Elden Ring follows in the tradition of FromSoftware games like Dark Souls and keeps its story shrouded in mystery. Many mechanics and effects are not explained clearly from the start. However, the Portuguese voiceover takes this too far, and affected fans are disappointed.
Elden Ring is among the games that tell their story through enigmatic dialogues, the game world, and item descriptions.
This type of storytelling has ardent fans as well as strong critics. However, even Portuguese-speaking fans of this narrative style are disappointed by Elden Ring.
Because in their eyes, the translation is quite poor, and when comparing item descriptions, they appear significantly “abbreviated”.
Fans complain about poor translation, even entire descriptions are missing
Why is the Portuguese version being criticized? Numerous players are complaining on Twitter about significantly shorter descriptions of various items such as armor, weapons, spells, and so on.
Here you can see the fingerprint helm as an example:
The originator of the discussion, Denosh, is quite angry about this. Because it is not only about the scope of the descriptions. In Elden Ring, there is only the Portuguese localization that covers the common European dialect.
However, there are some differences between “Portuguese Portuguese” and the Brazilian variant. “Harmless” expressions can be misunderstood negatively on one side of the Atlantic, which can change the context. Denosh states:
We Brazilians pay an ABSURD, high price for games and deserve a minimum of respect when it comes to localization for our language. It is of utmost urgency that they resolve this issue as soon as possible.
Many affected players agree in the Twitter post. They are particularly surprised that important information is simply missing in some cases. Gabriel writes:
In many items, the translation doesn’t even state what effect an item has; the Lusat staff has no effect in PTBR [Portuguese/Brazilian voiceover], but according to the English version, it increases magic damage in exchange for more FP. So I had to switch my game to English.
via Twitter
Even players who are not affected empathize with them. Washington Post journalist Gene Park states: “I feel for my Brazilian friends who have received a poor, abbreviated translation for Elden Ring. FromSoftware and Bandai Namco, this is a real issue. Please pay more attention to your players” (via Twitter).
Who is affected? Portuguese is the official language in a total of 8 countries. This includes countries like Brazil with over 200 million inhabitants, but Portuguese is also spoken in countries like Angola or Mozambique.
While the smaller countries may not necessarily belong to FromSoftware’s target audience, many players in Brazil are likely to be negatively affected.
However, players are not surprised by this. Portuguese is often treated rather neglectfully or even ignored by many publishers. A prominent example here is the Pokémon franchise, which does not currently offer a Portuguese voiceover.
High praise is given to the MMORPG World of Warcraft, which is regarded by many players as the best Portuguese localization so far.
In the case of Pokémon, a well-known Latin American site for anime and video games, ANMTV, started a petition that calls for Latin American voiceovers for the games and anime and highlights precisely this issue. Currently, around 21,000 players have participated. (As of: March 14)
In films, it has already become commonplace to release multiple versions of “one” language.
Especially in PvP, knowing the effects and impacts of certain items can be essential. Unless, of course, you can win your duels without fighting: In Elden, a player wins a PvP duel by shamelessly pretending to be an NPC
