How to turn off Age of Empires 2 voice narration

(Image credit: Microsoft)

Age of Empires 2 voice and narration is on by default, which can be a bit jarring when you first start the game, but you can soon disable it via the setup menus. This menu narration is a great accessibility feature, especially since Age of Empires 2 is quite heavy on reading and blocks of text. However, if you don't need text-to-speech narration reading everything, you can customize it so that certain aspects are still narrated, or you can turn it off entirely, so are the menus you need to look in to turn off Age of Empires 2 voice narration.

How to turn off narration in Age of Empires 2

When you first boot up Age of Empires 2 and are presented with the ‘Setup’ menu, turn off narration by switching off the Narration option at the top of the list. This will entirely turn off all text-to-speech voices reading out information to you in Age of Empire 2.

Age of Empires 2 narration options in setup menu — (Image credit: Xbox Game Studios)

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If you later decide you want to switch narration back on, or only want certain aspects of Age of Empires 2 narrated, open Settings (menu button on Xbox controller, Esc on PC keyboard) > Options > Audio. You’ll see a list of audio options, including Menu Narration, Game Narration, Tooltips Narration, and more that you can individually configure to suit your narration and accessibility needs. You can also adjust the volume of the text-to-speech voice by changing the Narrator Volume setting. If it’s the voice over and character dialogue that you want to adjust, turn down the Voice Volume setting instead.

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Will Sawyer is a Guides Editor at GamesRadar+ with over five years of experience in writing online guides, news, and features, and has a BA (Hons) in Journalism. Starting as a freelancer, Will contributed to startmenu and Game Rant before joining the GamesRadar+ team in August 2021. Since then, he has written hundreds of guides about a huge range of games, with shooters and action games being his areas of expertise. Outside of writing about games, Will hops between multiplayer shooters with friends, such as Darktide and Helldivers 2, and delves into whatever has been on his backlog for far too long. He also tries to get through his never-ending Warhammer pile of shame of grey Tyranids, Aeldari, and Chaos Space Marines.