Possible additions to game 'personality'

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

I believe that the ideas that dancing fool has are great. It would add more character to the game.

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.

The TEC should be ferengi, the Advent space rednecks with lasers and the Vasari should be rich persians that wear pink t-shirts and too much hair gel. (Kryo, put this on the roundup, hehe)

How's that for personality?

Sorry... couldn't resist. The Devs have said they have a big list of eye candy and fluff they are going to add to the game once we're closer to release date. I'm sure something like this is already on it. If not, it should be.

We've still got a fair bit to go before the game is released and the devs have my 100% support since they've been doing such a good job adding content and fixing problems.

Personality in a game can seriously elivate it because of a 'unique' factor that suddenly jumps to the player. The slang in Battlestar, like you said, is a great way to have people take something from it and still remember it months later.


Fraking Ferengi...

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

I remember them saying something like 3 hours of music...

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

Ok, humor is good ... to an extent. If there are to be more AI comment I hope they don't go overboard like in Galciv2.

They were fun and I did enjoy for a while, but I think sometime the excessive amount of humor really kills the mood.

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.

Something I think would be cool, have a voice for if your fleet knows it's outnumbered. Say you get jumped by a fleet twice your size, you then here: "OH frak, (or Sins universe expletive) they're everywhere!"

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?

Comic Relief? Sounds cheesey. Any comic relief will suck because this is a video game not a movie. Everything gets replayed over and over again, especially in an RTS game. Anyways, having a pirate say,"I'm going to plunder your booty," isn't funny at all to me, it's actually sort of disturbing when you think about the undertones of what's being said.

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

Radio Static is a great idea!