Do you like Reading in Video Games?

@smackosynthesis: Sounds like you need a doctor.

@someoneproud: Dubbed version?

@maelstromtear:Or maybe they died because they left notes telling everyone hunting them where they went?

I like skimming in games.

A hundred times YES. The best example I can think of this is in Skyrim, I was getting bored out of my mind listening to the slow dialogue just drone on and on, and I seriously wished it was like Morrowind where I could just click on them and get a wall of text to read so I can zoom through it really quickly, then again, nothing against those of you that love Skyrim, but so much of the story in the game was horribly boring and nearly put me to sleep. One of the things I liked about old RPGs was how quickly I could get through dialogue and just move on. Even Dragon Age wasn't too bad about it, since the main character's lines were not voiced and the story was engaging enough to me that the spoken dialogue didn't bother me.

@vampire_chibi: Yeah, I hate the FFX dub, I replayed it recently on steam with the Japanese VO / English text and enjoyed it considerably more. Auron's VO was the only one I could bear originally and it actively spoiled the game for me when it first came out.

Luckily a lot of JRPGs these days allow for the Japanese dub out of the gate and I invariably go with that. I don't speak much Japanese but the emotion comes through and the text gives me the detail, I'm content with that.

@someoneproud: Think it was FF13 that i just couldn't play on console because of the horrendous English VO, dunno if they ever came back and added Japanese VO but i never finished that game, think i got the Jap VO version for Steam though.

@random45: Yes the main story in Skyrim is very uninteresting but the lore is pretty decent and you get that mostly from books.

So I said earlier in this thread that I only read for the first couple of hours, but I just beat Wolfenstein II and I read every little scrap of lore that I found. Super well-written, so much so that it made me care to read.

Nah, my leisure reading and gaming remain pretty separate. The closes I've gotten was the Mass Effect comic that explains how Liara got Shepard's body prior to 2.

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@john1912: CTRL + F Divinity and I knew I'd have to find someone that was there with me.

I didn't read everything in Skyrim for example, but the immersion in those as well as Divinity really made me want to read far more than I would in other games. I found myself reading a lot in Wolfenstein II as well, to the point I want to go back to find all the art and newspapers. Reading is heavily dependent on the previous world building for me - there are some games where they put the content in and I don't care because the world just didn't grab me, but others like Divinity I want to see if there are hints or cool stories on the side.

Reading's fine. I still go back to play SNES RPGs from time to time, so I guess I'm used to it.

There's something about the video game format that renders me pretty unable to focus on reading. I think a lot of it has to do with the exposition-heavy style games tend to gravitate toward, or the frequency to which text-heavy games spend extreme amounts of time explaining things that could be better and more naturally explained through world building within the context of gameplay. Though as I think of it more, it's not just reading that I have this problem with—you could change "text" to "cutscenes" and I'd say exactly the same thing. There are of course outliers to this if the writing is engaging enough, but for the most part it's just not something I care for.

If the writing is good, I love it. I comprehend things better when I read anyway (so the subtitles are always on in my house). I especially like it when you can pick up books and notes, journals and other things to read to get a deeper understanding of the world you're in.

I definitely prefer voice acting for major things as I don't want to be reading the entire time playing a game preferably (sort of like subtitles in films, but that's a separate issue) but I do enjoy digging into lore through text. Even a text-based interlude in a game with mostly voice (i.e. Nier or something like Persona) is welcome.

Depends on the quality of the writing. I loved reading the humorous text descriptions and dialogue in Sierra adventure games like Quest for Glory and Space Quest. Betrayal at Krondor was also great. Darklands was great.

Yet most of the time, I don't enjoy reading verbose text in most games since I can't get so into the writing and tend to find it monotonous and repetitive. The above games are an exception.

Yes

3. It Depends

I don't mind if it is engaging.

For example, I read all the letters in the new Wolfenstein games, and all the entries of the Mass Effect codex, but I grew tired of reading stuff in Final Fantasy 13 after 10 minutes.

Holy shit, Darklands. So, if my post of Planescape Torment isn't enough. Yes, I like reading in general. I generally make an effort to read lore and stuff, to try and get more into the game. In some games, that stuff is just boring or seems generic, and that dampens my enjoyment of the game (Spellforce, Torchlight, League of Legends). And if it's good, it enhances my enjoyment (Mass Effect, Darklands, Dungeons of Dredmor).

It depends! If a game is well written (a lot of XSEED localized stuff and LucasArts adventure games come to mind) then I don't mind but that's definitely the exception rather than the rule.