Tolkien felt necessary to invent an entire language for his fantasy epic, and it’s no coincidence that many of his lexical inventions have filtered into mainstream genre use.
The best writing is invisible, but that shouldn’t come at the cost of too many characters reading (‘sounding’) the same, or them feeling inauthentic and disconnected from the setting. There’s also a challenge in writing dialogue for characters who live in the future, plus a highly multicultural/cosmopolitan city. Add any number of secondary NPCs, and you either get the JRPG syndrome (each uttering mundane one liners about their immediate surroundings ad infinum) or bloated exposition. It’s hard enough establishing a catchy, unique tone of voice and personality for your main characters. Flat, identikit sounding NPCs, dialogue (and by extension the in-game nomenclature of items, places etc) is not only a missed opportunity but a sign of laziness, and can be utterly immersion breaking. Writing dialogue for a game runs a number of risks, but one of the biggest is a lack of differentiation in tone of voice. Speaking Pidgin transforms them from visiting foreigner into one of the hundreds of well-integrated expatriates in Lagos… There’s a certain intimacy that this form of broken English emits a down-to-earth, survivalist approach to everyday living and hustling in Africa’s most populous nation.” - Source. “If they open up with Pidgin English instead, I instantly perk up.
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