Incline Disco Elysium - The Final Cut - a hardboiled cop show isometric RPG

[Prime Junta]

Yeah man, Tolkien should just have used English, what kind of a stupid name is Minas Tirith anyway, it's gibberish and nobody could understand that, at least not Haba

 

[Haba]

PJ, you really deserve all the shit you get.

Poor 'lil guy. I guess the rest of us multilingual intellectual chads can enjoy these games for ourselves.

I speak six languages, you dolt.

 

[NJClaw]

Yeah man, Tolkien should just have used English, what kind of a stupid name is Minas Tirith anyway, it's gibberish and nobody could understand that, at least not Haba

Yeah, fuck Tolkien, fuck trying to build a unique world. Fuck rpgs, who even has the time to play them anymore? Fuck videogames in general, they are gay anyway.

What the fuck is a "Candlekeep"? Who even is this "Baldur" everyone is talking about? We already have cities with names in our real world, why would you go to great lengths to reinvent the wheel? Just call them with renown names.
In an ideal world, "Baldur's Gate" would have been named simply "Washington Monument": your MC, a midget (what the fuck are "dwarves", "halflings" and "gnomes" supposed to be?), has to escape from Harvard to go to Washington and stop George W. Bush, who is trying to build a case for war with false evidence.

Yeah, that's the dream.

 

[Prime Junta]

I also am fed up with corona.

 

[Prime Junta]

PJ, you really deserve all the shit you get.

Says the guy who first presents his argument with the following cool, courteous, and reasonable phrases:

At the very point where you try to go for a "conlang", someone should beat you up with a mallet.

But if you start assuming players would need to remember words like "Ferscönyng" or "Héamecwyn", you're in a dire need of a beating.

Yep yep. Can dish it out, but can't take it. Cry some more, punk.

 

[Butter]

I feel like the point to stop was before throwing all conlangs out with the bathwater.

 

[jebsmoker]

oh boy, are we having a fight about whether if it's cool or not to use fictional languages in media? i'm almost tempted to ask Haba on whether if Pathologic 2's writing benefits from the conlang made to give the game's fictional universe more flavor and depth. in my opinion, it adds to hypnagogic quality the game has.. which is also a trait Disco Elyisum has.

 

[cvv]

The other extreme is something like Numenera, where they've really just slapped on exotic names on things and called it a day: aneen for horses and so on.

Question is whether this sort of retardery is the mental product of McComb or if it's just an artefact of the thoroughly stupid and ridiculous tabletop setting that they've chosen for the next Torment game for some unfathomable reason.

 

[NJClaw]

The other extreme is something like Numenera, where they've really just slapped on exotic names on things and called it a day: aneen for horses and so on.

Question is whether this sort of retardery is the mental product of McComb or if it's just an artefact of the thoroughly stupid and ridiculous tabletop setting that they've chosen for the next Torment game for some unfathomable reason.

The "unfathomable reason" being that Numenera was heavily inspired by Planescape and his designer worked on a lot of Planescape stuff.

But yeah, Torment 2: electric boogaloo sucks. However, that's not the point here. The point is that Sarevok should have been named George W. Bush.

 

[cvv]

oh boy, are we having a fight about whether if it's cool or not to use fictional languages in media? i'm almost tempted to ask Haba on whether if Pathologic 2's writing benefits from the conlang made to give the game's fictional universe more flavor and depth. in my opinion, it adds to hypnagogic quality the game has.. which is also a trait Disco Elyisum has.

I don't agree with Haba on the English thing but Tolkien based his fictional languages on real ones, precisely because they just sound "right" to our ears, they resonate. So the high Elves are Finns, Wood Elves are Welsh, dwarves are underground Jews, horse masters are Saxons and so on. Even if you're not a linguist it just somehow, subconsciously makes sense.

Languages that are just completely made up, like blaa-bli-blaa baby speech, do not have this effect. Usually they sound incredibly lame.

 

[Tacgnol]

Languages that are just completely made up, like a la-bla-bla baby speech, do not have this effect. Usually they sound incredibly lame.

Mostly because they haven't had the benefit of hundreds/thousands of years of refinement and evolution like real languages.

As you say, Tolkien was smart basing his languages on real ones. It makes them sound a lot more natural.

 

[NJClaw]

oh boy, are we having a fight about whether if it's cool or not to use fictional languages in media? i'm almost tempted to ask Haba on whether if Pathologic 2's writing benefits from the conlang made to give the game's fictional universe more flavor and depth. in my opinion, it adds to hypnagogic quality the game has.. which is also a trait Disco Elyisum has.

I don't agree with Haba on the English thing but Tolkien based his fictional languages on real ones, precisely because they just sound "right" to our ears, they resonate. So the high Elves are Finns, Wood Elves are Welsh, dwarves are underground Jews, horse masters are Saxons and so on. Even if you're not a linguist it just somehow, subconsciously makes sense.

A languages that are just completely made up, like a la-bla-bla baby speech, do not have this effect. Usually they sound incredibly lame.

Are we still talking about Disco Elysium? Because, as far as I can remember, there are no completely made up languages. There are barely any made up words at all.

 

[jebsmoker]

oh boy, are we having a fight about whether if it's cool or not to use fictional languages in media? i'm almost tempted to ask Haba on whether if Pathologic 2's writing benefits from the conlang made to give the game's fictional universe more flavor and depth. in my opinion, it adds to hypnagogic quality the game has.. which is also a trait Disco Elyisum has.

I don't agree with Haba on the English thing but Tolkien based his fictional languages on real ones, precisely because they just sound "right" to our ears, they resonate. So the high Elves are Finns, Wood Elves are Welsh, dwarves are underground Jews, horse masters are Saxons and so on. Even if you're not a linguist it just somehow, subconsciously makes sense.

Languages that are just completely made up, like blaa-bli-blaa baby speech, do not have this effect. Usually they sound incredibly lame.

i do agree with this; DE has Suomi and Francais (obviously) from what I remember, and used to good effect for giving things more depth. Pathologic 2 has.. a fusion of Mongolian and Tibetan for the steppe tongue

 

[Xamenos]

oh boy, are we having a fight about whether if it's cool or not to use fictional languages in media? i'm almost tempted to ask Haba on whether if Pathologic 2's writing benefits from the conlang made to give the game's fictional universe more flavor and depth. in my opinion, it adds to hypnagogic quality the game has.. which is also a trait Disco Elyisum has.

I don't agree with Haba on the English thing but Tolkien based his fictional languages on real ones, precisely because they just sound "right" to our ears, they resonate. So the high Elves are Finns, Wood Elves are Welsh, dwarves are underground Jews, horse masters are Saxons and so on. Even if you're not a linguist it just somehow, subconsciously makes sense.

Languages that are just completely made up, like blaa-bli-blaa baby speech, do not have this effect. Usually they sound incredibly lame.

So basically, if you do make a fictional language, make sure you put in the effort to do a good job? I don't think anyone can disagree with that, but it's pretty far from "use only English, waaah"

 

[Prime Junta]

I don't agree with Haba on the English thing but Tolkien based his fictional languages on real ones, precisely because they just sound "right" to our ears, they resonate. So the high Elves are Finns, Wood Elves are Welsh, dwarves are underground Jews, horse masters are Saxons and so on. Even if you're not a linguist it just somehow, subconsciously makes sense.

Oh man, back in the 1990s I used to be active on rec.arts.books.tolkien, we talked a lot about this shit.

Tolkien's conlangs aren't really based on any real-world languages, although they are influenced by them. High Elven is phonetically and structurally somewhat similar to Finnish, but there isn't anything a Finn would recognise there – "Aï, laurië lantar lassi surinen / Yeni unótimë ve ramar aldaron" doesn't look or sound at all like Finnish to a Finn, diphthongs notwithstanding. The Finnish cognates are really few and far between, only one I can think of off the bat is "ilmen" for the heavens which is a cognate for "ilma," air, probably by way of Ilmatar, the Kalevalan Lady of the Heavens.

Sindarin is even less influenced by Celtic languages. It is descended from Noldorin the same way modern English is descended from Old English. "A Elbereth gilthoniel / silivren penna miriel" doesn't sound Welsh or Irish or Gaelic to any Celt.

As to the Rohirrim, in LotR Tolkien uses Old English as a stand-in for their language, the same way he uses modern English as the stand-in for Westron, which is the common language in the West of Middle-Earth where it is set. The reason is that the relationship between Rohirric and Westron is similar to Old and modern English, so a Westron-speaker would get a similar "feel" from Rohirric as an English-speaker would get from Old English. Hobbit placenames are derived from Middle English, reflecting the common linguistic roots again – hobbit names are actually "translated" or "transposed" from their language into Middle/modern English. IIRC Meriadoc Brandybuck's real name is something like Kalimak Braldagamba for example – Westron really isn't at all like English. And yes he did go a long way to constructing these languages too, even though they don't even appear in the books.

Tolkien used languages beautifully to manage the sense of familiarity and strangeness in his world. He would use his conlangs as-is if they would have been alien/different enough for Westron-speakers, hence Sindarin, Noldorin, Khazâd, and Black Speech are left untranslated, but Westron becomes English, Rohirric becomes Old English, and hobbit placenames like Michel Delving become Middle/Old English.

Languages that are just completely made up, like blaa-bli-blaa baby speech, do not have this effect. Usually they sound incredibly lame.

Yep, agreed. It's a tricky proposition. You don't need to have fully fleshed-out conlangs though, you can substitute real-world languages or even just phonemes from real-world languages if you're clever about it, the point is that there has to be a purpose to it. If it's just random it's stupid. Robert E. Howard for example didn't create full conlangs but he did use phonemes from real (dead and existing) languages in his place and character names and occasionally in the text too. That worked quite well because he was thoughtful about it. If in his cosmology Gypsies descended from a particular civilisation, Zingara suggests that quite nicely, like Khem and Thoth-Amon suggest Egyptians.

 

[Sailor Woedica]

Omg everyone is really knowledgeable about fake language stuff lol it’s something I’ve never even thought about except that it sounds cool in Deadfire when they say ekera or gellarde!

 

[cvv]

Tolkien's conlangs aren't really based on any real-world languages, although they are influenced by them.

Sure, that's what I mean. Quenya is not Finnish with a twist but superficially it sounds awfully like it and that's enough to resonate with people.

 

[Haba]

oh boy, are we having a fight about whether if it's cool or not to use fictional languages in media? i'm almost tempted to ask Haba on whether if Pathologic 2's writing benefits from the conlang made to give the game's fictional universe more flavor and depth. in my opinion, it adds to hypnagogic quality the game has.. which is also a trait Disco Elyisum has.

Sure you can make up fictional languages and fictional histories to fictional cultures. The question is whether that seen as a masturbatory experience by the writer or something that feels like a living, natural part of the setting. Pathologic is an artistic experience by design, their use of colang fits into that framework.

Look at it from this point hosting a game of Planescape and having your players learn to speak Planescape slang v.s. having your players learn to speak Klingon. You could play PST without looking up the words or having an in-game wiki. They make sense in the context and fit with the rest of the spoken language of the game. That's why (for normal cases) I advocate using English, as the majority can infer the meaning without knowing the word.

Similarly you can have an immigrant use loan words (like in DE) while still talking in English. Feels natural. Get a voice actor who speaks that language and they can even pronounce everything (while having a natural accent in English).

But imagine a setting where everyone speaks some variant of English language, but they call the queen Héamecwyn. Even if you make up a fictional language, you have to think about how the people in that fictional world would adapt to encounters with that language. If that word for queen was in daily use, probably they would adapt it somehow. You know, unknown language v.s. unknown language adapted to English, still following English grammar.

For all the effort Tolkien put into Elvish languages, he used them very sparingly. The whole Lord of the Rings wouldn't exist without the language, so in that case Tolkien is really an outlier. It is completely on its own level.

Now average fantasy writers aping Tolkien make up their own languages, but they don't understand the absurd amount of effort he put into it. If the end result is that you make up a few funny words to replace already existing words, I'd much rather you spent the time to enrich the main language your text is in.

 

[Prime Junta]

^
OK so now this makes complete sense, once you stopped the juvenile woofing about beating people up with mallets. If you want to have a reasoned discussion it helps to discuss in a reasonable tone, bruh.

For example:

But imagine a setting where everyone speaks some variant of English language, but they call the queen Héamecwyn. Even if you make up a fictional language, you have to think about how the people in that fictional world would adapt to encounters with that language. If that word for queen was in daily use, probably they would adapt it somehow. You know, unknown language v.s. unknown language adapted to English, still following English grammar.

I entirely agree with this. The way Josh's conlangs were used in dialogues in both Pillars games was just clumsy and bad. "Fucking pidgins, how do they work."

But to get from that to "USE ENGLISH or something that closely resembles English" is a bit of a leap. And to get from that to edgelording about Disco just makes it look like you left your fly unzipped and your agenda hanging out.

Because Disco does use made-up words, loan words, foreign phrases, and accents in an intelligent and intentional way, to communicate all kinds of stuff about the world organically, without loredumps. It's not random at all.

 

[Grunker]

honestly I think de vs poe2 is like the hyperexample of how to do it vs how not to do it. de in part because it's used sparsely and to express stuff vs poe2 where it is littered across every single npc all the time as if to constantly shove the thing of it in your face. "look we made this thing isn't it cool." as with so many other things it comes to restraint and subtlety in the end, if you use it for something vs. if you use it just to use it

 

[Harthwain]

Are we still talking about Disco Elysium? Because, as far as I can remember, there are no completely made up languages. There are barely any made up words at all.

Not really. 1eyedking tried to say that using "boiadeiro" instead of "cowboys" is somehow "needlessly convoluted", not that Disco Elysium uses made-up words/language.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Mithril is *actually* stainless steel????!!! *looks at my stainless steel pan with a dropped jaw*

Fits the metallurgy.

Anyway, Disco Elysium has a lot of made-up words and for example uses French phrases and names a lot. That's all anchored in the worldbuilding. Boiaderos for example come from Mezque, which is a setting suggestive of South America. However it's not South America, so while calling them gauchos would have been better than calling them cowboys, they're still not quite the same thing, therefore the made-up word. Just like a motor-carriage is not quite a car, or a pistolette is not quite like a pistol. Close enough that you get the meaning, but different enough that you get that there's a difference.

Same thing with all the French. The dominant cultural power is Francophone, so the language of pop culture is French. Therefore Guillaume Le Million and all the graffiti in sometimes stilted French. So you get "La potence aux riches" rather than "Hang the rich."

You don't have to like it, but it's there for a reason, just like Josh's pwgras and fampyrs.

Ekera!

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

When it comes to fantasy cRPGs, PS:T's cant is still the gold standard as far as I'm concerned.

The cant of Planescape: Torment is taken directly from the Planescape campaign setting, where David Zeb Cook borrowed from English thieves' cant of the early-modern era:

 

[Grunker]

For someone who forgives ELEX its flaws you are really focusing on this thing.

Late to this one but how can you have been on this forum so long without realizing this is DR's base m.o.: overly apologetic about stuff he likes (ELEX, Shadowrun), overly critical about stuff he does not. It also makes the part about rationalization kindda ironic considering DR's sharp wit and intellect is exactly what enables him to do just that in aforementioned cases

Still the love the guy so what can you do

 

[Kasparov]

https://burleyfisher.podbean.com/e/isolation-station-13-disco-elysium/

Isolation Station #13 - Disco Elysium & Literature for the New Age

Today Dan is joined by Siim-Kosmos Sinamäe, a producer on the literary computer game Disco Elysium. Together they walk the line between literature and non-traditional media, exploring how a small development team from Talinn, Estonia used their writing chops to create one of the finest video games of the last decade. With backroad meanders into Russian Constructivism, Dungeons and Dragons and the Estonian avant-garde, together they probe at the borderlines of literature in the new millennium.