Telltale subtitles - they're too quick
I think Telltale's subtitles are too quick. I don't mean that in the sense that I don't have time to read them; I mean it in the sense I get to read them too quickly.
It ruins the joke. I've found the games to be a lot funnier I turn the subtitles off, just because it has that element of surprise a good joke needs.
A minor thing, I suppose, but one worth fixing. Just to illustrate my point, see how the subtitles are divided up here, in this scene with Murray in Curse. In Telltale's games, Murray's line "Roll! Roll through the gates of hell! Must you take the fun out of everything?" would have been presented in one take. I think that lessens the strength of that line.
So while Murray's lines in Leviathan are really good, some of the comedic impact is taken away by the subtitles.
The problem's in almost every line he says, though it's most obvious at 2:30: "Haha! Your contorted cast couldn't scare a schoolgirl! In my day I could turn a man to stone with a smirk! I could make blood boil --" etc. By the time he says "school girl," it takes him another 3 seconds to finish the rest of the line. Three seconds might not seem like a long time, but it is because you actually read the joke before Danny Delk's able to give it its due.
This has been around since Sam and Max, but I thought I'd mention it. It's not a big deal, though I did turn off the subtitles in TMI Chapters 4 and 5 and it made the whole experience more pleasurable. Delivery's important in comedy, and subtitles are part of that. So, working on pacing your subtitles is probably something worth doing.
It ruins the joke. I've found the games to be a lot funnier I turn the subtitles off, just because it has that element of surprise a good joke needs.
A minor thing, I suppose, but one worth fixing. Just to illustrate my point, see how the subtitles are divided up here, in this scene with Murray in Curse. In Telltale's games, Murray's line "Roll! Roll through the gates of hell! Must you take the fun out of everything?" would have been presented in one take. I think that lessens the strength of that line.
So while Murray's lines in Leviathan are really good, some of the comedic impact is taken away by the subtitles.
The problem's in almost every line he says, though it's most obvious at 2:30: "Haha! Your contorted cast couldn't scare a schoolgirl! In my day I could turn a man to stone with a smirk! I could make blood boil --" etc. By the time he says "school girl," it takes him another 3 seconds to finish the rest of the line. Three seconds might not seem like a long time, but it is because you actually read the joke before Danny Delk's able to give it its due.
This has been around since Sam and Max, but I thought I'd mention it. It's not a big deal, though I did turn off the subtitles in TMI Chapters 4 and 5 and it made the whole experience more pleasurable. Delivery's important in comedy, and subtitles are part of that. So, working on pacing your subtitles is probably something worth doing.
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I actually agree completely......
I can play games without subtitles, but I prefer having them because I'm not native English speaker and I don't want to miss anything if there's some word I haven't heard before or if actor's accent is difficult to understand. Also I sometimes play late at night and try to keep volume at minimal level, so subtitles are really helpful for me.
And when it comes to original question I usually adapt my reading speed to the speed of the voice acting.
We have subtitles in every foreign language TV shows and movies. Only children's programmes are dubbed in here. So subtitles are something I'm quite used to. And some programmes in our native languages have options for subtitles too for people who have hearing disabilities.
Has anyone tried lipreading with the volume and subtitles turned off?
Personally, I'd like to see games done in sign language (not finger spelling). Problems regarding subtitles, audio or translations in various languages would be a thing of the past.
Not that I'm hearing impaired, but it would sure make for an interesting game...
(I use subtitles, too)
Thanks for pointing that out. You're right and I stand corrected.
I thought the majority of signs (except finger spelling) would be understood all over, but now I can scratch that off my list of bright ideas... :rolleyes:
I'm with you on that one. I'm happy with their speed, it's no faster than the dialogue. Though i can understand non-native speakers having trouble keeping up.
I wonder if it would be helpful to use voice recognition technology in order to assist synchronizing subtitles to the spoken words.
I don't mean deriving the subtitles by voice recognition, but rather using it to map the timing of the voice to the words.
Also the engine would have to support showing parts of a sentence at a time.
Wow, Subtitles is part of what makes a Telltale game fore me, so this is shocking.
The speed of the Telltale subtitles are just perfect. When I read them I adjust my reading speed with the speed of the voice actor. If he pauses, I pause too. Its really not too hard to do. The subtitles must be on the screen for the intire time the character is speaking, so we can read along. And it shouldn't be cut up in shorter pieces, this will just make the pace and rythm too fast and choppy.
Keep it the way it is!
They're too slow appearing on screen, or too slow changing?
My problem is that they appear on screen too early.
I think that subtitles are an important enough feature to warrant some effort to integrate them nicely with the rest of the game. To be honest, I don't think the current situation is terrible, but I do agree with Kroms that there's room for improvement.
From a technical point of view, I don't think it is hard to mark where (parts of) sentences end in an audio snippet. If karaoke bars can do it with syllable-granularity, Telltale should be able to do it on at least a sentence level, if they really want to.
That's only happened to me on the wii.
Also, I like how in other games I can comfortably skip a dialog line knowing that the only thing that will be skipped is what I see in the subtitle. Sometimes you just want to get on with it, and not having to risk missing good stuff because of that is nice.