On Bombcast 529, Jeff complains at 33:30 about a shopkeeper in The Swords of Ditto that says something like "I stan for [character name]" and Jeff says "That's not something I want in this game." While the game obviously has a pretty lighthearted tone, I still think I share that opinion with just about every game that tries to pull that move with the dialogue.

Sometimes the game is jokey enough that it's fine, but when a game does cheeky modern day dialogue wrong, it makes me absolutely hate playing through the rest of the game. It feels less like you did something novel by making a weird collage of video game setting + cheeky modern day dialogue, and more that you just aren't a very good writer so instead of writing in-universe dialogue (funny or otherwise) you just emulated the banter you're used to seeing on Twitter. But let's go through some examples:

• Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP. This is one of the biggest offenders in my own gaming history. It just feels like the whole game is trying to have it both ways. It goes for this fantasy aesthetic that alternates between serene, trippy, and tragic, but also has a bizarre in-game Twitter feed that contains tweets from the game's characters, and I just don't think that Twitter feed added anything to the game. Logfella's dialogue, in-game and in-faux-Twitter, is especially modern-day-stoner-y, and just clashed super hard when I played the game. The game also has a framing device that suggests you're playing through different "sides" of a vinyl record as you progress through the game's acts, so the faux Twitter isn't the only anachronistic element, but the shots of a vinyl record mostly serve as scene transitions and then it's back into the fantasy world for the other 90% of the game. A lot of Sword & Sworcery felt like what Hyper Light Drifter eventually was, in terms of being a pixely hero's quest about a doomed protagonist fighting some shadowy darkness in a world very light on details, but while HLD was more than happy to stay mostly silent and let the visuals and music set the mood, S&S has similarly good visuals and music but then cocks it all up with inane Twitter dialogue.
• Ridiculous Fishing - A Tale of Redemption. This game is much more lighthearted since it's mostly a weird fishing minigame, but I had a similar distaste for having to put up with its faux Twitter feed where all of the game's characters banter about nothing.
• God of War (2018). Someone pointed out to me that Atreus says "duh" at least a few times, and while the game obviously has to use modern day English for players to understand it, using slang like "duh" is perhaps a little too 1980s/1990s. There is a fine line here, since so many modern day English turns of phrase are rooted in things from the past couple centuries while God of War takes place in antiquity or earlier so obviously no version of English existed during the time period of the game, but I still think "duh" is a little much.
• The Secret of Monkey Island. I recall there being quite a few anachronistic bits of dialogue, but the whole game is such a comedy that breaks the 4th wall (Ask me about Loom) and has other anachronistic items and sight gags that there's a consistency of tone to the whole thing so it's fine.
• West of Loathing. Basically see everything I said about Monkey Island. West of Loathing is set in the Wild West, but is not taking itself seriously.
• Magicka. Again, lots of anachronism in dialogue, but the whole game is so comedic and laden in pop culture references that there's not any immersion to break.
• Undertale. It's ostensibly set in modern day anyways, but still, technically there's no solid reason that the monster society should be so similar in speaking style to modern day youth. But I'm totally fine with a bunch of the characters just being the walking embodiment of Tumblr, because feel-good JRPG/anime/Phoenix Wright/dating sim VN is the whole aesthetic of the game, and it knowingly breaks the 4th wall and makes allusions here and there that the people who like those things are going to get.
• Borderlands 2. I never got around to playing it, but I sure did hear a lot about how much people didn't like how its humour. I've heard a lot of it was rooted in references to internet memes that shouldn't have much of anything to do with Vault hunting on Pandora, but I'm not sure where I fall on this one. It's not like Borderlands ever took itself seriously, but also everyone has told me that the humour is just badly executed in Borderlands 2.

I don't think I have an exact list of criteria for when it is and is not OK for a game to break immersion and use a bunch of ill-fitting modern day speech in their fantastical/historical setting, but I can really only gel with it when the whole game is a front-to-back comedy of some sort. If the game's setting or story is actually cool or interesting in any way, I'd much rather they stick to the setting and write some believable dialogue for the setting. Using a bunch of modern day dialogue often just feels like a cop-out to me, where you're trying to be Adventure Time but not doing it half as well.

So I'm curious to hear what you think about games using modern day speech in this way. Love it? Hate it? Any examples that I missed? Chime in!

Not a game, but so egregious that I'm compelled to bring it up any time this topic gets raised. The mid-2000s Criterion Collection DVD release of Seven Samurai used the phrase "Those guys were really cramping my style" as a subtitle for one of Kikuchiyo's lines. I have never been so immediately taken out of a piece of media before or since.

I pretty much agree with your opinion that it's annoying and bad when it just comes out of nowhere and is out of place. West of Loathing is a great example of doing it well because that's basically the entire aesthetic of the game, especially if you're familiar with the original browser game.

One example that is kind of weird and I think ends up being a pretty decent example of doing it right is Final Fantasy XV. That game has a bunch of modern day words like 'selfie' but the setting is also essentially an alternate reality where technology is more or less where it is today but also there's magic and empires are the main governance system. So you basically end up with a setting that is a mix of typical FF fantasy setting and modern day technology like smartphones so it ends up feeling fine in practice.

I look at it as a form of contemporary approach to humor. What you are describing, it works well with some video games (and other media) than others. Easy to see it as pretentious and assuming, or witty and sharing a common theme in both historical and modern context. It's a device, modern expression in historic themes, that has been used before, pretty much through time. Twitter format is just a particular form.

If it gets on my nerves, it's probably because in some way it does not comport itself well. As the saying goes, you know it when you see it. I personally do not have a twitter account. I do like reading the Staff's entries for humor's sake, as well as information. You could say my refusal to do so, as well as other internet interaction sites, is a bit of me tapping the cane. But even if I do have a bit of a reactionary reflex towards the internet in total, what you describe really doesn't bother me unless it is done poorly.

I hate it regardless of setting

I wouldn't say that I like it, but I can't say that it really bothers me either.

I agree that Atreus felt like he was from another world at various points throughout the game, and not just because of the "duh" comment. I honestly never fully came around on Atreus period and consider him the game's most obvious weak point aside from his clear value in the combat. Barlog has intimated in a couple interviews now that there were periods during development, some relatively close to finalizing the game, where Atreus was close to being cut from the game entirely and I think, in a few subtle ways, it shows because he's often the least polished part of the game. His dialogue and manner doesn't fit with anyone else in the world and he often warps around and looks at things with interest that you've already completed or explored. All minor stuff, but notable.

Anyway, that was getting off topic. I can't say I can think of any specific examples of this but I do think I'd find it world breaking and often do in other media. I hated Luke Skywalker doing that thing with his hand during Last Jedi, for example. I groaned out loud to be frank. I associate that motion pretty specifically with either Michael / Janet Jackson dance routines or Jay-Z depending on the era I'm thinking most about at the time (it was an obscure enough phrase in 2004's mainstream, when the Jay-Z song was released, this local magazine did a really stupid analysis of what it might mean.

I will say I've really enjoyed the few examples of Facebooks, Twitters and message boards that I've come across in games, as far back as Final Fantasy VIII's social forums for the Garden to GTA V's constantly updating Twitter feed.

@nodima: Yeah, I'm not opposed to fake social media in and of itself, and I think GTA V, South Park, etc., have used it well. I'm less into it in Sword & Sworcery where it's a bunch of medieval people inexplicably posting to a Twitter feed the player can read, or Ridiculous Fishing where it's a fisherman and some marine life all posting to the same Twitter feed and not being especially funny. Neither of those added anything meaningful to the game nor did they really even make sense in the context of those games. It just seems like the creators of those games really fucking like Twitter or something, unless those fake Twitter feeds were some commentary on communication that I was missing.

It pretty much comes down entirely to how it's used. If done well I don't even notice it.

Borderlands 2 in particular is probably the worst case I've seen.

@bisonhero: When I saw the title of this thread the first thing that popped into my head was how Atreus speaks in God of War. He speaks in a very modern and jarring way compared to everyone else in the game. The first time he said "duh" stood out like a massive sore thumb. His tone and manner are a bit too modern. I'm half expecting to turn around and see him on a smart phone playing Clash of Clans.

I've gotten a bit used to it now though. It probably would've been worse had he been as straight speaking as Kratos or generic fantasy kid #238.

I dislike it when it happens in most things. Like @nodima said about Luke in The Last Jedi - I felt that even in The Force Awakens a lot of those characters don't act like Star Wars characters, but instead act like someone in 201X writing a character for a Star Wars movie and forgetting that those movies are set in a universe with an established tone.

I don't mind it too much in comedy games. You mentioned Magicka and I think that gets away with it because that whole game is just one big sort of nod to parody and jokes.

For me it really depends on how well the game sells its world outside of the dialog. This means my tolerance of the anachronistic dialog can vary from game to game. If a game does a very good job at selling a setting that is reminiscent of say 18th century England and then uses dialog that would be very anachronistic, it will usually seem jarring to me. However, if a game does a decent job, but has a more steam punk vibe or the like, I am willing to wave off the anachronisms and they don't bother me in the least.

@bisonhero: This was a big complaint about what was wrong with Mass Effect Andromeda's dialogue. The duders even noticed it, things like Vetra's introduction reading just like a Twitter bio. It just makes it feel like all the writers are under 30 or something. Completely yanks me out of the game when a distant future colonization mission sounds like something Joss Whedon wrote early in his career. It's far from the only problem with that game's writing (the plot is a shambles as well), but the dialogue is the most consistently obnoxious.

The dialogue in Andromeda is just terrible. The tone is way off and the jokes and witty retorts don't fit the setting at all. One of my big pet peeves, and granted this is as Mass Effect lore nerd, is the abundance of word play and english/human specific humor spoken by non-human characters. It's a far cry from ME3 where Garrus is confounded by James's idioms and doesn't even know what it means when he calls him "chicken." Aside from the nonsense of alien characters being fully versed in human humor, the idea that they could somehow manage rhyming and wordplay jokes when they are speaking alien languages that are being translated defies all logic.

That game was such a bummer.

I was taken out for a second when Atreyus in God of War said "duh" once

Destiny's sassy robots make me want to break things.

I came in here to talk about Sword and Sworcery and you beat me too it haha. That game would be great with no dialogue or a translation or something. It was one of the most try hard things I have ever seen.

It's about context, as always.

As far as Atreus in God of War, it's not something I've noticed playing the game. To me though, speaking English is already anachronistic enough in a game like this. Once you're doing that I don't have a problem with slang as long as it fits the character.

To be fair, even most ancient languages had short 1-syllable terms for frustration or things of that nature, which would more or less be the modern equivalent of "duh". But I can see how that would kill player immersion all the same.

I tend to have a general sense of distaste for Twitter slang on Twitter itself, so it's natural for me to feel that way about it in a game, regardless of when or where it's set.

That being said, there's almost certainly a more complicated truth to the application of modern language and attitude in all entertainment media. One could argue that there should be some represenative flavor because art not only imitates life, it commentates on it. One could also argue that if used poorly, you only serve to date your art, hence alienating future generations. Yea, it's complicated.

Sort of semi on topic, one of my pet peeves is trailers that feature modern music (including those tired ass melancholic covers) laid over a game that takes place in a very different place and or tone. In that case, it's less excusable because it often times feels like marketers coming in after the fact and slapping in some shitty cover without the developer's say.

I'm generally fine with that as I can't even think of an example to use. Which means I've either never encountered it or it totally didn't leave an impression. Or it was mondo cool.

I can't think of a game, but I hate when a piece of fiction set far in the future uses our modern day terminology. Like the bad guy in Avatar saying, "We're not in Kansas anymore".

@ungodly: People still quote Shakespeare, it stands to reason seminal films like the wizard of Oz will still be quoted centuries later.

I could not disagree more with regards to Atreus. Also, I'm not sure about him getting cut, the actor who plays Atreus, Sonny, pretty much had the final say on who was cast as Kratos.

I need my games like I need my Kid Rock; authentic.

It never really bothers me, because if they were using period accurate speech we wouldn't be able to understand it. For example Middle English is pretty much indecipherable compared to modern english. If I start nitpicking one, then I fall down a rabbit hole or why? why? why? Shouldn't all the Lord of the Rings been performed in elfish and Hobbitish?

@ll_exile_ll: the Wizard of Oz does not have the resonance of Shakespeare. One movie doesn’t have the staying power of an entire body of work. Either way the discussion is about personal pet peeves, and no matter the argument, I will never not cringe at that scene in Avatar.

I think the deeper problem here is that "stan" is a really dumb term and probably shouldn't be used in any situation.

@banefirelord: hmm, this is interesting, and maybe not as simple as it appears at a glance. Do you know what the original Japanese line was? Was it something that wouldn't have sounded anachronistic to 1950s Japanese theater-goers watching a movie set in 1500s Japan? Or was it a similar common idiom in 1950s Japanese that no one in 1500s Japan would've said?

I feel like if I'm the translator writing the captions, and the original line was a 1950s Japanese idiomatic phrase, I probably would've made an effort to use a modern English idiomatic phrase to preserve the intent of Kurosawa and his team, as best as I'm able to understand his intent from the available evidence anyway.

@rigas: I'm pretty much with you. Sticklers like to complain about the Orcs in Two Towers saying "meat's back on the menu". But look: those Orcs wouldn't have been speaking English anyway. They wouldn't have even been speaking a language that Merry and Pippin could understand. They would've said some idiomatic phrase in Orcish that we'd have no frame of reference for.

If someone really needs it to be "accurate", then the most realistic scenario for the audience to understand what the characters are saying is to imagine that there is some instantaneous translation between the screen and our eyes/ears. What we get on screen is filtered through the mind of the translator just like everything everyone else in those movies is saying. So if we really need it to be "accurate", just imagine that they said something in idiomatic Orcish that the imaginary translator translated to idiomatic English for us to understand.

I guess this stuff rarely bothers me because it's just not possible to be completely period-accurate and also preserve full understanding for a modern audience. Developers/producers/artists have to pick some point in the middle. I guess it's really about how much you agree with their choice.

I don't have a categorical problem with anachronistic dialogue. If it fits the tone, I like it. For example, I thought the dialogue in Mass Effect: Andromeda fit the game really well, since it was not supposed to be Mass Effect 4. Same with Atreus, his dialogue accentuates his difference from Kratos and that works.

However, there are times when it really feels lazy, like Kumail's orc in Shadow of War. The game did have orcs that were supposed to be comedic reliefs but that orc just fell flat.

A bigger problem is the way the language can date the game. The stanning line in Swords of Ditto is definitely one of those. The term "stan" has already become a phrase only corny people use anymore, so it really dates the game so you can pinpoint that it was made in 2017. It's the same with jokes about/references to current issues, but even worse. The Ace Attorney games are really bad with this, trying to replay those games now is rough.

The writing in Sword and Sorcery made me stop playing within about 20 minutes.

I'm normally pretty oblivious to the writing in games (good or bad) but something about it in Super Brothers really really turned me away.

I tend to agree on the use of idioms in translations. Naively, a completely literal translation seems like the best way to do it, but different languages accomplish the same tasks in different ways. You have to try and find a way to convey the same connotative meaning and poetry or the original language if you're translating something.

One thing to be careful of is idioms that too explicitly reference something modern in a historical piece. "Hitting a speed bump" or "Shifting gears" are things that should never happen before the invention of cars.

I loved the writing in Sword and Sworcery. It fit the mordern-retro aesthetic perfectly.

I think people who complain about that sort of thing are far too wound up.

No never liked it.

Short answer, no, I hate it. Anything particularly "memey" specifically just makes me mad. I think it's bad, unfun comedy, and comedy that doesn't make you laugh can be very grating. But I don't think that's helpful advice for developers, 'cause they're just trying to be funny, and a lot of people obviously do think it's funny.

@ll_exile_ll: Not to mention the fact that aliens from the andromeda galaxy use arabic numbers. I was going to say this is silly, but then I remembered that bothered me, so I can't complain.

Never had an issue with it, in fact I would prefer that a game uses modern parlance as it is designed to be viewed and enjoyed by modern humans. Using "era appropriate" language only does more damage to confuse the audience and pull them out of the story. IMO nothing is ever sacred and people who want "realism" never made any sense to me *shrug*

@flakmunkey: Well, it depends. Sometimes the goal is to make something that does sound era-appropriate. The Witch is a good example. And you're right, it's a tradeoff because you are going to lose people who will be confused. It depends on what audience you're aiming at.

I grew up on Disney movies which throw in modern slang and pop-culture references all the time, so for the most part I won't really notice unless it's something egregious like Borderlands 2 (and even then I could just tune most of that stuff out). I think the only instance where I've been actively pushed away from a game by it is Life is Strange, which is funny because that kind of writing actually fits the setting perfectly.

I can slightly play devil's advocate here and suggest that there are times where media set in the past or future do need certain modern day twangs for the audience to follow. An example would be slurs or bad language, particularly in the past where the really bad words people use today were not really known or used much and other stuff such as tarnation or gadzooks which at time time would have had more of an impact than today. If you wanted to set a scene in the Wild West where one character was really angry at another, it would need a modern day slur to replicate to a modern day audience the impact of what was said at the time.

As long as its not a) internet shit or b) the crap kids came with in the "fire" and "lit" period I'm usually okay with it unless it really clashes with the game.

I actually liked the kid's dialogue in God of War because it kind of sold me on him being a kid. So much better than the children in Bethesda games who just seem like caricatures of small children.

I also love period appropriate stuff though so its cool when media pulls that off.

No issue for me as long as it doesn't break immersion for the story/setting.

What you described for God of War would bother me, what you described for BL2/Undertale/Swords of Ditto would not.