The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

I think for one of my future playthroughs I'm going to make the language Italian with English subtitles. That way there's a little bit more authenticity to the game. The Desmond parts might not be authentic, but based on what I've heard he's such a small part of the game that it doesn't really matter.

Agreed - the subtitles are nice to have. I just wish they would appear a little after the spoken dialogue. Then I could listen and only refer to the subtitles if I missed something.

They put a lot of work into the dialogue this time, I felt it was a bit unnatural in the second one, like a play before an audience or something (not that I have anything against plays). This one has a lot more depth in everything, and I wouldn't understanding half of it if not for the subtitles.

I put the subtitles on early because I wanted to see what they were saying in italian and it was amusing to see that they cussed a lot. lol.

for me its that too but i hope to learn italian one day

My first playthrough I didn't have them on and I thought, "crap another game I'm only getting half of" but I turned them on for my second playthrough and it was worth it. The first run I paid attention to facial expression, graphics etc..my second run I just read. I was able to put the two together. It worked for me.

hehe well its quite a cool idea huh?

Haha yes, cuz the Italian Ezio spurted off the first time I imagined was cursing in some way or another so when it turned out to be true, I laughed all that much harder!

Two things:

I missed a lot of cutscene moments in the game because I was too busy reading subtitles to see the "press x" or "press y" messages.

There are a lot of Italians playing the game who say the accents are really REALLY cheesy, and when they speak Italian it's even worse. I've read several comments saying such on youtube videos.

This was the same for me. I managed to do them all on my second playthrough, but it would have been nice to have more opportunity during the first run.

I've noticed that some give you much more time than others, and there are a couple where pressing the button doesn't seem to do anything. It doesn't take away the prompt, it doesn't make the success sound like the other ones do, and the cutscene is identical to doing it without pressing the button. I redid the one in the cutscene after the final battle four times back to back, trying to see if there's a difference in timing or not doing it at all, and all four times were identical, as were the first two times I had this cutscene normally. Seems like a bug.

Personally, I disagree with the devs' idea that the player needs something to do during cutscenes. Me, I prefer to put the controller down and take a drink of water or bite of food or whatever. I don't really stop watching the scene, and I love cutscenes in general, but it annoys me that I have to fumble for the controller when some prompt pops up and then disappears a second later before I've had a chance to press the button.

I'm not Italian, but they seem fairly close to that of the real-life Italian-speakers I have met. Some lines, like "It's-a me, Mario!" are clearly out of place, but they're not intended to be accurate.

In an interview with Cory Mays (sp?), he mentioned that the dialects throughout Italy are quite different, as was the language back in the late 15th century compared to now. He said that they had to come up with one universal accent that was the most accurate while taking into account time period and region. Obviously it's impossible to get it right. I think it's quite forgiveable and I feel that they did a great job given the restrictions. I imagine that a lot of people complaining about the accents don't realize what limitations there were while making them.

I imagine they would have used Italian-Canadians and Italian-Americans to do a lot of the voice work. That would cause a big difference when viewed by Italians from Italy. French used in France is quite noticeably different than French used in Canada. Even non-French speaking people can usually hear a difference between the two. So I imagine Italians from Italy would probably scoff at the accents and language used in AC2.

One thing, it's very easy to imitate after hours of exposure. It pisses off everyone around me, but hey .

I don't know about the Italian parts, but the Italian accent of the English sounds good, but is very exaggerated (Frederico: Eet ees a gud life vee leeve, BRUder)

But it all makes the game really believable and natural, so I don't really mind.

I don't speak Italian, but my first language is spanish and I can tell that at least Borgia's accents really seem like the one of an Spaniard, although mixed with a little Italian in the sounds of the consonants. As for the Italian characters, they are very believable, but they seem to be a little rough with the consonants, not exactly as a person would normally speak.

Overall I think they did a good job. It's like some back country Chinese person complaining about Mandarin being the choice of language. Dialects are different in all the different regions of a country so I agree finding the 'majority' spoken language is most effective. I've been irritated by southern accents as well but I think movie producers try to find the 'middle ground'. I try to keep that in mind. At least it isn't 'white boy' Altair in the middle of a Muslim country speaking perfect English when he was raised in an Arab country. Hehe

Lawl... xD;
I actually wish they used the voice in Bloodlines for Altair in AC1 as he sounded epic in my opinion~ x3

Yeah, Altair with an accent (and goatee) was incredible.

yeah, he's only a British 'white' boy in Bloodlines...haha

British? White? I perceived neither of those qualities from Altair.

Badly imitated Arabic accent, to be sure, but at least closer to Arabic that say, british, or american.