The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

This is an interesting point. Foreign swear words are a useful tool to make the games slightly more adult-appropriate without being too vulgar. It also adds a nice mechanism to the game whereby you know an NPC is angry when you hear him shouting in his mother tongue; it doesn't really matter what he says, just how he says it.

It should be considered that Italian people do play these games so for them the language is just normal swearing. Obviously there is still less of an impact as the English-speaking audience is definitely the majority.

Realism may also need to be considered as we know the developers like to keep things historically accurate. The word f**k, which I personally think is a bit strong for AC, was first used, in some form, in the late 15th century but did not come into common usage until much later, first appearing in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1972. There is anecdotal evidence of its use during the American Civil war but even that was a good 80 years later than the events of AC III.

If we think further back to the original AC, it included very little/no swearing, although as the first title perhaps the developers thought it may be a bit of a risk to include it. I feel that swearing wasn't necessary in AC as it didn't suit the setting; the use of "Infidel!" was far more appropriate.

I certainly think they'll include some profane language where they feel it makes sense but I can't see it being too vulgar. I hope they keep it so that it fits with the other games and is noticeable but not constant.

Haven't they already stated they won't be backing away from the time-appropriate insults and vernacular? Which no doubt includes swearing? I'll try to find the article...

Dangit, can't find the exact article... I'll keep looking... but here's a snippet along the same lines.

Desmond cursed a lot in AC1, so it's not really going to matter. This isn't a game for kids. Cursing is just words. Who cares?

Well. Apparently around Ezio's time Swearing was used a lot. So that could be a reason for ACII.

ACIII on the other hand will probably tone it down with the swearing. We'll probably here someone outside the animus curse more. But I'm sure cursing will only be used when Connor is speaking native American, so unless you have the subtitles on you wont have a clue.

But really Assassin's Creed has had worse than swearing...Beginning of AC Brotherhood,Nuff said.

I have no problem with profanity, it's just if you play AC2, you can take for granted the fact that characters are sometimes saying fuck every other sentence. If it was all in English, it might have seemed like a bit much for me sometimes. I personally doubt that there will be that level, expecially seeing as the main character is more stoic and silent than Ezio and they are trying not to paint the villains as needlessly evil.

EDIT: not to say that swearing is evil, but constant use of profanity is associated with bad people, and for good reason. People who hate everyone else are more likely to use words to belittle them.

A lot of people use profanity in stressful or intense situations. A person hits their foot on the leg of a chair, they yell a profanity 90% of the time. Studies show that saying these words releases the stress of the situation for that person. In AC1, Desmond used it when he was deeply confused or frustrated. Ezio said "cazzo" and "merda" many times when things didn't go as planned. It's not used for the hell of it. It's used realistically. If I was in the business of the Assassins and something screwed up my plans, I'd be cursing more than I do now.

Society has labelled these words as being inappropriate. Was that the original intention at their conception? Of course not. They've just been transformed into that. Desmond saying "What the fuck is happening?" is a fairly accurate representation of what a lot of the audience is thinking. Just because you heard it in another language doesn't make it better or worse. An Italian player who's sensitive to cursing may feel uncomfortable playing these games because of that, totally turning them off of it. It shouldn't matter what language it's in. If it bugs you in your own language, it should bug you in all languages.

Hate to pick on you, JoeyFogey.

Trolling is just words. Flaming is just words. Yet people do care.

Well, but it doesn't. Because swearing is offensive, it may make you feel uncomfortable to hear it. But since you aren't used to hearing it in another language, it doesn't have the same affect. Same for if you're playing an AC game in front of people. You'd rather have it in another language. And I do admit it would be weird to have a lot of cursing in AC3 because of the time period in America.

But you still know what they mean when you hear/read it. I just don't see why people should be offended by a few words if the point of the game is about running around and murdering historical figures. Shouldn't that make you more uneasy than some swears? Let's be adults here.

I agree with you, Joey, that it's not massively offensive and can be used in a video game for adults/older teenagers, but trying to make out that finding swearing offensive is childish is wrong, IMO. They may be 'just words' but they do hold meaning that, depending on their usage can greatly offend. I understand that, in this context, they are not being used to insult people so perhaps should not be seen as offensive but excessive use of them can be seen as inappropriate.

I'd get bothered by it if the words were just shoe-horned into the script just because (like Gears of War). They have to make sense in context. If Desmond screws up a mission, he'll be yelling profanities as he attempts to fix it or run away from it. Like Patrick said, it can be used improperly, but so far, AC hasn't had a problem with that.

Yeah, I think we can agree that, whatever they do, the devs won't mess this up. The game looks fantastic so far and I highly doubt profanity will ruin that. I trust a huge company like Ubisoft to judge this properly and produce a near-perfect game, appropriate use of strong language included.

I am not speaking of profanity in situation when under stress or something goes wrong, but just the general prevalence of foul language among villains in AC2, even when they have the upper hand. They use it in ways that belittle others, not just ways that express their frustration. I personally don't like to use profanity except around people I trust, and in very rare situations, because if I have to resort to using a word that has a stigma attached to it then I have lost control. I don't like to lose control. Many people are different than me and just embrace the breadth of language to the point where it becomes a natural part of their speech. I find too that that can lead to uncreative sentence structure, which I also abhor.

It can be amusing to have several characters who use varied and creative foul language, such as that scene in brotherhood with bartholemeo (I think that's his name, too lazy to check) but if everybody is speaking like that I feel it cheapens the feel of the dialogue, and makes it difficult to take anyone seriously. The more you resort to cursing, the less intelligent you sound.

I have faith in Ubi's abilities too, I'm just wondering if the removal of the language buffer will result in less casual use of profanity.

Have you been out in the real world? People curse all the time. They haven't overused cursing, even when allowed to through Italian alterations.

To be honest, the only people I see that would be using these words are soldiers. Especially during battle. I don't see Connor really using any over the course of the game. He seems more noble than that; more poetic in his speech.

Some people curse all the time, but not all, and most of the time people keep it under control when they don't want to piss each other off. Fictional worlds have the advantage of being written, so writers can make dialogue more interesting and clever than a real-world expletive-laden sentence. Assassin's Creed dialogue to me has struck a nice balance of being realistic while still more interesting than really realistic speech. To rephrase again my question, I'm wondering if, since using different languages softens the profanity, Ubisoft wishes to keep that same tone, and will therefore refrain from using english swear words as frequently as italian ones were used.

I'm a bit annoyed that some of you are using this to explain to me why there's nothing wrong with swearing, or that it is a natural part of the real world, as I really have no problem with it and am very used to it. But I appreciate the intent.

EDIT: And if I sound unwarrantedly upset or whatever, it's very late at night, so I didn't mean to come off that way.

Calvar, have you ever heard Maria, Claudia or Machiavelli curse when it was not appropiate? Because I sure haven't.

Again, I was referring more to templar characters and other antagonists.

ac3 will have a lot of soldiers i will bet you that their language will not be very descent they will be poor people who will be very tired and in some cases in pain i will bet now that ac3 will include a lot of f*cks.( a lot more than i give now )

Again, I was referring more to templar characters and other antagonists. Soldiers are more of a neutral faction, and I expect their dialogue during battles and on guard duty to be comparable to soldiers in previous games.

the soldiers in the other games where also in wars but no one was so big.

To be fair, it could be 50/50 with regards to Templar characters' use of vulgarities and profanity. Because Templars are all "bad" but some are less "bad" than others. It depends largely upon their character too. I do expect a Templar to look down on Connor and chuck a few swears at him to put him down, this happened a lot in history with great/not so great political figures or just powerful people. I already have a scene in mind where Connor gets captured and handcuffed, and the Templar holding him is just swearing at him, making him angrier every second. Not that that's confirmed to happen or anything, just letting my imagination wander. At the same time, there will be Templars that are very polite. There have been before. (Al Mualim in my opinion was a pretty polite guy, for example.)

A bunch of the new stuff in AC3 are things I was hoping they'd put in an AC game, so you can get your hopes up.

Yeah, Al Mualim was very polite when he was chewing Altair out.