Biomutant will let you choose how much narration you want
Less talking, more shooting.
If you've seen gameplay footage of THQ Nordic's upcoming open-world action-RPG Biomutant you may have found its overzealous narrator a bit annoying. Every time he exclaims "boom!", "neutralised!", or "hack-and-slash!" mid-battle it can instill a sense of weary irritation. As it turns out, developer Experiment 101 understands that this feature isn't to everyone's tastes and it can be drastically minimised.
Head of studio Stefan Ljungqvist explained to Eurogamer at PAX West 2017 that Biomutant's narrator can be reduced in the settings, though that's not the only thing that determines how much superfluous natter you're subjected to, as this questionable feature also takes into account your play time.
"Each session, the conversation that's dynamic decreases," Stefan Ljungqvist told Eurogamer in an interview. "So if you play one hour and start your second hour on the same session, we decrease the frequency. If you play 10 hours of the game, the default frequency gets lower and lower."
"You also have a scaler for how frequent you want it," he added. "It scales with your session time, and it scales with your total play time, and you also have a slider."
That said, the narrator can't be disabled altogether as he plays a part in the game's story, both because he's a character (albeit one yet to be revealed), and he offers exposition on the world and its characters.
"He's contextual to combat scenarios, but also to the world," Ljungqvist clarified. "So for example, if you go into a new avenue, he will narrate that. He'll start talking about the world around you and where you are at that moment. He also narrates what the other characters say, because they speak mumbo-jumbo [i.e. they mumble a non-discernable language]."
While I found Biomutant's narrator to grate, at least in combat scenarios, by the end of its 20-minute tutorial section, it's good to know that the entire game won't be plagued by this feature - at least not unless you want it to be.
Biomutant is slated for release in 2018 on PS4, Xbox One and PC.