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Comment by Fire-Dragon-DoL | Hacker News Reader

Even if it was interesting, I found incredibly frustrating reading in Control.

In general, interrupted reading is annoying, in videogames this is a hard requirement, so it makes it annoying by default. To me if there is text in a videogame to narrate stuff, wrong medium is being used. Small reading rarely is ok of course.

Portal 1 has a good example of not needing reading and still telling interesting an interesting story

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Agreed. I enjoyed control’s aesthetic but I didn’t want to read dozens of files at a time. And I didn’t want to open up my inventory to read it. If text must be there I prefer it to be more like resident evil style. Brief collectibles, read on the spot. All of them tending to be plot specific and relevant. Typically each “page” is just a few sentences.

Little in the way of open world building with an expectation that you know who all these people are. Discussions of gods in games irks me the most. Oh my god how I hate reading religious lore in every game.

If I have the opportunity to use my gaming machine - I want to spend it playing a game, not reading lore. But I really appreciate good lore if it's made available elsewhere (books, apps, websites, etc.). If lore is going to only be available in game I think audio logs ( albeit with optional subtitles) are a better solution than walls of text.

I'm on the exact same boat. Thank you for expressing my thoughts

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