How to Set a Different Audio Language and Different Subtitles in Dying Light 2?
In Dying Light 2, you can have different audio language and subtitles, but only on PC. We present a method on how to change the language and subtitles in the Steam version of Dying Light 2.
It is possible to change the voice and subtitles language in Dying Light 2, same as in the sequel, but you can't do this in the game menus, and at first glance, it seems it's impossible to have different languages for voice and in-game text. The game does not have any language options in the menus, and installs the language version corresponding to the default Steam version you're using. However, you can use a simple operation on PC to do exactly that.
If you just want to change the language (voice + subtitles), just change the default language of your console, and in case of Dying Light 2 on Steam, you can right-click on the game, go to its "Properties," and then "Language," and then you can conveniently select the language you want (the game will download additional files). If you wish to have subtitles in a different language than the voice, however, it gets trickier. While we haven't found a viable solution for that on the consoles, you can do it relatively easily on the PC. Here's how to.
How to set a different audio language and different subtitles language in Dying Light 2?
STEP 1 – Install the desired language for audio
Enter the Steam Library and right-click on the game icon. Go to "Properties," and then select the "Language" tab. Here we can set the language of the entire game (voice + text). You can select any language you heartily wish to hear and see in the game. Just remember, this option changes the language globally, for the entire game. Steam will automatically download a few GB-worth of data and then install the new language version. You can run the game and see if everything works properly.
In order to do that, you have to install the game in one language, for example English, backup the audio files, install the other version that you want the text in, say Spanish, and then replace the Spanish audio files with English ones in the Spanish game language folder inside the “data_lang” directory, while also changing the names of English files to make them look as if they were in Spanish (by changing the “_en” suffix in the file names to “_es”).
- Download the language version in which you want the audio in the Steam options.
- Find the newly installed audio files in the location of Dying Light 2 on your hard drive (steamapps -> common -> Dying Light 2 -> ph -> work -> data_lang -> speech_XY -> data -> audio. Back up 3 files.
- Again, change the language in the Steam Library game properties to the one you want the subtitles in.
- You find the folder with the new language version installed and delete the new files and load the old ones. Note, the files must be named exactly as the files you just deleted. Done.
STEP 2 – backup desired audio files
Once this is done, you will have to locate the Dying Light 2 folder on your hard drive and backup the audio files. The game will be located in the default Steam games location, unless you've selected otherwise while installing. To locate the folder quickly, find the Dying Light 2 icon in Steam app, click on "Properties," go to "Local files" and then click "Browse." This will open a Windows explorer window with the game folder.
Now locate the audio files with the installed language. For example, in case of English, you will find these files in:
steamapps -> common -> Dying Light 2 -> ph -> work -> data_lang -> spech_en -> data -> audio.
In this directory, you will find three files (meta_en.aesp, sfx_en.aesp, streams_en.aesp). First, create a backup of these files, we'll need them in a moment!
STEP 3 – Download and install desired subtitles language
Then we go back to the Steam app and again to "Properties-> Language" to install the language you want the in-game text in. If you want the speech in the game to be in English, but text, for example, in Spanish, install the full Spanish language pack after backing up English audio. Steam will download and install the new language.
STEEP 4 – Swap audio files installed in step 3 with backup created in step 2
The only thing left to do is to copy the backed-up English audio files, but note that their target directory changes and that you will have to change file names! For the example above, you need to swap the Spanish audio files with the English backup, but in the Spanish folder. In that case, go to:
steamapps -> common -> Dying Light 2 -> ph -> work -> data_lang -> spech_es -> data -> audio
(analogically with other languages; the folder "speech_x" will have a different ending, corresponding to the language).
We're nearly done. In the target folder, you will see the same three files we've backed up (meta_xx.aesp, sfx_xx.aesp, streams_xx.aesp – with the “xx” corresponding to the languages: _en for English; _es for Spanish; _fr for French, etc). Now swap the original files found inside with the backed up, target files we’ve created in the step above, while the names of the target files, so that the game things these are the proper language files to be used. This will let you have different audio and text languages. Once you have this procedure figured out, you can switch to any desired pair of languages.
