When I reviewed The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales, one of my bigger gripes with the game was how obnoxious and chatty Faie, the fairy companion, was. Apparently, I’m not the only one who felt this way, because a fair number of other critic and user reviews have mentioned her obnoxious, constant, high-pitched dialogue running at basically all times. Well, the game has been out for three weeks now, and Square Enix has finally caved and given us an option to just shut her voice off entirely.
This comes in an update pushed to Steam today that “adds an option to turn off support character voice,” which is a very formal way of saying you can tell Faie to shut the hell up. Originally, The Adventures of Elliot wasn’t going to have any such option at all, but a fan feedback survey following the game’s demo let the developers know that players were already a little over the talkative companion. For launch, the team added a way to adjust “Partner Chattiness” in the game’s settings to “Reticent,” which was supposed to make Faie speak less. Having tested both versions myself, I guess it helped a little bit, but I certainly wouldn’t define the new version as “reticent.”
“Since we had been involved with the game’s development for such a long time, we had naturally grown very fond of Faie ourselves, and in hindsight I think we may have become a little biased because of that,” said producer Naofumi Matsushita in response to my question about the demo.
And, you know, I think I kind of understand where he’s coming from. Personally, I actually think turning her off entirely kind of sucks too? The thing is, Faie does have interesting things to say sometimes. She’ll comment on the dungeons you’re in, point out treasure, or sometimes reflect on a cutscene that’s just happened. I also kind of love it when she cheers me on after I get a really long string of kills without getting hit. I just don’t really need her yelling, “Splish splash, and away you go!” every single goddamn time I jump in the water, or asking if I’ve tried using my shield every time I accidentally get hit. Surely, surely there’s a happy medium somewhere between “nothing” and “Deacon from Days Gone.”
Regardless, more options is almost always better. If you prefer your adventures to have peace and quiet, it looks like you can do that by downloading the latest update.