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Developers hear me out! Playing in English doesn't mean refusing the Metric system!

A

Alex_Mexico

Member
So this is the second time in the last 12 months I've come across a big, multi-million dollar, several years in the making, AAA title that thinks that just because I play my games in English it means I'd rather play with feet, miles, and Fahrenheit rather than meters, kilometers and Celcius. And I'm here to vent because this shit is inexcusable and has to stop before it propagates and becomes the standard.

Both Final Fantasy XV and Zelda Breath of the Wild (finally I've just begun playing it) don't give me the option to keep the Metric system when I'm playing in English.

Both of these games come with several language settings out of the box and all of these use Metric when you play them except English. So it's not like the game doesn't support Metric, it's there already for the other 5 languages in FFXV and the other like 9 or so for Zelda.

Developers. I've it news for you: Not everyone playing your game in English lives in the United States. Millions outside of that country will play your game in English and would rather keep the Metric system because they may live in Canada. Or Great Britain (some there do prefer Metric). Or Australia. Or New Zeland. Or Jamaica. Or their native tongue isn't supported so they're bilingual and play in English . Or, like in my case, where I live in Mexico, happen to know English and I've played video games in English all my life because growing up I didn't have an option to play in any other language so now I just kept playing in English by default. All of these people do not use the Imperial system in their day to day life.

I know it's not a deal breaker and for some games it's a small thing to complain about (Zelda apparently only uses Imperial to tell me the temperature in Fahrenheit) but I can't believe this has to be said: the second language most spoken my humans on Planet earth is English and not all of them live in the US.

Developers, please. Just because we choose to play video games in English it does not automatically mean we also want to abandon Metric. Hell, both of these games were done with Metric first since they were developed in Japan and then stripped away from it when localizing to English. Why choose one over the other when we can have both?

Gran Turismo does it right. It's a Japanese game that when playing it in any language it still gives you the option to keep Metric or go Imperial.

This has to stop.

Sincerely,
A non-American English speaker.
 
K

K.E. Keith

Member
While as an American-English speaker this isn't a problem I personally run into, it's definitely a stupidly simple adjustment that more devs could and should easily make. Little accessibility things like this should never have to be called into question; they should just be put into games.
 
J

jonno394

Member
Not saying i disagree, but might be useful to say how the lack of use of metric system makes your experience worse.
 
N

nephilimdj

Member
Only real games this has fustrated me with is sports games, a few golf games have been locked to yards and feet. Hot shot golf psp on my vita as a example.
 
M

Mik2121

Member
Agreed. I also play Zelda BotW in English and when I saw it didn't have Metric system available, I internally facepalm'd at Nintendo.

Edit: Actually not sure if it was BotW or something else. I remember playing some game recently and changed the language to English only to find it had no Metric system.
 
S

Sitris

Member
Whenever a game makes me use imperial measurements for distance, I just imagine that they are metres and my character just moves ridiculously fast.

I can't convert it in my head, so it's easier this way! Options should be for all games, I could not agree more.
 
Patrick S.

Patrick S.

Banned
Personally, it doesn't bother me that much because i can do the conversion in my head fast enough, and in most cases I can even do without, as I have a good grasp of the more common units.
 
S

spazchicken

Member
Nah cause what's going to happen is they'll eventually either do one or the other and I'd rather keep my feet, miles and inches than be bothered with a system I have never previously had a reason to touch.
 
A

Alex_Mexico

Member
jonno394 said:
Not saying i disagree, but might be useful to say how the use of metric system makes your experience worse.
Click to expand...
I often, especially in the beginning, would misjudge a distance in FFXV thinking I could make a run for it instead of driving because I didn't know what the fuck a mile was. And would literally be disoriented when the 0.x mile count would suddenly change to a 4 digit feet counter.

Like I said. It's not a huge deal breaker. What Im arguing is that the Metric system is already there! Why not just let us give us the option to keep it for those of us that play in English?
 
B

Black_Red

Member
jonno394 said:
Not saying i disagree, but might be useful to say how the lack of use of metric system makes your experience worse.
Click to expand...

To understand and dimension Pokemon sizes/weights of the pokedex. Or distances in maps.

Edit: I dont know if pokemon uses metric, it's just an example
 
A

Alex_Mexico

Member
spazchicken said:
Nah cause what's going to happen is they'll eventually either do one or the other and I'd rather keep my feet, miles and inches than be bothered with a system I have never previously had a reason to touch.
Click to expand...
So basically "fuck you, got mine", huh?

I'm not advocating to take away your miles and Fahrenheit. I'm saying it should be an option. Especially when the game already has the Metric system programmed into it!
 
C

C.Olimar788

Member
Even better: use the metric system forever because the imperial system is hot garbage and should be abandoned in every way as soon as is possible. Video games can lead the charge!
 
S

shotgunbob04

Member
It most definitely should be a separate toggle in the game's menu. Probably wouldn't take much work for Nintendo to patch in at some point.
 
A

Alex_Mexico

Member
Kareha said:
Does it do this when you play with Japanese audio and English subtitles?
Click to expand...
I tried playing Zelda with Latin American Spanish voice overs But as long as my system language was English (aka the language in which all the text in the game displays as) it'll keep Fahrenheit.

Same thing in FFXV. The measurement system was ruled by text language, not the dub.
 
T

TatteredHat

Member
Agreed, I haven't played the games where this is an issue but it seems like an very obvious thing to add especially since it's already in the game in other languages.
 
S

Spectone

Member
jonno394 said:
Not saying i disagree, but might be useful to say how the lack of use of metric system makes your experience worse.
Click to expand...

Imagine you are playing a game and it says the weight of an axe is 579 Bloofels and the next village is 314 Goomblits away and the temperature is 475 Ooblits.
 
J

jonno394

Member
Black_Red said:
To understand and dimension Pokemon sizes/weights of the pokedex. Or distances in maps.

Edit: I dont know if pokemon uses metric, it's just an example
Click to expand...

I think People in the UK have become adept at switching between both forms of measurements. Officially we're on the metric system but the Imperial system is just ingrained. I can tell you roughly how many km in a mile, how many kg is in a stone etc liquid measurements though... No clue.

Javier23 said:
Seriously?
Click to expand...

Salty Hippo said:
Isn't it obvious? It's a measuring system many english speakers are not entirely familiar with.
Click to expand...

AcademicSaucer said:
Distances where miles become feet and inches
Click to expand...

I wasn't aware that this made people's gameplay experience worse because i rarely pay attention to these numbers myself.sorry.
 
S

spazchicken

Member
Alex_Mexico said:
So basically "fuck you, got mine", huh?

I'm not advocating to take away your miles and Fahrenheit. I'm saying it should be an option. Especially when the game already has the Metric system programmed into it!
Click to expand...

Basically, yeah. We're in MERICA! To quote a line from Fury, "You wanna talk Mexican, join a Mexican tank."

I understand what you're saying and I'm fine with that. My concern is that some developer will eventually just leave out the US option and that would catch on. Maybe it'll be patched in later, maybe it won't. I wouldn't want that. Just let me keep mine. You know what you can do with yours.
 
A

Alex_Mexico

Member
plufim said:
I'm in Australia and I'm like 99% certain my BotW units are metric.
Click to expand...
It'd be good to know if that's the case for Australian copies. My North American copy definitely displays Fahrenheit when set to English and these copies are sold in Canada, Mexico and the rest of Latin America.
 
E

EdwardTeach

Member
One of the the grreat features in Football Manager is that you can choose the units for everything. For example I have height in feet, weight in stone and temperature in Celsius.
 
A

Alex_Mexico

Member
spazchicken said:
Basically, yeah. We're in MERICA! To quote a line from Fury, "You wanna talk Mexican, join a Mexican tank."

I understand what you're saying and I'm fine with that. My concern is that some developer will eventually just leave out the US option and that would catch on. Maybe it'll be patched in later, maybe it won't. I wouldn't want that. Just let me keep mine. You know what you can do with yours.
Click to expand...
What the hell is this? And who's "we"? Not even the developers of these games are "in 'MERICA", let alone myself or all of GAF.

According to your logic if you'd want to play FFXV or Zelda you'd best be learning Japanese and the Metric system.
 
T

TheVampire

Banned
Metric is so backwards its weird.

Like how with temperature freezing in Fahrenheit is 32 degrees where as in Celcius its 0 degrees
 
N

Neverforget

Member
I definitely agree with you OP, it's the definitely a shame that some developers don't have enough common sense to at least offer a toggle to enable it.
 
G

ggx2ac

Member
Just curious, when Americans are playing video games of Olympic sports or even watching the Olympics on TV, do the events use the Imperial system?

Like, instead of 100m sprint, it's the 109 yard sprint?

Or instead of 1500m backstroke, it's the 1640 yard backstroke?
 
S

spazchicken

Member
Alex_Mexico said:
What the hell is this? And who's "we"? Not even the developers of these games are "in 'MERICA".

According to your logic if you'd want to play FFXV or Zelda you'd best be learning Japanese and the Metric system.
Click to expand...

They made the version of the game for the US and changed what they needed to change so that we could enjoy it in our native systems, be it miles or fahrenheit.

Nobody here uses the Metric system. It's not even important when it comes to games. A mile probably isn't even really a mile most of the time. It's just a ticker to count down and tell you how close you are to the next objective.
 
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