In certain situations, the game may only display English characters. Attempting to use foreign characters will brake and disform the texts often replacing them with question marks (?).
I have used Google Translator to input some of foreign characters on various part of the game see if they were working or not and this was the result.
b Loading screens[/b] (MP “game tip” box is working correctly, although I forgot to add it on the pic)
b Console input box[/b] (output box is somewhat working correctly, as shown. the text is very small and it deforms characters, but it is working)
b Main menu screen[/b] (Chapter titles are working correctly, as shown)
b Entire options menu[/b]
b Credits[/b] (Again, chapter titles are working correctly, along with subtitles. Credits that appear at the end of the game are also bugged.)
b H.E.V. boot-up seq is also bugged where attempting to display foreign character result in a fatal game crash[/b] (hence no pic).
As shown, subtitles, chapter titles (on-screen texts), achievements, console output box, MP game tip texts are displaying these characters correctly.
This bug is very frustrating especially for non-English speakers since it means it is impossible to translate these texts.
They are not font issues as changing the font does not solve the problem. This does not happen in any other source engine game. I have not tested the issue with other OS. It is possible that this issue is not global (that is, could be happening only to select individuals).
This issue has been there since at least November 2015 (most likely since the release). This is extremely much more prominent after recent update as it forces to use translated Steam texts instead of English, and the game will display broken texts as shown, so now foreign players will have to revert to English version of Steam to play the game without broken texts.[/size]