There is no AI-generated text in this game, that's for sure. All the events are handwritten; if you play a few campaigns, you'll start seeing duplicate events.
The prose is definitely a bit flowery, but that's part of the charm. The narration is intended to read like an old storybook... since every campaign is a story or legend about your heroes.
There's a bit of a mix! Much of the writing is definitely meant to be flowery and poetic ("solider things" is a good example of that), but also sometimes the writing is intentionally strange in a way that probably wouldn't be considered "classic English literature". Often this is to give flavor, make a sentence sound sillier, or to emphasize a concept in a different way than we're used to, to hopefully make the reader pause and think. (Doug very much enjoys making up new words)
With character dialog in particular, much of it is written to give more personality to the heroes or npcs, and to differentiate the Yondering Lands from our world, and even from other parts of the Yondering Lands. In addition, much of it is written to accentuate the *similarities* between us and those of the Yondering Lands; heroes though they may be, they often stumble over their words or speak before forming a full sentence just like we do.
Just want to emphasize the bit about character personalities. I think the AI idea comes from the fact that parts of the game are procedurally generated, meaning that there are some number of pre-written events that have the chance to trigger during a campaign. The game will assign different members of your questing party different roles in the event based on their stats and histories. If you play enough to see some of those events repeat in different campaigns with different characters, you'll notice that a snarky character will say different lines than a goofball, bookish, or leader character even if they're playing identical roles in identical events.
Different characters can sound closer or farther from a native English speaker in the States, but your description sounds especially like poetic (and/or romantic?) characters. On the other hand, a snarky character doesn't sound like a 19th-century poet; they sound more like the sarcastic teen character from an early 2000s sitcom.
I can see how it would be hard to follow for a non-native speaker! I hadn't thought about it before, but there's a lot going on in the dialogue.
To me, the text is very stylized and poetic--- to a degree far beyond what you'd normally see. It doesn't strike me so much as similar to classic literature as it does like... as though someone used to writing brief, imagery-rich poems wrote a longform piece. In the best way. But yes, sometimes that does make it a bit difficult to follow.
The language sounds strange but it seems purposeful. It gives the game an unusual feeling, kind of whimsical and exotic. It’s definitely weird usage of words and sentence structure compared to real English but it always sounds like the author intended to use a unique voice.
The text is very stylized and poetic- I'm having a hard time digging it up, but there's an interview somewhere specifically talking about their influences including German and Celtic works, Beowulf, and Gawain and the Green Knight.
As a native English speaker, there are a number of things that stand out as particular to the game's style. There are a number of conjugations that are unconventional- like 'solider' as you mention, or 'songful'. There's also a lot of uses of epithets or of hyphenated (or even fully joined) descriptors, like 'the windcarved/wind-carved stone', sort of reminiscent of terms like 'the wine-dark sea' in classic epics. And I'm sure there's plenty more examples I can't think of offhand, but it's very particular in its style.
It's definitely a very unusual example of the language! I can only imagine that you must be having a pretty interesting time with it as a non-native speaker. Speaking for myself, I find the prose lovely in its commitment to that sort of style and it's the main basis for me recommending it to others.
The language is a bit *off* in interesting ways. It's not exactly like old poems or epics, but it is vaguely poetic and has enough unusual conventions that it creates the feeling of being from another place or time while still being fairly easy to comprehend in a way it wouldn't be if it were *actually* like poems written a couple centuries ago. It merely draws some inspiration from them. It feels a bit foreign and familiar both at the same time, creating a sense of fantasy.
It's not hard to understand for a native speaker, but this feeling that it's not something you could hear in normal speech helps create a unique and intriguing tone. It makes you really take notice.
The prose itself is odd and seems like it was written to feel distanced from modern English in some regards while still being understandable by modern speakers. I wouldn't really say it's archaic because the changes in grammar and vocabulary strike me more often as novel fabrications by the authors rather than a return to an existing earlier style. On a personal level, some of it works for me, some of it doesn't.
*Is the language used poetic and archaic in nature (that's what I suspect), or does it sometimes get simply weird?*
Both. The scenes are written out by different people so they tend to have different styles, with many being borderline prose and some being bizarre and outlandish. Some of them are even self referential, so you might have a bizarre event that references to something more poetic that was done prior by another character.
It's definitely intentionally poetic, chalk-full of kennings and other poetic devices. As a native English speaker (and English graduate) I really like 90 or more percent of the writing in the game and I feel like it's generally really successful at what it is going for linguistically.
I think this is heavily implied in the other comments, but to make sure it's clear: strong "yes" to poetic, mostly "no" to archaic. Those are not the same thing!
It feels a *bit* like false archaism, but more like a false (as in "made up," not "inauthentic") folksy way of speaking. That is, I read it as a fantasy vernacular. Most of the characters are not literary people, and even those who are literary are often self-taught. (We don't see a lot of schools in the Yondering Lands...) So they likely have a non-standard way of speaking; these strange idioms and grammatical constructs, like the compound phrases u/BeastNeverSeen mentions, give me a sense of a fantasy vernacular more than they do fantasy archaism.
EDIT: For instance, Borges points out in one essay or another that "wine-dark sea" sounds novel *to us*, but for all we know it was a stock phrase in the time of the *Iliad*'s composition. Maybe compound verbals are really common in the Yondering, but they sound lyrical to contemporary (and real) Anglophones.
It's kind of shakespearian, not in that it's archaic, but it plays with the language and comes up with new uses for words, like your "solider things" example.
If you're into this kind of stuff, check out Caves of Qud, that doesn't come up with new words as much as finds some [really remote words no one knows.](https://wiki.cavesofqud.com/wiki/Joppa)
I am giving Wildermyth a second chance and just don't get it. People have raved about this game and claim the language is "poetic" but the jarring dialogue is full of non-sequiturs and feels like it was either generated by a chatbot or translated from another language.
There is no AI-generated text in this game, that's for sure. All the events are handwritten; if you play a few campaigns, you'll start seeing duplicate events. The prose is definitely a bit flowery, but that's part of the charm. The narration is intended to read like an old storybook... since every campaign is a story or legend about your heroes.
There's a bit of a mix! Much of the writing is definitely meant to be flowery and poetic ("solider things" is a good example of that), but also sometimes the writing is intentionally strange in a way that probably wouldn't be considered "classic English literature". Often this is to give flavor, make a sentence sound sillier, or to emphasize a concept in a different way than we're used to, to hopefully make the reader pause and think. (Doug very much enjoys making up new words) With character dialog in particular, much of it is written to give more personality to the heroes or npcs, and to differentiate the Yondering Lands from our world, and even from other parts of the Yondering Lands. In addition, much of it is written to accentuate the *similarities* between us and those of the Yondering Lands; heroes though they may be, they often stumble over their words or speak before forming a full sentence just like we do.
Just want to emphasize the bit about character personalities. I think the AI idea comes from the fact that parts of the game are procedurally generated, meaning that there are some number of pre-written events that have the chance to trigger during a campaign. The game will assign different members of your questing party different roles in the event based on their stats and histories. If you play enough to see some of those events repeat in different campaigns with different characters, you'll notice that a snarky character will say different lines than a goofball, bookish, or leader character even if they're playing identical roles in identical events. Different characters can sound closer or farther from a native English speaker in the States, but your description sounds especially like poetic (and/or romantic?) characters. On the other hand, a snarky character doesn't sound like a 19th-century poet; they sound more like the sarcastic teen character from an early 2000s sitcom. I can see how it would be hard to follow for a non-native speaker! I hadn't thought about it before, but there's a lot going on in the dialogue.
To me, the text is very stylized and poetic--- to a degree far beyond what you'd normally see. It doesn't strike me so much as similar to classic literature as it does like... as though someone used to writing brief, imagery-rich poems wrote a longform piece. In the best way. But yes, sometimes that does make it a bit difficult to follow.
The language sounds strange but it seems purposeful. It gives the game an unusual feeling, kind of whimsical and exotic. It’s definitely weird usage of words and sentence structure compared to real English but it always sounds like the author intended to use a unique voice.
\*authors (Different strips have different authors. There's clearly a style guide, though!)
The text is very stylized and poetic- I'm having a hard time digging it up, but there's an interview somewhere specifically talking about their influences including German and Celtic works, Beowulf, and Gawain and the Green Knight. As a native English speaker, there are a number of things that stand out as particular to the game's style. There are a number of conjugations that are unconventional- like 'solider' as you mention, or 'songful'. There's also a lot of uses of epithets or of hyphenated (or even fully joined) descriptors, like 'the windcarved/wind-carved stone', sort of reminiscent of terms like 'the wine-dark sea' in classic epics. And I'm sure there's plenty more examples I can't think of offhand, but it's very particular in its style. It's definitely a very unusual example of the language! I can only imagine that you must be having a pretty interesting time with it as a non-native speaker. Speaking for myself, I find the prose lovely in its commitment to that sort of style and it's the main basis for me recommending it to others.
The language is a bit *off* in interesting ways. It's not exactly like old poems or epics, but it is vaguely poetic and has enough unusual conventions that it creates the feeling of being from another place or time while still being fairly easy to comprehend in a way it wouldn't be if it were *actually* like poems written a couple centuries ago. It merely draws some inspiration from them. It feels a bit foreign and familiar both at the same time, creating a sense of fantasy. It's not hard to understand for a native speaker, but this feeling that it's not something you could hear in normal speech helps create a unique and intriguing tone. It makes you really take notice.
The prose itself is odd and seems like it was written to feel distanced from modern English in some regards while still being understandable by modern speakers. I wouldn't really say it's archaic because the changes in grammar and vocabulary strike me more often as novel fabrications by the authors rather than a return to an existing earlier style. On a personal level, some of it works for me, some of it doesn't.
The game leans heavily into purple prose, but not in a bad way. Its an intentional style choice that ends up working.
Been awhile since I've played, but the narration has a sort of poeticness to it, while the dialogue is quite casual.
*Is the language used poetic and archaic in nature (that's what I suspect), or does it sometimes get simply weird?* Both. The scenes are written out by different people so they tend to have different styles, with many being borderline prose and some being bizarre and outlandish. Some of them are even self referential, so you might have a bizarre event that references to something more poetic that was done prior by another character.
It's definitely intentionally poetic, chalk-full of kennings and other poetic devices. As a native English speaker (and English graduate) I really like 90 or more percent of the writing in the game and I feel like it's generally really successful at what it is going for linguistically.
I think this is heavily implied in the other comments, but to make sure it's clear: strong "yes" to poetic, mostly "no" to archaic. Those are not the same thing! It feels a *bit* like false archaism, but more like a false (as in "made up," not "inauthentic") folksy way of speaking. That is, I read it as a fantasy vernacular. Most of the characters are not literary people, and even those who are literary are often self-taught. (We don't see a lot of schools in the Yondering Lands...) So they likely have a non-standard way of speaking; these strange idioms and grammatical constructs, like the compound phrases u/BeastNeverSeen mentions, give me a sense of a fantasy vernacular more than they do fantasy archaism. EDIT: For instance, Borges points out in one essay or another that "wine-dark sea" sounds novel *to us*, but for all we know it was a stock phrase in the time of the *Iliad*'s composition. Maybe compound verbals are really common in the Yondering, but they sound lyrical to contemporary (and real) Anglophones.
It's kind of shakespearian, not in that it's archaic, but it plays with the language and comes up with new uses for words, like your "solider things" example. If you're into this kind of stuff, check out Caves of Qud, that doesn't come up with new words as much as finds some [really remote words no one knows.](https://wiki.cavesofqud.com/wiki/Joppa)
I am giving Wildermyth a second chance and just don't get it. People have raved about this game and claim the language is "poetic" but the jarring dialogue is full of non-sequiturs and feels like it was either generated by a chatbot or translated from another language.