Biomutant Patch Finally Addresses That Chatty Narrator
When "Biomutant" launched in late May, gamers and critics were disappointed to find that the ambitious open-world sci-fi game had some deep flaws. While some critics struggled to put their fingers on exactly what it was that made "Biomutant” less than compelling, nearly every review mentioned one of the most distracting factors in the game — the unmutable and inescapable narrator.
It wasn't that the narration, performed by veteran voice actor David Shaw Parker, was particularly bad. The issue was that it was simply everywhere. Since every character communicates in what the game calls gibberish, the narrator translates each and every line of dialogue, all while commenting on the vast majority of significant player actions. For many, this grew tiresome, considering how, as PC Gamer put it, "his saccharine tone clashes with the fragmented English in the writing, which is often embarrassingly twee."
While players did have an option to at least bump down the frequency of the narrator's interruptions, the game didn't offer a choice to completely turn off what many saw as the game's worst feature. However, a new patch, which THQ Nordic announced on Twitter last week, has finally arrived, and gamers now have the ability to silence the overly chatty narrator in "Biomutant."
Biomutant now lets gamers mute the narrator
The "Biomutant" 1.4 patch went live for the PC on June 1 and will be released for consoles as soon as it passes through Sony and Microsoft's submission processes. The patch notes posted on Steam waste no time in laying out the new settings for the narrator and include some details about pared-down dialogue for a more streamlined experience.
Players can now specify what they hear when interacting with NPCs, with options to silence both the narrator and the gibberish spoken by other characters. Players opting to keep the narrator will now hear him sooner in NPC interactions, as the amount of gibberish heard preceding translation has been shortened. The developers also removed any text delay when the narrator is disabled, allowing players to move through the game at their own pace.
THQ Nordic also seems to be taking a critical eye at the amount of dialogue in the game, starting with the tutorial, where they "edited dialogues to be shorter" to improve the pace of play. Players who check out the notes will notice that there are also extensive changes to combat, the game world, and loot drops. While it may take more than a single patch to resolve critics' issues with "Biomutant," at least the developers are taking the opportunity to listen to fans and provide fixes.