Some humorous commentary would be good, it worked well in COH.

To elaborate a little (at least on the Advent): not necessarily a ‘mount full of marbles’ accent but a subtle but clearly-there accent, my personal favorite being Czech (sorry, old girlfriend was Czech and her accent drove me wild—who are you to judge me!?). Seeing how they are into psych, consider a lilting language (one that uses much inflection, such as Asiatic languages): again, something that would easily be recognizable but be sufficiently different from standard English to be obviously different. Example of changes in language with time:

http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761564210/English_Language.html

Also consider use of common, and fairly obvious, grammatical errors (at least as viewed by an English-speaking person): for me working with Asian-nationals I notice the mistake of plurality errors (‘I have many paper to work on’) and shift in tense. For further examples please refer to:

http://www.ece.msstate.edu/academics/writing_resource/grammatical_errors.html

This would not necessarily make-or-break the Advent, but would make them sufficiently ‘alien’ enough (at least in a grammatical sense) to add character to the game). Add to that a variety of slang words and phrases and you are playing a whole different race (as opposed to yet another human copy, but with a different icon).

As for the Vasari, you have even more laterality with how you proceed. However, again, I would stress making them sufficiently ‘alien’ to make them truly different from the other races (and different from anything else people have been exposed to in the video game genre). Maybe a hybrid between English and an alien language (‘Ga-ka-ra-cha! Victory will be ours!’):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_language

I know this could be perceived as yet another ‘work on nuance’ when you are actually working on game mechanics and play. However, I would again stress that it is not only the ‘big things’ (graphics, game play, learning curve) but to some extent, and even more so, the small things (nuance difference between races, multiple different voices, large variety of music for the same situations) that make a game of this caliber stand apart from anything which has proceeded it.

AFAIK there will be far more music in the final game, the selection is just limited for the beta.

VOICE OVERS FOR THE AI WHISPERS!!! (I just wanna hear someone say the pirate lines lol).

my friend and I are both atmosphere buffs, its one of those things that can make or break a game.

listen, for the love of god Ironclad! KEEP WITH THE ORCHESTRAL GOODNESS!!! everything everything everything everything EVERYTHING is more epic in orchestra.

I don't think it needs humor so much as it just needs personality. Who here who's played Starcraft can't recall at least a dozen of of the lines various units would say when you selected them or gave them orders?

You want to add personality to the game, add a radio static to the ship communications.