Do you read lore text in games?
In different games (usually RPGs), quite often different documents and information about the history of the game or just some stories are scattered over the levels, for example, books and documents in TES: Skyrim, Cyberpunk 2077, Genshin Impact and so on. The information, of course, is interesting, but does everyone read it? How do you generally feel about such things? Do you skip these documents or do you still read most of them to the end? Why?I personally have a somewhat contradictory feeling: it seems to be interesting, but since all this is a continuous unvoiced text, it is very difficult to read it from beginning to end + the dynamics of the game sags very much. What are your thoughts?
I usually read because playing such games helps immersion. You better understand what is happening around you and what world you are in.
But, for example, in the same Skyrim, ~ 2/3 of all books, somewhere around 200 out of 300, are absolutely useless trash and I feel sorry for the time spent on it.
infrequently. if the world of the game and what is happening I'm interested in reading to better understand.
but it also depends on the presentation. so for example, I didn’t read books tightly for games. and if this is something at the level of a bestiary, rather concise and formalized, I’ll most likely read it.
The first thing you learn in educational institutions is to quickly read such crap diagonally, snatching the essence that fits in a couple of sentences. Well, this is not technical literature, where words can be IMPORTANT, this is low-grade graphomania. I read everything, but for me it looks like blah blah blah warrior Great Uh blah blah blah killed by Crooked Leg blah blah blah buried in the Icereach dungeon, that's where I'll go for his sword on the quest. The voice acting of the text, on the contrary, interferes, because I read much faster than they pronounce the text.
As for immersion, it depends on the gameplay. If the game itself is slow and meditative, there is nothing strange about stopping and looking through a book. If the game is fast and arcade, some kind of slasher with crowds of enemies respawning, it's stupid to tear the gameplay for the sake of a portion of illiterate fanfiction.
I read and I don't! I usually skim through the first page and if the plot of the text intrigued me, I read longer. I remember playing Elder Scrolls, I came across both interesting stories, and which I wanted to close after the first sentences. Well, it’s also good that games usually don’t have long texts, like Anna Karenina. No, I by no means mean that L. Tolstoy writes bad books. Anna Karenina is a decent work, but it just goes beyond the format of the game due to the volume.
Of course not! I always skip all the cutscenes, all the dialogues, reading is nerds! It's hard to know where to go, but I'm trying!
MunchkiN 616
Why didn't you read books in tes? Is the volume of text large or just not interesting?
Loken
Well, yes, it also began to seem to me that this is a rather serious problem if there are many books in the game, but some of them are rather controversial both in terms of usefulness and in terms of interest. How would you try to make such books more useful?
requiemmm
I once started a passage in Skyrim, where I wanted to read completely every piece of lore that I saw ... you know how long it took me? For about an hour or an hour and a half, and then I began to read the way you said: diagonally. Now I started thinking about how it would be possible to improve the readability of these lore texts and thought about voice acting, but you're right: as a rule, the reader reads 1.5 or 2 times faster than the announcer, and then there is no point in even more mediocrely spent money.
yariko ookami
Well, as for me, for RPGs quite often they make lore texts of 2 virtual pages or more (especially in TES) and it is very difficult to read such texts, especially when there are few interesting and useful stories
StaticSaysMyNamE
I cannot formulate the exact reason. the point is most likely that at the beginning I played games on the principle of completely clearing locations and for this I didn’t need to remember the essence of tasks at all while RPG games were small, so sooner or later I would have gone through the game just insanely vacuuming and looting locations and shouting dialogues . hence I had enough superficial knowledge about the game. about the narrative, in addition to what I am told that we have already sailed to Morrowind, I thought somewhere in the time of Gothic 2 once when I became interested in the food conflict between the city and the countryside and I generally became interested in how life is arranged in quasi-medieval games. so before playing Morrowind, I read some books, but in general I was rather neutral about the series, and the books gave everything rather blurry and artistic. and when there were 20 pages in the book, I got lazy and I went to clean the dungeons from mobs and loots. I did about the same in the Oble and Skurim, being content with what the game itself told me - Daeds are running, Alduins wake up and run - this is work for a dragon slayer witcher. then watching letsplays and streams, I found that there is a deeper lore there, but I still didn’t read books. although they were heaped in all my games so that if anything could be set off.
...but some of them are quite controversial both in terms of usefulness and in terms of interest. How would you try to make such books more useful?
Here is a story about two chairs. if the approach is some kind of reality simulator, then the books should be quite complete and voluminous so that it is felt that you live in the world and eat food. you read there some sort of treatise on the alchemy of magic and the gods and run into tons of any contradictory and lengthy information. if you make books useful, it should be somehow conditioned by the gameplay and transferred to the skill plane of the player. and this will be played by 2 and a half nerds, the rest of the players will be unhappy that they don’t understand what to do and need to figure it out or upload it. if you go on a spree - how to craft a manna potion or how to complete a quest, this is a failure of the game presentation and gameplay, I think.
in theory, all these books and codes are needed only by enthusiastic fans, and not even at the first passage is possible. Most of the players have enough emotional narrative goal formed by the plot of the game.
In general, reading should be one that will help to pass the game, and will not load the story of how it all began ...
The voice acting will stretch the passage time.
I read, helps to better understand the game world. But it happens that I come across notes left for the sake of “so, I need to write something,†I just look through these, without really reading it.
Not a big fan, to be honest. Still, through visuals, dialogues or stories in cut scenes, it’s easier for me to digest everything.
Notes, magazines, books, listening to audio messages. Yes. But there is an exception, as, for example, in Cyberpunk. That's it it was tyagomotina text.
most often I read from and to, it helps to better understand the world around me, even if I don’t read it right away, then I just allocate a large piece of time for it and look through everything, it helps to immerse myself in the game more
In dragons, probably read everything.
And in other games, with a few exceptions, usually not very interesting.