#inscryption localizations

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First of all, just to show this off, here are two screenshots of Leshy at the start of Act I, from the German localization:

In the first one he’s using masculine language to refer to the Challenger, saying “Ein weiterer Herausforderer”, while in the second one he’s using feminine language instead, saying “Eine weitere Herausforderin”.

So, despite it not really being needed for the original English version, the game does clearly have a flag of sorts that determines whether the Challenger is considered feminine or masculine - and in turn what grammatical gender is to be used for them in localizations that cannot avoid this as easily.

There is at least one detail affected by this that’s also in the English version, though - the Challenger’s hands.

As you might know, there’s two types of hands the Challenger can have:

And as far as I can tell, the first one is always used when the Challenger is flagged as masculine, while the second one is always used when the Challenger is flagged as feminine.

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The question now is, how is this determined?

While I can’t tell what the actual mechanics are programming-wise, I did figure out that it’s apparently tied directly to the Challenger’s head.

In another post of mine, I talked a bit about the different looks of the Challenger’s sprites and figurines - and it seems that each possible head of the Challenger is considered either masculine or feminine.

Specifically, “Prospector”, “Gravedigger”, “Robot”, “Settlerman” and “Chief” are considered masculine, and “Wildling”, “Enchantress” and “Settlerwoman” are considered feminine.

This can most easily be seen in Act II, so here’s screenshots for all of them being addressed by Rebecha in German:

And yes, that does mean that whenever your figurine or sprite changes, either by starting a new run in Act I or using the mirror in Act II, the way the game refers to you can change.

It’ll always be based on what head the Challenger currently has.

For example: If one had the Enchantress head and then uses the mirror to get the Gravedigger head instead, the game will then automatically switch from using feminine language to using masculine language for the Challenger.

Even in Act III, when the Challenger’s appearance can no longer be changed, the game will still refer to them differently depending on their head:

So at that point, you will just be stuck with either one or the other.

Also note that while I’ve mostly shown screenshots of the German localization so far, I did check and confirm that these same mechanics do apply for the French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian localizations of the game, too.

Some of these languages have fewer instances where they come up, but they do all have them.

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However, there is one major exception to the rule.

For some reason, the intro cutscene of Act II has no variable text, it’s always the same no matter what. So, it’ll always refer to the Challenger the same way, regardless of what head they currently have.

But, to make things more complicated, which way they go with differs between languages!

The French and Spanish versions use neutral phrasings in this scene:

The Italian and Russian localizations use masculine language in this scene:

And the German and Portuguese localizations use feminine language in this scene:

So, even if one has a feminine head while finishing Act I, the intro cutscene of Act II will always refer to the Challenger with masculine terms if the game is set to Italian or Russian.

And on the flipside, even if one had a masculine head at the end of Act I, the Act II intro cutscene will always refer to the Challenger with feminine terms if the game is set to German or Portuguese.

I don’t know anything about the game’s programming, so I have no idea why it’s like that, but it is.

Now this next bit is only speculation, but since the versions differ from another, I doubt this would be a programming error or the like, though.

My assumption would be that for some reason this specific cutscene can’t have variable text, so they all had to settle for just one phrasing per language.

It’s interesting though that we end up with a pretty equal distribution here: two neutral, two masculine, two feminine. Maybe this was a compromise of sorts?

Well, your guess is as good as mine.

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With all that said, you have to wonder why people are under the impression that the Challenger is always referred to as female, when that’s not the case at all.

I think the reason for that is probably because masculinity is just (unfortunately) considered the default, and thus less likely to catch anyone’s attention.

Meanwhile any instance of femininity feels unusual as a result and sticks out.

So, that’s what people are more likely to remember.

Plus, the the copy of the game being played was, in-universe, previously owned by Kaycee Hobbes. Thus, a lot of people were led to believe that this would be an intentional detail alluding to her, if it was a thing.

Because of that, few people had reasons to doubt this idea, I feel.

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Speaking of Kaycee though, I also want to go over how Kaycee’s Mod handles the Challenger in this regard.

As far as I can tell, Leshy will still refer to the Challenger with either masculine or feminine language depending on what their figurine’s head is:

Same as in the main game.

However, unlike the main game, the Challenger’s hands are not affected by this in Kaycee’s Mod.

Even when the Challenger is using a masculine head, their hands will always use the feminine style:

(They’ll also be wearing the ring right from the start, but that’s less relevant right now.)

This is something you can see for yourself in English too, of course.

And I do feel that this right here likely is a deliberate detail alluding to the fact that we are playing Kaycee’s modded file in this mode.

That’s nice at least.

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And that’s about all I could figure out on my own regarding this topic.

Like I mentioned, I haven’t looked into the game’s programming or anything, so this is just my observations from playing the game itself.

Don’t know if anyone else would find this interesting, but I did. Especially considering that this means the game was actually programmed to support these different ways of referring to the Challengers and all.

It suggests that Daniel Mullins and Co. did take the localizations into consideration when making Inscryption, which isn’t always a given with games like this.

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So here we go, the relevant cards are...

Tomb Robber:

(In French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese)

Master Orlu:

(In German, Spanish and Portuguese)

Gourmage:

(In German, Italian and Spanish)

Orange Mage:

(In German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian)

and Hover Mage:

(In German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian)

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Also, exclusively in French, the Mantis God is Mantis Goddess instead:

I feel this partciular one might be because “mante” (“mantis”) itself is a feminine word in French?

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Not counting the exclusively French Mantis Goddess, I do find it interesting that these other five cards are pretty consistently referred to as female in localizations.

It’s not completely consistent like for the Melter and Inspector whom I talked about before, but it’s still notable that it’s speficially these five.

Like before, I think it’s quite possible that this isn’t a coincidence, but rather official details regarding these cards.

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While this is just one example out of all of them, it should be noted that Magnificus’ game at the end of the main story does portray Orange Mage as looking feminine:

Which of course would go with the localizations of more gendered languages referring to this card with feminine terms if there was no neutral variant.

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In any case, I was personally glad to see this when first playing through the German version, because it’s such a common thing for localizations here to just use masculine language as the default for everything.

So if this is an intentional detail, the gesture is appreciated.

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It turns out the French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish localizations all refer to the Inspector and Melter as female. (These being languages that have a so-called grammatical gender.)

Here’s screenshots that show this off, plus English equivalent screencap for the reference:

Inspector - English

Inspector - French

Inspector - German

Inspector - Italian

Inspector - Portuguese

Inspector - Russian

Inspector - Spanish

Melter - English

Melter - French

Melter - German

Melter - Italian

Melter - Portuguese

Melter - Russian

Melter - Spanish

In case you’re not familiar with how these languages work, basically many nouns, especially for professions, will have different endings and sometimes articles depending on if they’re masculine or feminine. (Compare “actor” vs “actress” in English.)

And for these two character, they always seem to use feminine forms when possible.

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In addition, while Japanese doesn’t have a grammatical gender quite like this, the Japanese version does have the Inspector and Melter use speaking styles that are generally considered feminine (for example, usage of the “わ” particle), and the Inspector even uses the very feminine first-person pronoun “アタシ”.

Neither of these have to mean that a character is female, they would definitely make most people playing in Japanese likely to think that they are.

The only languages I didn’t check are Turkish, Korean and either version of Chinese, since they lack grammatical gender as far as I am aware, and I don’t understand enough of them to pick up on additional indicators like in Japanese.

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But, in conclusion, the fact that this seems to be consistent through all the localized versions for languages that use gendered terms or the like, I think this probably isn’t a coincidence, or something the localizers decided on independently. I feel this could be an intentional detail.

So, the Inspector and the Melter are most likely supposed to be women or feminine-leaning, even if that’s not immediately obvious in English.

Now, I wouldn’t wonder if this has been pointed out before, but I still thought it might be nice to have all the reference screenshots in one post and all.

There’s some more details along these lines too that I might look into and document later - for example, the German version had several of the Mage cards be referred to as female, etc.

I don’t know, I thought it was interesting.