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I've been watching many different speed runs of all my favourite games; Horizon Zero Dawn, Legend of Zelda, Dark Souls, etc.

However one thing I've noticed is that they often use a different language to run the game in, often when they don't speak the language (or at least don't appear to, like playing in German, while speaking English with an American accent).

Why is this?

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  • The answers below seem to answer your question quite well, but another couple of reasons why people (not necessarily speedrunners) may want to play in another language is that, the game being in a language they don't understand helps to avoid getting distracted (like how study music has no words in it). The other reason is like how sc2 players would play on the korean server because the higher skilled players would play there.
    – Aequitas
    Commented Jun 4, 2017 at 7:27

2 Answers 2

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If a game has a lot of text to scroll through, there is a chance that in another language you have to scroll though fewer text to save some seconds for your run. Or the voice acting goes a little bit faster. Maybe sometimes some roms have unique time saving bugs. Here's a language comparison video for the legend of Zelda

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  • 2
    that video comparison really shows the difference
    – Aequitas
    Commented Jun 4, 2017 at 7:21
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Games may have releases where some languages have less text to skip through or flaws/defects/bugs unique to a particular language release. Advantages offered by a particular release are valuable to a speedrunner trying to shave off a few seconds.

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