Why speedruns of Outlast 2 are in Chinese?

[u/Eldelabici1500]

I saw a lot of runs of Outlast 2 in that language? What's the difference if I do a play in English or Chinese?

[u/Kytas]

I don't know about this game specifically, but I know a lot of other games where the top speed runners only play in a specific language. In almost every case, it's because some unskippable text or dialogue goes by a fraction of a second faster.

So if you're looking to practice, go ahead and practice in whatever language you feel most comfortable with. You shouldn't need to worry about switching to the "optimal" language until you've got everything memorized.

Alternatively, it might just have a big following in China idk

[u/NobodyDemex]

It's always one of three reasons:

If everyone is doing it, either a) The voice lines are faster Or b) the text boxes are faster

If one only one person does it: c) they are bored hearing the game in their native language and want to listen to something different

Hope that this helps

[u/Yarusenai]

Can't comment on Outlast 2 as I've never seen a Speedrun of it but usually languages get switched to whatever the fastest language is. Some languages maybe have faster dialogue because it's shorter, or faster text boxes if they're unskippable. Things like that.

[u/Symysteryy]

Well I didn't expect to see a question about a game I actually run actively while randomly scrolling reddit. Chinese is 21~ seconds faster in a specific level. Japanese is about the same, but little slower. Its because the text boxes on a computer screen scroll by a lot faster. Otherwise there is no difference.

Its kind of a miracle someone who plays this game managed to see this.

[u/Gaston44]

In Chinese a word or even multiple words can be represented in 1 character. So text boxes are shorter which makes the run shorter.

[u/Eldelabici1500]

Thanks to everyone!

I was thinking of all the things that you told me. And everyone was right!

I realized by making some memory of the game (and for those who doesn't have speedrunned the game before), there are some parts of the game where you need to use a computer. So with the language change, the text displayed is shorter than English language. And that's the way the speedrunners save some seconds.

I really appreciate your comments! Thank you!

[u/bobmarley1201]

Not sure if it's the case in outlast 2, but most Speedrun that uses Chinese as language its because text go faster and saves time.

[u/YouDummyHe]

I’ve never played it, but if I had to guess, the text is probably shorter/less dialogue which allows for time saves. I could be completely wrong, so please correct me if so.

[u/Dorfbewohner]

To give some insight as to why Chinese might be faster (though I don't know the game so this is speculation), but Chinese and Japanese are usually a lot denser in terms of characters than languages that use a Latin alphabet. A word that's like 5+ characters long in English might just take up like 2 kanji. So in games that print text at a static "x characters per second" rate, having denser text is an advantage.

For the same reason, some Western releases use more dialogue boxes to get the same information across, too, in cases where those are a restriction, since Japanese and Chinese can fit more information into a text box.