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[ShemhazaiX]

Only time I've had problems with subtitles in games is when I tried playing MGS:IV on a CRT TV. Other than that I've never thought about them needing to be bigger. :s

Maybe I just have good eye sight. :/

 

[MetalRain]

Many games also have ambient voices that could/should be subtitled, but can you do it in a way that doesn't mess up with the more important conversations. I wonder if style that Witcher 2 did proves useful, having primary subtitles at bottom and then secondary as "speach bubbles".

 

[KNT-Zero]

Best example of this bad practice I can think of is Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts:

SO much screen to cover, and the text is ant-sized. It wasn't the worst thing about the game tho.

 

[RoboPlato]

Also, learn to put in proper freaking dramatic pauses in subtitles. I hate accidentally reading too far and "spoiling" the next line because a 5 second pause is totally ignored by the subtitles.

This is the biggest reason why I'm glad I finally have headphones good enough to not have to rely on subs anymore. They go off as soon as I hit the title screen.

 

[Commanche Raisin Toast]

There should be subtitle font size options.

Also: I'm seriously tired of nearly every game not having the subs sync up with the voices. Almost every game has this issue. The voices will be a whole paragraph ahead of the subs because they're advancing too slow.

 

[studyguy]

I just want Dragon Age games to have subtitles on the bottom.

This, why the fuck are they at the top?
The dialogue wheel? Sure move them slightly or move the wheel up, whatever.

Also going to chime in with another vote to the whole subtitle exposing the big twist before it's ever shown thing. It's fucking annoying to read it before it happens.

 

[GravityMan]

I suspect a lot of devs don't spend much time testing their games in 10-foot environments.

 

[LordBaztion]

They also throw all the dialog lines at once, does not match as the dialog progresses. Sometimes it can even spoil the scene due to bad timing.

 

[funkystudent]

Me trying to read the subtitles in Sleeping Dogs

 

[jluedtke]

Me trying to read the subtitles in Sleeping Dogs

I just came in here to post the same sentiment. I have a 50" TV, but the subtitles are crazy small.

 

[eXistor]

Completely agreed, it's quite baffling that very few games have decent subtitles. It's not something that seems that hard to implement either.

 

[Stuart444]

I fully agree. I always play with subs on and some of the subs in games are pretty damned bad.

 

[Lng0004]

Or you can just do what I do and invest in a good pair of reading glasses.

;P

 

[Hypron]

Or you can just do what I do and invest in a good pair of reading glasses.

;P

Even if you can read the subtitles by concentrating, if they're too small it'll be harder to look at both what's happening on screen and what's written in the subtitles - which is bad.

 

[injurai]

Yeah it's pretty bad. At least the font sizes have gotten a bit better.

Back at the start of last-gen with the transition to HD. You couldn't read shit if you were still on an SD tv. I literally couldn't play ME1 on console, had to switch over to PC which netted me the superior version. But it was pretty frustrating at the time.

 

[Stuart444]

Yeah it's pretty bad. At least the font sizes have gotten a bit better.

Back at the start of last-gen with the transition to HD. You couldn't read shit if you were still on an SD tv. I literally couldn't play ME1 on console, had to switch over to PC which netted me the superior version. But it was pretty frustrating at the time.

Aye, that was pretty horrible, mainly because it wasn't just the subs, some interface elements were so tiny on SDTVs. :/

 

[Bookman]

I live in Sweden and do not care what language the game is translated (ie whether it is in English or Swedish) but it is strange that it rarely says on the cover. Assassins Creed is an example of a game that usually is translated into Swedish but neither rogue or unity was translated , which was sad because my 8 year old son likes to watch when I play. maybe a little off the point but it shows that the game developers do not prioritize or even have a well thought out policy 4 subtitles

 

[artsi]

My worst subtitles award goes to Destiny. It's all in one piece per line, it's like reading a novel.

 

[ComputerMKII]

Destiny's annoy me because they're yellow.

Don't bother reading them, you won't find a story there anyway.

 

[KePoW]

I guess I'll be the minority opinion and disagree with the OP

I hate large subtitles. But then I have good eyes (with contacts) and don't have any trouble reading

The only example I'll agree with is the Tomb Raider one, that looks absolutely terrible

 

[TheSeks]

Also, learn to put in proper freaking dramatic pauses in subtitles. I hate accidentally reading too far and "spoiling" the next line because a 5 second pause is totally ignored by the subtitles.

Not sure I want subtitles as big as the examples though honestly. TLOU were fine by me, but options would be nice. I have them on at all times in most games but don't want them super obtrusive either.

Conversely, some of us don't READ THAT FUCKING FAST and two lines are literally five seconds away from each other when the subtitles change. It happens in movies and games, it drives me crazy. I have to continuously rewind and play again to get both lines.

 

[IntelliHeath]

I agreed with most of people here. Most of games' subtitles were pretty bad for standard. Also I hate the fact that there are some games that actually lack subtitles. I'm looking at you, God of Wars franchise and Assassin Creed 1. That's one of few reasons why I haven't play God of Wars franchise or Assassin Creed franchise yet. Yes, I'm aware that Assassin Creed 2 (and future titles) had subtitles but I would like to start with first game but it's their losses.

Yeah, I'm deaf so I had to depend on subtitles to understand the games with plots even it can be subpar or not.

 

[Jiyuu Tenshi]

The ones used for the Kingdom Hearts games are pretty much perfect in my opinion.

 

[MrRudiMentary]

When a subtitle goes "Oh I'm just going to open this door, I'm sure it'll be-" and spoils that something is gonna explode.

 

[KainXVIII]

Rockstar games subtitles are terrible, way too small.

Yep, RDR one of the worst offenders

 

[Joey Ravn]

(Random image found on Google just for the sake of the example!)

I really don't like how Dragon Age: Inquisition positions the subtitles on the very top of the screen, while the dialogue wheel is on the very bottom. You have to constantly move your eyes up and down to read the subtitles and the options you are given. It'd be much better if everything was eitther on the bottom (preferably) or on the top of the screen, but not cut into two separate sections.

 

[Rafterman]

I like small sub-titles. In fact if I have an option I never use them anyway, but in games where they are forced I'd rather they be smaller. I guess they could always be better, and I completely understand why someone with hearing problems would use them, but why do so many people with perfectly good hearing use them? Do you guys watch movies with subtitles as well? Seems like a distraction for anyone who doesn't absolutely need them.

 

[RionaaM]

You know what really fucking blows? When a game starts straight into a cutscene or whatever and you can't access the options menu to turn on subtitles until it's finished which means you have to sit through it all then pause the game, enable subtitles, and restart the whole thing from scratch.

What the fuck? I'm not even deaf or hard of hearing so I can only imagine how terrible this must be for the people that rely on them.

Psychonauts does this. It's truly a really bad design decision.

 

[Stuart444]

I like small sub-titles. In fact if I have an option I never use them anyway, but in games where they are forced I'd rather they be smaller. I guess they could always be better, and I completely understand why someone with hearing problems would use them, but why do so many people with perfectly good hearing use them? Do you guys watch movies with subtitles as well? Seems like a distraction for anyone who doesn't absolutely need them.

Yeah I do.

As to why I would use subtitles? Variety of reasons, one reason is that sometimes it's easy to mishear something (ie due to accents or volume changes in game) which subtitles would help you understand (some games also have bad mixing making it more likely to not hear what someone said as well). Other people don't have or don't want to use headphones, subtitles would help those people out as well (ie if parents/SO/whoever else in the house is in their bed).

As for wanting bigger subtitles, for me right now, my eyesight is bad due to conditions that my glasses don't help too much with. At least with bigger subtitles, I can read them even if my eyes are a little blurry compared to small subtitles that are small AND blurry.

 

[God Dayumm]

I'm just happy some put subtitles at all. Dropped Assassins Creed because they lacked them, and Sly Copper was not very enjoyable.

 

[cyberheater]

As a professional subtitler... I must say they are awful.

Lots of subtitles have insuficient reading time, many others stay on the screen for far too long, the line division tends to be awful, as people just said, we get "spoiled" by subtitles that begin before dramatic pauses...

Developers need more professional subtitlers *hint hint*

Do you mean "insufficient".

 

[TheSeks]

I'm just happy some put subtitles at all. Dropped Assassins Creed because they lacked them, and Sly Copper was not very enjoyable.

????

Only AC1 lacks subtitles. AC2 on have had subtitles from the get-go. Ubisoft got MASSIVE backlash (and rightly so) from not having them in AC1. Similar to Valve and Half-Life for d/Deaf people to where Valve did a (good) close captioning system for HL2 and Source titles.

 

[KePoW]

????

Only AC1 lacks subtitles. AC2 on have had subtitles from the get-go. Ubisoft got MASSIVE backlash (and rightly so) from not having them in AC1. Similar to Valve and Half-Life for d/Deaf people to where Valve did a (good) close captioning system for HL2 and Source titles.

wow AC1 literally had no subtitles whatsoever??

datz kinda krazy, I can't remember a major game without them

 

[offshore]

Back at the start of last-gen with the transition to HD. You couldn't read shit if you were still on an SD tv. I literally couldn't play ME1 on console, had to switch over to PC which netted me the superior version. But it was pretty frustrating at the time.

LOL, this is so true. I used to think "oh well, when I get a HD TV it'll all be different"... and it isn't.

What also annoys me is that, if there are subtitles, there is hardly any consideration if the background colour matches the subtitle colour, so you can end up with tiny white subtitles on a white background. Gets on my nerves. lol.

 

[RadarScope1]

Totally agree with the first two posts about text size and timing. Text size in general needs to bumped up. I'm tired of squinting to read menus when there's tons of usable space left over at the same time. It's just poor visual design. Nintendo games and games that are cross-play on Vita and PS3/4 do it right, ie Guacamele.

 

[Braag]

Yeah the subtitles being on top of the screen instead of bottom like in Dragon Age Inquisition drives me fucking nuts. Why would they do that?

 

[KorrZ]

I never use subtitles, they're too distracting for me. I end up spending all my time reading the subtitles and never actually watching the scenes/listening to the dialogue.

 

[adj_noun]

I really don't like how Dragon Age: Inquisition positions the subtitles on the very top of the screen, while the dialogue wheel is on the very bottom. You have to constantly move your eyes up and down to read the subtitles and the options you are given. It'd be much better if everything was eitther on the bottom (preferably) or on the top of the screen, but not cut into two separate sections.

Yeah, I wasn't a fan of how they did 'em.

 

[Meneses]

I always turn on subtitles, and as an ex-professional subtitler I find they are almost always bad.

The size doesn't really bother me that much, but when they're out of synch, or stay on the screen for too long / not long enough it's really annoying.

Also when they put too much info in the same subtitle (like, some are 3 or 4 lines long).

But the worst thing for me is when they they spoil the dialogue/ events. Please learn how to effectively divide your subtitles so they pop up when they should for maximum effect.

 

[yongeandcollege]

I'm just happy some put subtitles at all. Dropped Assassins Creed because they lacked them, and Sly Copper was not very enjoyable.

ACIV's are full of errors / misquotes.

 

[jelly]

It's not even limited to subtitles, some menu item description is a joke.

I blame devs/testers playing the game a foot from their face at a desk.

 

[Astral Dog]

I thought this was going to be about using subtitles on inadequate places/ways, like the first post, but that is annoying too.

 

[Enilced2]

I'm surprised there is no mention of Evil Within. Games already running widescreen format then the subtitles pop up with a big black bar under them covering up a quarter of real estate of what you can see. Just put them in the black bars it's widescreen already damnit

 

[Five]

I'm on the other side of this where I can't stand subtitles that are too big. Naughty Dog's are about as big as I'm comfortable with. This isn't karaoke.

If it's too wordy, then they should resort to subtitling's nr 1 rule: summarizing.
Subtitling seldom uses all the text that is being said due to limitations concerning reading speed.

Is that generally the reason why a subtitle would be different from the spoken line? I always figured the subtitlers were copy/pasting from the written script and the actors must have just ad-libbed the line.

 

[stan423321]

It's not even limited to subtitles, some menu item description is a joke.

I blame devs/testers playing the game a foot from their face at a desk.

Which honestly seems to be the way to go.

 

[Ian]

It's not even limited to subtitles, some menu item description is a joke.

I blame devs/testers playing the game a foot from their face at a desk.

Yeah, this problem definitely isn't just subtitles.

I just got a PS4 and am currently playing through GTAV. In order to read the "helpful" prompts that show up in the top left of the screen, I have to sit about 2 feet from my TV. Not impressed.

 

[CamHostage]

I'd actually like it if a middleware provider made a good plug-in for both Subtitles and Credits for developers to use in UE and other popular engines. (These engines often have rudimentary tools for it but it's clearly not a priority area of development ... partly because it's relatively easy to do simplistically, but seeing as how often subtitles are done badly, there's call for a specialist.) There's very good need to address this problem with better technology.

A good implementation of Subtitles would include user-adjustable size/fonts/color/borders (even if a pre-set style is great if a developer does it right, sometimes that may make it hard to read on a set or for people with visual impairments / colorblind issues.) It would also be nice to have awareness of the screen width for size choice. And it should have choices for hearing-impaired (games don't broadcast subtitles over the traditional TV overlay signal in addition to the in-game subs, correct?) where utilized. It should also have complete mechanisms for subtitling over FMV, in-game cutscenes, and game dialog (too often, the cutscenes are subbed but then when the companion is yelling, "turn left, I've got a shortcut" or something like that and you fail the mission because you missed audio cues, the subs are not doing their jobs.) It would also be lovely if these subtitles were stored in a file that could be fairly edited by partner publishers (or hackers/patchers, eventually) for localization across territories. (That seems easy, but Japanese releases are still using old engines and graphic-based subs, for some reasons that make sense but mostly because they're doing it wrong.) And all of this should be wrapped up in typography and display choices (comic book-style overlays? color gradients/effects? zooming/fading? screen placement/rotation?) that allow powerful use of text in game without having to render anything down to hard-set graphics. There might even be call for a console pre-set (it would be incredibly handy, plus a nice service for the handicapped, to set on your PS or Xbox with options like "Always Show Subtitles" or "Subtitle Size: S/M/L" or "Subtitle Color Preference: White/Black-Border/Yellow", stuff like that.)

As a few of us said in a previous NeoGAF thread about Game Credits, there's reasons good for the developers, good for the publishers, and good for the gamers in taking a better approach to this often-ignored aspect of game development.

 

[Lord_Byron28]

Yeah I had this issue a lot last gen. I believe dead space was a big offender. I wasn't playing the game on a big screen and it was difficult to read anything.

 

[whoszed]

Destiny's the worst. Tiny yellow font and a huge wall of text.

I remember Naughty Dog's subtitles being okay though. Ground Zeroes has a weird ass looking font.

 

[Rafavert]

Do you mean "insufficient".

Uhm, yes. I'm not a native english speaker.

Is that generally the reason why a subtitle would be different from the spoken line? I always figured the subtitlers were copy/pasting from the written script and the actors must have just ad-libbed the line.

Yup. When subtitling, the priority is reading speed, aka how long it takes for the average person to read the line (usually measured in characters per second. If I'm not mistaken, in the UK, the average reading speed is 12 characters per second). So if the spoken line has too many characters for the time it is given, we have to summarize it and make sure the important information isn't missing while ensuring there is enough time for it to be read. That's why things like "You know", "Well (at the beginning of a sentence) and other perks of the language are ignored: they bring no real content and increase the time needed for the subtitle to be read.