Talking Point: Do You Read All the Crap in Games?

Generally start out with good intentions and read everything, but if it can’t keep my interest I’ll stop. Which is 99% of the time.

I read a lot of the notes in Control because I found them interesting. I've never read every single note in a game though. Even trying sounds like some kind of masochistic torture.

For some games I do read through everything but I will try and gage if I'm getting anything out of it and if it's not interesting stuff or isn't going to help with the game I'll just drop it. I guess it saves a lot of time in development as well as space on the drive compared to video or audio so I get why it's an oft used thing but sometimes it does feel like there's way too much of it.

During the PS1 days, I'd read everything as I was used to reading everything from the 16bit days. Believe it or not... we used to not have voice over in videogames.

I know... weird huh?

Over time though, I've found that I only bother reading most items in games that are favorite series. Even favorite series that have an over abundance of reading material... like Mass Effect... I don't bother reading everything. Most? Maybe... but not everything.

Usually some but not all. There are some exceptions where it's particularly good stuff, like HZD - I think I read everything in it.

90% of the time: Hard no. And everyone talks about how interesting the texts in Skyrim and Fallout are for world building, but who has time for all that?

I only bother to read the texts if they're in my face (like an item) and brief, like in Control. Or if they're stories. But if it's just a fictional journal that's laying open and you have to angle the camera just right to read it, where some random character who died before the game happened is just rambling. I admire the devs' devotion but I'm good.

Most of the time, no. But if it's a game that has fascinating lore, sure! The games that come to mind are Kingdom Hearts, Skyrim, and The Witcher 3.

depends if i care enough.

notes like in TLOU games and uncharted are interesting since they tell more about the world and are ussually short.

horror games rely on notes and documents to understand the full story so you have to read them in those games.

the books in skyrim are nice things but i just pick them up but never read them.

With Far Cry 6 I only ended up reading the ones with a clue to solve the purple-gem-thingy challenges.

No.

Only on my most favourite games which isn’t a massive list. When it’s a game like that I love it. All that written stuff is for the Uber fans cos the dev’s know they’ll appreciate it. And we do 👌

What's this article about? I stopped reading as it doesn't have a trophy attached.

@Anke Than you should write a review about Death Stranding.

@RBMango The notes in The Witcher 3 were really interesting. When I visited a new village, I always checked the black board for them.

Yes always, you miss too much good stuff otherwise and all the best easter eggs. And I always use subtitles. I good at speed reading and more often than not I'm too impatient to go through with watching the cutscenes, especially with some RPGs and JRPGs that take themselves too seriously.

I feel like it's hard to stop and read something when you are in the middle of something, and with games, I feel like I am ALWAYS in the middle of something. Last game I finished, Outriders, had a lot of "lore" that was readable and I skimmed some but it's a game where you are blasting things so I was not as concerned on the back story.

I'm deep into Far Cry 6 and I feel the writing of the spoken dialog, the acting, is so sharp, funny and well done with great characters, that I tried reading the many notes. But it's not the same. So I have not read much in FC6.

I think the only game where I read the most was the terminals and notes from the Fallout games. Something about hearing characters who are long gone, along with everything else being wiped out, is a bit more compelling.

@themcnoisy dang it that was the bulk of what I was going to say too! XD

@thefourfoldroot same!

Only top tier games like the last of us or witcher. In witcher 3 I still remember the letter from past jacques de aldersberg who was the final boss of witcher 1 passing his final message to geralt about the wild hunt. That was epic.

as others have said, i start games with the intention to read everything, but as soon as the text becomes burdensome and uninteresting [to me], i bail. the only games i've read all the supplemental text for are naughty dog games.

Yep. Lore is important to world building. I hate games that neglect that or make it easy to bypass. I don't want to get locked in a cutscene or have a novel to read, but I do want to organically learn about the world I'm in. Otherwise you are mostly just killing pixels and that gets real boring, real fast. Give me a reason to care about the pixels and their plight.

If I’ve bought into the experience then yes, absolutely.

One of the problems and the reason I am kind of defending games having so much readable crap in them is that it's often hard to develop characters that you don't even see onscreen for 99 percent of the game. Some genres of games are major exceptions of course but for a lot of games it's kind of hard for a character to stand around and talk about themselves to a video game protagonist that's running around and killing people the entire time. So there is really not a lot of ways to approach that issue. Still I hardly read notes in games unless it's potentially helpful to gameplay like in Deathloop or something.

Usually I do. I'm glad that I've been taking the time to read everything in HZD because it gives you lots of insight, really adds to the game's atmosphere, or both.

Ive been playing Alan Wake, where the manuscript pages are pretty integral to the story. Otherwise it depends on my interest in the lore of the game. On a side note I use Kamurocho street signs as Japanese practice.

I usually don't. I know it helps expand the lore but I kinda don't care most of the time. If I want to read up on the lore I'd rather do it on my PC.

I think in the vast majority of games that have 'text' only collectables, whether important to the lore/backstory etc or not, I never bother. I also never bothered reading any of the Character Bio's and 'updates' (for example in the Witcher 3). A lot of RPG's do have bestiary's which can contain useful information that can be handy to refer too - Like H:ZD when you scan a machine, you can refer back to it if you forget what parts are 'weak' or 'strong' to which elements/weapons etc, same with the Witcher 3 and which bombs, spells etc are 'best' to use but those are usually all I do refer back to.

If they are accompanied by 'Audio', then I may 'listen' to them once (I say listen but often its just on in the 'background'). I still find myself driven to collect all the 'collectables' if only for the enjoyment of collecting (a legacy from the old platforming days - LOL)

I used to back in the PS2-3 era. But now the font is so dam tiny & I don't have a lot of free time to just game like I used to. Yeesh, Red Dead Redemption:2 was killer on my eyes for reading, even with enlarged text. The Last Of Us 2 however did it right. Big ol' texts!

It has to feel important. In Control and Horizon it felt necessary for understanding the world and the story, whereas in games like Skyrim or Amalur it often feels like they've set a bunch of topics and just shoved a load of GCSE creative writing coursework into the game for seemingly no reason. Obviously there's a middle ground, but whether I take the time to do more than skim read very much depends on how invested the atmosphere and the other gameplay mechanics make me feel in getting answers.

Sometimes, usually not. I just finished Days Gone, I didn't even read the instructions for skills and bike upgrades.

Used to all the time as a kid, now not at all unless its a game im REALLY into. I think God of War are Horizon are the only ones in recent times where I took time to read a lot of the lore and codex entries.

100% Depends on the game.

When there's enough of it and you can tell from looking at it that it might be interesting, you can kind of pick and choose what to read based on interest just like real life. Elder Scrolls is great for this imo. I read the title of a book and if it sounds interesting I'll read it, if not then not.

@theheadofabroom

Yep... Control/Horizon are 2 games I read/listen to everything I found - and actively looked for them.

Depends on the game. I think Dragon Age Origins had interesting notes. Tomb raider reboot trilogy's notes that Lara verbalises are interesting. Farcry's notes feels more like an excuse to have more collectibles.

I normally read all the crap if unless I start to become disinterested in the game.

It comes down to two things for me. I have to be interested in the lore of course but more importantly it needs to be concise. I almost never read short stories in games like books in an RPG. I much prefer just short paragraphs that add a little more context to what's going on.

13 Sentinels is the perfect example of what I mean. They don't give you 6 pages of lore dump all at once. Instead they unlock more parts in the mystery files as you progress through the story so your never feel overwhelmed. Plus the story was fantastic enough to make me want to learn more about the lore.

I read it all... All of it, I tell you! I am a slave to the text. I try to do it for lore building and then in Far Cry 5 you end up getting notes from people you meet, but by the time I met them I forgot what on earth their particular note said, due to all the other ones I read. Lol I remember a weird note called "Clown Thoughts" in FC5 as well, which seemed to fantasize about abusing children. I mean, potentially just a terrible dark horror thing to suit the area it was in (haunted house) or a real fetish of that particular writer. Let's hope it's the former. So, ya know it's not always fun in games. I remember doing the same in Oblivion; after buying my first property I collected every book I could find and lined them up neatly on my shelves after reading through them. Then I collected various cool items and also dotted them around for decoration. However, many times I would re enter to find some items had fallen off or popped out of the glass case or something and being eally annoyed about it. I have still never completed the game. XD

Sometimes .it all depends.but i do read a lot of texts in games.word up son

My eyes glaze over and my brain goes numb for 90% of spoken dialogue, even if I try. Even worse for text. My subconscious knows it's mostly poorly written filler.

Cyberpunk 2077 also has an insane number of readable materials scattered all over the place, I'm just not bothering with all of them. In games where those notes gives you clues or codes to some stash, I read, in Arkane games especially. But it's getting a bit much these days, seems there's a career out there for "writers for in-game notes" so we'll that's good for them.

I do sometimes depending on how invested I am in the game. In some games it’s just nonsense but in HZD for example it’s absolutely necessary. Adds so much more depth to the story and world building. RE is another game where I always read the notes. And who can forget the notes left by Ish in TLoU.

It depends I guess. The Sherlock ones are a good example, they’re clues after all and you really should read them. I quite like reading the database and the notes in AC games too. But yeah, some games like Horizon I just could not be bothered.

I rarely bother nowadays, unless it’s short. Same with audio logs.

Horizon I read absolutely everything. It added so much to the world and helped me piece together the mystery. Control I read a lot in the beginning but then I just didn’t bother as it was all a bit nonsense. Kingdoms of Amular there are just pages and pages of books and journals. No way I’m reading that. Some games have far too much readable content and I don’t understand why. It adds very little to a game IMO. Perhaps they are just trying to keep writers employed during a game’s life cycle…

I tend to read some early on in the game, but then the interest wains and i stop. If there was a trophy for reading them all it would be different. In some games though, its in your interest to at least open the book as it may initiate a mission, take Skyrim and The witcher 3 for example.

It depends on the game but, by and large, absolutely not.

Any time this topic comes up I immediately think of Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor, a game with an appendices to rival the actual LotR books, which killed every ounce of interest I had in continuing to play the game.

I don't mind little one or two paragraph things scattered throughout a game, or audio-logs, but if I want to read a book I'm going to go read a damn book. IMO, if the majority of the storytelling and world building of a game is done via in-game tomes of text I have to sit in a menu for hours on end to read through, then it has failed as a game.

My assumption is the developer puts most of the important things to read in the first quarter of the game, so I'll read whatever I can in that portion, and then sprinkle it in through the rest of the game.

I will read some random pieces of paper at times but usually avoid this kind of thing. I know there are games with books you can read like Fable and Elder Scrolls. I appreciate the time and effort it takes but I also am conscious of my own time. I don't think they normally are helpful in the games.

Kinda depends on the game I suppose

I do most of the time, especially if they meaningfully add to the story. Horizon Zero Dawn was a much better told story when reading most of the files and vantage points.

I want to but end up not doing it.

I tell myself this is the game I want to read everything in. Every book, every note, I'll read it all.

But once I open it then nope, I just spam the button until it's gone.

While I was playing NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139 and we come to the part with a wall of text, I tried to read some of that. But I got so bored I started spamming my way through and good god it went on forever. I told myself I'll read it next time when I replay this game someday. But no, I didn't read it the first time round so I won't the second.

I've tried reading the books in Skyrim too but forget everything I just read so I just stopped bothering with it. I'm so eager to get exploring that I don't have the patience to read through the books

When it comes to the games I love the most, I can't help but think to myself this is the game I'm going to read everything but just can't bring myself to do it. Which is funny because I do enjoy reading books... Just can't do it in a game.

If you were to give me an exam about the contents of notes after any given game, I would fail pretty damn hard.

I will however, always remember that Smough ground his enemies bones into dust before sprinkling said dust on his meals. That's the kind of stuff that leaves an impression!

Mostly never but I make exceptions for certain games like the Ezio AC trilogy. I really liked reading the factual stuff about the architecture and historical characters. Also read every item description in the Dark Souls games.

Audio logs yes. Reading notes and books? No, unless needed for a mission or hidden loot.

As other I do start out reading it all. Some game it seem to trivial after a while. It needs to make me feel its important to the game or helpful in some way.

The only series of games of which I read ever single note is the Resident Evil games.
I read most of what I found in Horizon Zero Dawn and a few bits in The Witcher 3 and Skyrim on the Xbox360 but I get bored..would rather play than read.If I want to read if read my book.

Definitely depends on the game. If I really love the stories, characters and setting, I'll latch on to every piece of text, big or small. Otherwise, flavor text on item descriptions and such often gets ignored - no way I'm bothering to read through all items in a Souls game.

When there are document/note collectibles I typically do read them all, but I've made some exceptions - for example, I lost interest in doing so halfway through Control.

Something I will never, ever do is skip dialogue or story-relevant text.

I think it’s great that the option is there to really dive into the world’s lore if you choose to do so. And you can easily just skip it if you want, too. I always enjoyed reading about the stories based on actions you had a hand in, like the newspapers in Red Dead, or the conversations in towns that would change in different rpgs. I used to actually search out everything and read all I could. Maybe it was a bit of a Charlie Brown syndrome since he said, ‘Somebody went to the trouble of writing it, so I sort of feel obliged to read it.’ Then again, a large staple of my gaming in my teenage years was Working Designs translations which, for the most part, were pretty darn interesting. Unfortunately, I don’t have the hundreds of hours to sink into learning the ins and outs of the game’s world that I used to have.

Honestly it's why I enjoy souls games. There's no 1000s of text in a page or item I find. I was trying so hard to read through every piece of text in Horizon zero dawn but then I gave up and stopped caring. It's waaaay too much text. I'm trying to play a game not read a book.

nah , reading is one of them things in life i don’t enjoy & never will.

Speaking personally, I like notes in games. If done right, it can give the sensation that there’s a world that exists in these games that exists beyond you. So often I feel like games have nothing but areas made just for me playing. Notes, while they can be overabundant and have important information put in them so quickly, I feel can help give you another view of events happening beyond you.
My main problem is that sometimes note placement or why somebody writes a note makes no sense, like when they’re put in a place that no reasonable person would be able to reach, or when they leave a message for someone else that was never recovered. But other then that, I think it’s ok there’s notes to read in games. But then again i shouldn't get too excited about notes in games- sometimes it's hard to tell the difference if there's something important in a thing to read or if this is just someone screwing around.
As long as there is a feature to read the notes after the fact, like in watch dogs legion, i should be fine with the abundance of notes in your game.

I want to but there's too many games to play and not enough time.

I read most of the stuff in Horizon because I thought it was interesting. Usually skip the drivel in most games.

I don't even watch the cutscenes in most games, so there's no way in the world I'm reading documents in a game.

Really depends on how much there is.

If the game sporadically leaves notes for a bit of world building, such as TLOU then i'll read them or if they leave clues for loot which you'd otherwise miss.

If they're all over the shop and they're clearly added as filler as they commonly are on open-world games that are already filled with nonsense collectibles and such then I wont bother as they're usually just padding to simply make the game longer and add little if anything to the narrative.

For open-world games I think I prefer tape collectibles as you can listen while you explore.

I literally use my Skyrim copy as an occasional reader app on Switch. Need I say more?

I don't tend to, though this has bit me in the arse before, especially with bioshock where I had way less context for the ending

I pretty much read everything. I feel written notes, letters, journals etc give me an understanding of the world and it's characters and I want to experience everything within that world, as I feel it's important for immersion, I go out of my way to find hidden ones. This is especially important in From Software's Soulsborne titles, as a massive part of the lore is contained in item descriptions.

What part of this is down to my being on the autism spectrum I don't know, I enjoy the reading, can speed-read and have a photographic memory - it doesn't seem like a chore to me.
I also think a large part of those not wanting to read is a generational thing too. I'm older and feel a lot of the younger generation want instant gratification without putting the time in, they want everything immediately and everything is disposable. Jeez they can't even sit down to watch a movie with having their phone out constantly!