Dialogue-rich Computer Games in Second Languages?

[PeterMollenburg]

A few more additions to the list (thanks guys!), and some new sections started for games in Dutch and Romanian!

I loved Monkey Island!! Mainly the first, but 2 was good too. Back in the day these games were really magic.

Couldn't agree more! I don't know if it was the tongue-in-cheek humor reminiscent of smaller pioneering production teams in a bygone era, or the overall ingenuity and imagination of programmers and designers limited by hardware technology at the time, but the word "magic" does indeed conjure up what it was like to be a part of that creative phase in the development of gaming.

I would go as far to say that no game before or since Monkey Island has had quite the magical feeling it had. Even all my (wasted?) years of hardcore adrenaline seeking WRC rallying and Gran Turismo put together wouldn't come near it. Whoever were behind Monkey Island were absolute genius

[Yuurei]

Some more games and languages (only languages I'm sure of - there might be more):

On PS3
Uncharted 2 (FR)
Uncharted 3 (FR,ES,NL,PL)
Dragon Age 2 (FR)
Dragon Age: Inquisition (FR)

On PS3 and Steam
Assassin's Creed 2 (FR,ES) [in addition to the languages already listed]
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (FR,ES,IT)
Assassin's Creed: Revelations (FR,ES,IT)
Assassin's Creed 4 (FR,ES,IT,DE)
Assassin's Creed: Unity (FR,ES,IT,DE,JA,RU)
Assassin's Creed: Syndicate (FR,ES,IT,DE,JA,RU,PT-BR)

Steam
Skyrim (JA) [in addition to the languages already listed]

Note on PS3 games:
*Most of the time, the European disc releases are the same across countries, which means that each disc has all the available European languages (usually most of English, German, French, Spanish & Italian). However, there is no guarantee that this will be the case, so unless you find some confirmation of which languages the disc contains on the internet or in a game store, the safest bet is ordering the version from the country whose language you want to play (i.e. from France if you intend to play the game in French), otherwise you may suddenly find yourself disappointed. (Of course you should first make sure a dub exists at all!)
*In order to play the game in a specific language, you usually have to change the system language to that language prior to starting the game (beware: some games save games according to language, meaning you can't start playing the game in French and then continue in English or vice versa. You can start a new game in the new language though, naturally.) Exceptions to this are the Uncharted series and Dragon Age: Inquisition, where all language options are available from the game's main menu and the Italian language option of the AC games.

Note on Steam games:
*For some reason Steam doesn't list the available audio languages for some of these games (Skyrim, older AC games) anymore. When I bought these and other games the audio languages were still listed. Haven't played these games in a while, but I don't see why all(!) the audio should suddenly be gone, so pretty sure it's just the listing that disappeared. Buy at your own risk though. The listing for newer games are fine though and generally, Steam is has most if not all the available languages, which is great.
*In order to play the game in a specific language, you usually have to change the system language of the steam client to the language in question. Steam will then download all the language data (including audio files) for that language and delete the old ones. This makes switching between languages somewhat annoying, but if you stick with a language for a while, it's no problem.

[ddich]

First of all, first post so greetings everyone.

Second, thanks for the suggestion for Criminal Case. At least it's something different to do to learn a language.

As for the games, I'm not 100% if this has already been mentioned or not, but I only just recently found out how easy it is to change the language of the games in Steam. For example, I started playing the previous Tomb Raider again, and then I found out there's quite a few languages I could play it in.

steam.jpg

Now, I don't know what happens if you set it to something like Korean, but with Italian it downloaded about 1gb's worth of data to change absolutely everything into Italian. It also seems to be the exact same thing with almost every game I have. Not that there's that many...I swear...

I also remember playing WoW couple years ago in Italian on an Italian server, and changing the language was just as easy as it is with Steam. Haven't touched that game for a long time so I can't remember how I did it.

Hope this helps.

[fivexthethird]

For most games on steam you can see what exactly the translations have on the store page:

I've found that this is a blatant lie surprisingly often though; occasionally there are more available languages than is listed, or there is audio when the list says there isn't.
You can also set steam to your language and all newly-downloaded games will be in it if at all possible:

[NIKOLIĆ]

Found another little gem. This game can be played in a whopping 30 languages. Another good thing about it is that it's available for all 3 major mobile OS': Apple, Android and Windows Phone.

Imperia Online

[Elenia]

Found another little gem. This game can be played in a whopping 30 languages. Another good thing about it is that it's available for all 3 major mobile OS': Apple, Android and Windows Phone.

And it's available in Swedish!! Yes!

[Jimjam]

On xbox 360, Halo combat evolved remastered was available in plenty of languages. I have tried playing it in french, japanese, and german. This changes everything, dialogue included, to the TL. I haven't tried yet but I assume it works the same for the master chief edition on Xbox one.
This also works for the plenty of games on 3ds such as zelda and pokemon (im assuming many other games would too but i dont play much else on 3ds). They don't have any spoken dialogue but have plenty of written text. It seems that whatever language the console can be set to, the game matches.

I have also played the console version of minecraft in japanese, which i dont really recommend unless you can read the kanji for all different types of minerals which differ only slightly and are super hard to read in minecraft sized font. It was not a good time haha.

[LanguageSponge]

One of my favourite series of computer games ever is the Final Fantasy series, which is pretty dialogue-heavy. I downloaded VII to IX from the Japanese PSN Store. I'm sure you can do this in any language the games were translated into if you create a PSN account for the relevant country. One thing worth mentioning though is that up to the ninth instalment, the dialogue is all text-based, there is no voice acting. The tenth instalment is brilliant and I've played it through more than I have played any other game on any system, and there is voice acting in that one. I also enjoy playing the Metal Gear Solid series in Japanese. One thing I find useful with this one is that even if you play in Japanese, the dialogue is still subtitled in Japanese, unlike the options for many anime I have tried. I've also just ordered Ni no Kuni ニノ国 and although I haven't played it yet, I am sure knowing the kind of game it is, it'll be pretty dialogue-heavy.

[WASPy]

They're not dialogue-rich games per se but if you are in EU you can get practice listening/ speaking to natives in lots of different European languages in games like Dota 2 and Counter-strike.

[Keys]

HUNGARIAN

[*]Morrowind (fan translation in the Fallout series) [Hu], suggested by Keys.

Just a tiny correction:

It's the Elder Scrolls Series, and it's got a Hungarian translation for the (huge) games from the Elder Scrolls series; Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim (the latest game).

Here's the link where you can find all of them (download and install after first installing the original games):

http://www.morrohun.hu/hirek/