than me helping in the best way I know. I should also mention that I'm an editor and writer by trade and have worked on a number of games. I'll cut my pitch short, but it would be a dream come true to make my +5 Scalpel of Proofreading available to Obsidian.

 

General Thoughts

 

I personally like the invented terms and language (as mentioned in this thread), so I'll keep this to actual textual treatment. I also like the decision to capitalize important game terms like Stamina.

 

I think the single-hyphen dashes - which are rendered in-game like this - read as a bit weak. Somehow I doubt your foremost concern is to go back into all the text at this point in development, but maybe you can turn them into double-hyphen dashes -- like this -- with a find-and-replace?

 

"The White that Wends" -- Some publications use a style rule that all articles of four characters or longer are automatically capitalized. It may be simply that I'm used to that rule, but the lack of capitalization ("that") in certain place names like the above just looks odd to me. It throws the reader off.

 

Errors

 

In Character Creation, for the Perception trait description, "instinctive" is misspelled (it's missing the second "n"):

 

"Perception represents a character's senses as well as their instictive ability to pick up on details."

 

The Cipher's Secret Horrors ability is missing the word "to" between "effect" and "believe":

 

"Causes enemies in the area of effect believe their worst fears have been realized, Frightening and Sickening them for the duration."

 

It's minor, but in the Character Creation screen for the Fighter class, there's a space missing between the single-hyphen dash and "Fighters": 

 

"Constant Recovery -Fighters continually regenerate Stamina at a modest rate during combat."

 

In the Journal, in the expanded quest description for Cat and Mouse, there's a misspelling of "Dyrford" (it's missing the first "R"):

 

"She's an orlan woman. If I find her, he wants me to convince her that it's safe to leave Dyford."

 

No biggie, but in a line of Nyfre's dialogue, "any more" should be "anymore":

 

"We're not exactly friends any more if you catch my drift."

 

Stylistic Issues

 

I've noticed a minor discrepancy between some actions as represented in dialogue choices. Some [action] brackets end with a period and some don't. For example, with Nyfre, options include [Lie], [Attack], and [Leave]. Whereas with Dengler, it's [Display your coin pouch.]

 

No big deal, but for the Character Creation screen for the Wizard Class, adverbs that end in "-ly" don't take a hyphen that joins them to the following word. So in the second sentence, you don't need to hyphenate "highly-organized group." Same thing with a bit of Sid's dialogue in the inn: "newly-independent Vailian Republics"

 

By contrast, the Wizard, Druid, and Priest character-class descriptions all mention "per encounter use." In that case, "per-encounter" should actually be hyphenated, given that it's modifying "use."

 

In Character Creation, for the Deadfire Archipelago description, there should be a comma between "beyond" and "making":

 

"Deadfire Archipelago is the 'last stop' for anyone headed east - a multitude of monstrous sea creatures infest the ocean beyond making travel virtually impossible."

 

The game's text seems to use the serial comma in general, but I've noticed that a few item descriptions have omitted it. For example, in the description for "Stew": "meat, vegetables and rice."

 

Also, in the item description for "Sweet Pie," no need to hyphenate "golden-crust" (as it's a noun).

 

Yes, I'm a big nerd for noting all of that.

 

Bugs

 

Not sure if anyone else has noted this, but when I came back to Medreth's group (because I was itching for a fight), the one boar animal companion had multiplied to ... I don't know, a pack of six or so? Here's a screenshot.

 

And I also noticed that in the inn, the assistant in the back room seemed to be transparent. I thought she might be the ghost of a little kitchen scullion, but I'm guessing it's just a graphical glitch? Here's a screenshot.

 

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I guess I can repeat the grammatical advice I gave in this thread. Switch out all the "him or her/his or her" stuff with "their". It's a gender-neutral pronoun that makes the text a lot less messy.

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"You're a fool if you believe I would trust your benevolence. Step aside and you and your lackeys will be unhurt."


 


 


Baldur's Gate portraits for Pillars of Eternity   IXI   Icewind Dale portraits for Pillars of Eternity   IXI   Icewind Dale 2 portraits for Pillars of Eternity


 


[slap Aloth]

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Thank you for reporting these. It's a lot of text to proof - I appreciate all the extra sets of eyes. 

 

Note that for bracketed text, we've made the choice to have single words not be punctuated. That accounts for the discrepancy between [Leave] and, say, [Kill this jerk over here.] Purely an aesthetic choice - I think the single words tend to look better unpunctuated. Consequently, if you see bracketed single words that are punctuated, or bracketed sentences that are not, those'd be bugs.

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