Brightest Star is a narrative space adventure where uncovering the story through text and character interactions is paramount. We, the creators, want to convey our thoughts and ideas as effectively as possible and fully realize the game's potential. And it is even more important for the players to understand what is happening, delve into the details, successfully immerse themselves in the narrative flow, and make the best decisions – ultimately getting the maximum enjoyment from the experience. Therefore, we are striving to ensure that as many people as possible can understand the game directly in their native language. Given the genre and our narrative ambitions, this is a truly challenging task, and we are very cautious in assessing our capabilities.
Initially, on the Steam page, we announced support for nine languages for the text. In addition, we will most likely add Brazilian/Portuguese to the list (we've been considering it for all our news updates for a long time). We definitely don't want to settle for just translating the interface, like menus, as that would cut many players off from the crucial game experience. So, we mean a proper, high-quality literary translation of every single written word.
As for voice-overs, they are currently announced only for English. Our caution here stems from the fact that there are several ways to tackle this task, and each has its own significant drawback. After trials and consideration, we find that only hiring professional voice actors is an acceptable option.
Initially, we tried computer-generated voice-overs, and they are absolutely not suitable. Their shortcomings are too serious and conflict with our vision of a high-quality game. We also tried voicing the characters ourselves – and unexpectedly got a lot of positive emotions from the process. But we must be honest with ourselves: while it's a live, emotional conduit for the ideas, it's also not of the best quality. So yes, we are leaning towards hiring professionals. So where is the significant drawback? It lies solely in the cost. Brightest Star is not a business project with a calculated balance of expenses and profits, so we will figure this out as we go. We can handle voice-overs for two languages, and then we will look at the countries on our wishlist and align your needs with our capabilities.
In any case, work is in full swing, we are doing our best, and with each day, the release is getting closer.
