Update: Square-Enix responded rather rapidly to the problem, and a follow-up patch – at a whopping 0KB in size – re-enabled English in the language options of the game’s properties. Re-selecting English prompts another 1GB download to get the English audio back. Oh well! At least it’s fixed.

Original story: A moment ago, I noticed that the rather excellent Tomb Raider had downloaded a 1GB patch. What could it be, I wonder? Seems a bit small and a bit free, so it’s probably not the DEFINITIVE EDITION graphic updates, if we’re even getting those on PC. The game is now out on Mac, but it’s unlikely to be that – I’m running the PC build, after all. So what did it do?

It made the game French, is what it did.

That’s right: this big ol’ patch apparently removes the English language from the game, as can be seen in the screenshot below. While you can still navigate the (French) menus and return the game to Anglais (that’s English, for those uninitiated in the ways of la Belle Langue), the in-game voices are all still in French. I’m assuming that changing the language settings below will put in the voice acting for the other languages and whatnot; I expect that English was removed from the selections for some reason, thus making the game default to French, thus causing it to download the (1GB) French audio.

So… um. Well done, Square Enix. Now I can pretend Tomb Raider is a subtitled film. And hey, at least the French voice acting seems to be pretty good!

I expect another 1GB patch to return Tomb Raider‘s voices to English sometime soon.