So I read this post on the VizionEck dev blog and it got me thinking about in game languages. Here's the full post.
"Hi all,
From the beginning I knew the creatures in VizionEck existed in their own universe/reality. Sticking strictly within the game's lore, it'd make no sense for these creatures to speak English or another language we're used to.
A simple solution would've been to make a new alphabet and simply convert the letters back and fourth. This is pretty common in games and I'm sure you've encountered it before. The problem with this method though, is it doesn't actually solve the original conundrum. The creature's language would still be based on English, so strictly sticking within the game's lore it'd also not make any sense.
The next stage up in creating the creature's language would be creating a fully new language, similar to what is often times done with movies. Klingon, Navi, etc. I was taking this route with the creature's language. That was until I realized even this method was cheating the game's lore. Alphabets, pronouns, subjects, etc. are all human inventions. I needed to go to the very core of what makes a language a language and split off from there.
So I did. The creature's language allows for both spoken and written communication, but it's incredibly different than anything on Earth. I want people to "crack the code" for themselves once the game releases, so I won't spoil the specifics just yet. For now I'll leave you with just a taste of what the written form of the language looks like.
Please be excited,
-Mike"
From http://vizioneck.com/forum/index.php?topic=831.0
Now I personally just finished playing FEZ the other day. It has a made up language using the first method Mike talked about. That was super simple and the game even had a bunch of text dedicated to making solving it easy, but still it was too much for me to bother. The "tetris" pieces, an in game language for controller inputs, was much more my style and the "teaching block" made it really fun.
I guess I really like made up languages in games, but I like them to be intuitive too. HBU? What's your favorite in game language? Do you agree with Mike about in game languages cheating their lore?
Or do you not even notice in game languages?
