7 replies to this topic

[Tooneyman]

What did you all think of how Bioware in Jade Empire created two different languages in the game? I was flat out impressed the team of writers would got that far to create a made up language in the game.

Edited by Tooneyman, 02 September 2010 - 02:23 PM.

[Seagloom]

Do You Speak Tho Fan?



Do not be too impressed with Jade Empire's writing team as they had nothing to do with it. BioWare contracted a Ph.D. candidate to conlang Tho Fan for them. To be blunt, I was not impressed by it. I played Jade Empire so many times back then, that towards the end I noticed many of the same phrases repeated in situations where the subtitles were completely different. It was not unlike alien speak in KotOR, where they all had a few looping sentences to act as speech for anything the writers wanted to subtitle. If Tho Fan was developed further, it wasn't evident in the game.

[Ingrida]

What an interesting article, I had no idea! Thanks for posting the link. But hang on, four languages for DA?

[schalafi]

Tho Fan was pretty interesting at first, but got monotonous later in the game. I got a laugh out of a few of the slips in the game where a word was used that was utterly out of context. Like when the sailor that stole the merchant's statue said *geez*, and when several people pronounced words like *out* more like the Canadian *oot*. It was just obvious enough to be funny.

[caradoc2000]

Moirah wrote...

But hang on, four languages for DA?

Dwarvish, Elvish, Qunari and Arcanum (the language of the Tevinter imperium).

[Ingrida]

I did a little googling on the use of Tho Fan in JE last night, and quickly ran into the reasons for the game not taking full advantage of the work put into creating the language. Unfortunately they ended up mapping plenty of Tho Fan clips and translations (subtitles) based on e.g. the length of the clip instead of the meaning of it. Apparently it was basically due to time and budget constraints, and the need of last minute content tweaks.



@caradoc2000, thanks! I completely forgot Arcanum.

[Alexine]

I was not impressed by Tho Fan either. It sounded too much like like vietnamese with thai and a hint of Japanese.

I think that Tho Fan could be developed further if there is any future games. I kind of wished they included such aspects such as dialects for different people (it might be costly, but it would've been more believable.

[Tooneyman]

Alexine wrote...

I was not impressed by Tho Fan either. It sounded too much like like vietnamese with thai and a hint of Japanese.
I think that Tho Fan could be developed further if there is any future games. I kind of wished they included such aspects such as dialects for different people (it might be costly, but it would've been more believable.

I can understand the time budget they had with the game and why Tho Fan might have suffered from it, but you do have to give bioware for trying something that bowled with a video game. How often do you see video game devs trying to invent a language for a game. Not many at all.

Also if you talked the old guy on the beach in your school before it was burned down. He says actually a few spanish words in his speak and there was one word in Tho Fan I could never forget.

Mut-ta! Which I have no idea what it meant, but its catchy as hell.