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[Disgruntled Canadian]

In the original ME trilogy it was well established that auto-translation tech was a thing, and allowed seamless communication with all these alien races. That worked. But in Andromeda, we'll presumably be the first to ever make contact with any of Andromeda's native species.

So is anyone else hoping BioWare goes for authenticity, and makes all the alien races, hostile or non-hostile, speak in a completely unknown language, or a method of communication humans can't even recognise?

Just imagine how much more tense a diplomatic meeting with a new race would be if you were communicating with a complete unknown, who's mannerisms and speech is alien, who you could potentially offend with just a slight miscommunication or wrong gesture...much better than it being handwaved with the old 'we have observed your communications for some time' excuse we see so much.

Thoughts?

[Han Shot First]

It would be interesting if an inability to communicate was responsible for the conflict with the Khet. 

[dreamgazer]

Yeah, the language barrier will be ... interesting. A definite problem.

Unless some AI greets the travelers and downloads all the necessary translation data to their gear early on.

[BabyPuncher]

Basing a plot off not being able to communicate is a bad idea for ME.

 

Because when you do that, now 'universal translators' are not just the convienant, useful device you need them to be for this sort of story to function. now they're real things with real problems and real headaches that have to been written for and around. And I know very little about linguistics, but I imagine there's a lot hell of a lot of problems with getting these things to sound plausible. You can't put the cat back in the bag and go back to everyone being able ot understand each other flawlessly.

[DaemionMoadrin]

http://forum.bioware...-communication/

 

...

[Hanako Ikezawa]

Only if we get to have a scene like at the end of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. 

[Dar'Nara]

Alien; GLARGHFARHARTH BLYTHECH IYIOCH (Welcome travellers! We welcome you to our settlement, we'd happily allow you to remain here for a while if you can help out a little with the daily routines we have?)

 

Human;  Uhh, what?

 

Alien: ARGHTHA IOPTHAH HHFLARGH!!!  (They disrespect us! They will know our wrath, attack!)

 

Human; What did i say?

 

   Ok... a bit basic i know but there could be some funny situations due to a lack of understanding.

[Sartoz]

                                                                          <<<<<<<<<<()>>>>>>>>>>

 

No and no. It's a needless game pacing interference.

 

I'd much prefer to start the game with the responsibility of finding the best colony planet I can find. Once done, I can set colony growth objectives and the AI agents (assuming they still exist) can be sent to perform quick scouting missions and any necessary preliminary diplomatic missions which can take care of your language issues.

 

I, as the Protagonist, can then do the main follow up investigations and get into all kinds of trouble, fighting my way towards victory, exploration wise, romance wise, raiding mission wise or any other wise.

 

But, hey, that's just me.

[CrutchCricket]

We can only hope for this and aliens that aren't just differently colored humans or humans with animal-like faces.

 

But probably won't happen.

[Amplitudelol]

They make the universal translator nonsense even more universal, problem solved. Do you really think the writers will get into details like this and have sleepless nights to figure out sci-fi stuff? They wont. RGB, nuff said.

[Oldren Shepard]

For making that, they would have to do something like in game of thrones, i prefer they spend their resources elsewhere.

[LinksOcarina]

It would be interesting if an inability to communicate was responsible for the conflict with the Khet. 

 

I bet it's a major lot point if it's a first contact. 

 

Either that, or we are established out there, and we know who groups like the Khet are, and found ways to communicate.

[Wazzanut]

It would then become the job of our cummunications officer to work out translation. And even if we can understand them it doesn't mean they understand us. Cultural differences may lead to war, a simple hanshake could be an insult. The Yaag slaughtered the team sent to them from the council because they tried to stand as equals. Misunderstandings and how we react with a lack of communication and understanding could be very interesting. We are playing an explorer after all... We could end up accidentally married to some alien daughter to a clan chief of some unknown race... 

[phagus]

A loud foreign sounding English accent usually works just fine. Oh and guns for when they scream something unintelligible back at you. You can then just shoot them and take their stuff.

[CuriousArtemis]

"Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra"

[In Exile]

Basing a plot off not being able to communicate is a bad idea for ME.

Because when you do that, now 'universal translators' are not just the convienant, useful device you need them to be for this sort of story to function. now they're real things with real problems and real headaches that have to been written for and around. And I know very little about linguistics, but I imagine there's a lot hell of a lot of problems with getting these things to sound plausible. You can't put the cat back in the bag and go back to everyone being able ot understand each other flawlessly.

Bioware has never let a little thing like "the rudimentary knowledge one can obtain from Google and Wikipedia about a subject" get in the way of writing. Look at quarian immunology. It makes zero sense, unless you ignore ME1 and everything they say about antibiotics. And really how they actually characterise their immune problems.

[BabyPuncher]

Bioware has never let a little thing like "the rudimentary knowledge one can obtain from Google and Wikipedia about a subject" get in the way of writing. Look at quarian immunology. It makes zero sense, unless you ignore ME1 and everything they say about antibiotics. And really how they actually characterise their immune problems.

 

First of all, trying to plausibly write how a universal translator would work, the problems such a technology would encounter, and the solutions proposed to remedy those problems is not going to be anything even remotely close to 'rudimentary knowledge.'

 

Secondly, this exists in an entirely different scenario. This is an absolutely mandatory concession. BioWare cannot write the story they want to write without 'universal translaters' or some other handwave, period. It's not a question of writing skill or knowledge. They cannot make a game where 50% of the dialogue is characters trying to communicate with one another and dramatic moments continually grind to a halt because nobody understands what anyone else is saying.

 

Thirdly, it's a little irritating you to whine about this as if the same wasn't true of pretty much any other story of significant length you can name. Surely you don't imagine other stories don't make mistakes that could be corrected by knowledge found on Wikipedia?

[Sylvius the Mad]

I do wish ME would move in a more hard sci-fi direction, and this would be a good first step.

However, they could also handwave it by saying the one or both sides has some sort of super-fast learning AI which can learn new languages within a couple of days, and then suddenly the translation software has a key from which to work.

It's not hard to explain these things. It's hard to fit that explanation neatly into the narrative, but that's what the codex is for.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Thirdly, it's a little irritating you to whine about this as if the same wasn't true of pretty much any other story of significant length you can name. Surely you don't imagine other stories don't make mistakes that could be corrected by knowledge found on Wikipedia?

You haven't read much hard science fiction. There are whole novels about translating alien messages.

[N7Jamaican]

I would love to see some type of a communication barrier.. Even if it is for a brief moment.

[Wazzanut]

I always find it funny in sci fi when we know someone is using another language and because of translation bots,  their lip movements become synched to English. If the tech was real, it would appear like we were watching a badly dubbed show everytime someone spoke lol. Having it appear realistic in game would actually make it seem fake.

[LinksOcarina]

I do wish ME would move in a more hard sci-fi direction, and this would be a good first step.
 

 

I hope they don't...hard sci-fi is very, very pedantic and esoteric. There is little drama that can be done in hard sci-fi. I think the closest I have seen it is 2001: A Space Odyssey, and that is not even fully realistic either.

 

I don't know...I just enjoy the more operatic tendencies of Sci-fi. And we are in a renaissance time for it too. 

[WittyUsername]

Alien; GLARGHFARHARTH BLYTHECH IYIOCH (Welcome travellers! We welcome you to our settlement, we'd happily allow you to remain here for a while if you can help out a little with the daily routines we have?)

Human; Uhh, what?

Alien: ARGHTHA IOPTHAH HHFLARGH!!! (They disrespect us! They will know our wrath, attack!)

Human; What did i say?

Ok... a bit basic i know but there could be some funny situations due to a lack of understanding.

Feel like it'll be more of the humans going, "Oh my God they're coming straight for us!" pow pow pow.

[maia0407]

First of all, trying to plausibly write how a universal translator would work, the problems such a technology would encounter, and the solutions proposed to remedy those problems is not going to be anything even remotely close to 'rudimentary knowledge.'

Secondly, this exists in an entirely different scenario. This is an absolutely mandatory concession. BioWare cannot write the story they want to write without 'universal translaters' or some other handwave, period. It's not a question of writing skill or knowledge. They cannot make a game where 50% of the dialogue is characters trying to communicate with one another and dramatic moments continually grind to a halt because nobody understands what anyone else is saying.

Thirdly, it's a little irritating you to whine about this as if the same wasn't true of pretty much any other story of significant length you can name. Surely you don't imagine other stories don't make mistakes that could be corrected by knowledge found on Wikipedia?

Yes. This. I currently live overseas in the Middle East. This country has expats from all nationalities with heavy concentrations from Europe and Asia. Even though most people speak English as a secondary language the accents throw everybody. From getting where you need to go in a taxi to ordering food or getting a drivers license, life is an exercise in patience and slowing down to understand each other. Its not just language but cultural differences as well. OTC meds commonly used in the US are unheard of here, favorite foods are hard to find or have a different name, etc. I wouldn't give up this experience for anything but I can say language barriers in a game would just be frustrating to players. And, I only live overseas with other humans, not a different Galaxy, lol!

[Sylvius the Mad]

I hope they don't...hard sci-fi is very, very pedantic and esoteric. There is little drama that can be done in hard sci-fi. I think the closest I have seen it is 2001: A Space Odyssey, and that is not even fully realistic either.

I don't know...I just enjoy the more operatic tendencies of Sci-fi. And we are in a renaissance time for it too.

I don't think they should go full hard SF. Just make more of an effort to justify the game's systems from an in-universe perspective.