Originally posted by Cuathon

Originally posted by Emrendil

Originally posted by maplestone

Originally posted by Emrendil

I prefer voice acting. If  I see a lot of text, I just skip it. A book is far better medium for that.

Moving from written words to spoken/animated words doesn't change that it's still an inanimate world behind all the detailed visual simulations.  

Book is a book, computer game is a computer game. Two diffent mediums :)

And neither of them is a movie. Did you know early computer games, especially RPGs, were written entirely in text?

Like BatMUD? :P

Originally posted by Emrendil

Originally posted by Cuathon

Originally posted by Emrendil

Originally posted by maplestone

Originally posted by Emrendil

I prefer voice acting. If  I see a lot of text, I just skip it. A book is far better medium for that.

Moving from written words to spoken/animated words doesn't change that it's still an inanimate world behind all the detailed visual simulations.  

Book is a book, computer game is a computer game. Two diffent mediums :)

And neither of them is a movie. Did you know early computer games, especially RPGs, were written entirely in text?

True, but the computers back then were far less powerfull. It's sad to still read "wall of text" in 2012 with gigabytes of ram and multicore processors :)

In real life we have a perfect physics and rendering engine. But people still read books. Shocking.

Originally posted by Cuathon

Originally posted by Emrendil

Originally posted by Cuathon

Originally posted by Emrendil

Originally posted by maplestone

Originally posted by Emrendil

I prefer voice acting. If  I see a lot of text, I just skip it. A book is far better medium for that.

Moving from written words to spoken/animated words doesn't change that it's still an inanimate world behind all the detailed visual simulations.  

Book is a book, computer game is a computer game. Two diffent mediums :)

And neither of them is a movie. Did you know early computer games, especially RPGs, were written entirely in text?

True, but the computers back then were far less powerfull. It's sad to still read "wall of text" in 2012 with gigabytes of ram and multicore processors :)

In real life we have a perfect physics and rendering engine. But people still read books. Shocking.

:)

Originally posted by Emrendil

Originally posted by Cuathon

Originally posted by Emrendil

Originally posted by Cuathon

Originally posted by Emrendil

Originally posted by maplestone

Originally posted by Emrendil

I prefer voice acting. If  I see a lot of text, I just skip it. A book is far better medium for that.

Moving from written words to spoken/animated words doesn't change that it's still an inanimate world behind all the detailed visual simulations.  

Book is a book, computer game is a computer game. Two diffent mediums :)

And neither of them is a movie. Did you know early computer games, especially RPGs, were written entirely in text?

True, but the computers back then were far less powerfull. It's sad to still read "wall of text" in 2012 with gigabytes of ram and multicore processors :)

In real life we have a perfect physics and rendering engine. But people still read books. Shocking.

:)

Just have the computer read it and comprehend it in otherwords?  You might have to ask the Terminator if you can borrow his processor, and compatible motherboard. :D

Originally posted by maplestone

Originally posted by Emrendil

I prefer voice acting. If  I see a lot of text, I just skip it. A book is far better medium for that.

Moving from written words to spoken/animated words doesn't change that it's still an inanimate world behind all the detailed visual simulations.  

So? Movies are inanimate worlds too .. but the feel is totally different from reading a book.

VA is the same. It changes the "feel" of the game. I just finished Deus Ex .. great game. It would not be as fun if i have to READ quest text.

Originally posted by LeegOfChldrn 

If you do not know what I am talking about or who, you may be unaware of how many people play games like Mass Effect and literally skip through the entire storyline and dialogue just to beat the game...(if you don't know, Mass Effect is a heavily dialogue, story-driven game). Yet this game has voice acting and action in the scenes, making it far easier for the ADHD generation to handle. Now imagine those who actually read quest text...wow.

Good thread.

However, I'm 31 with ADHD and take a bit of offense to this. Actually, a person with ADHD's ability to hyper-focus on interesting stimuli will make them the most avid spectators of a good story (which ME's are), so long as they care about it to begin with. This is actually what caused me to be diagnosed so late in life.

On the other hand, constantly switching to new tasks over and over and over again (small quest grind) will literally break my brain and make me unable to pay attention to things for hours afterwards.

Originally posted by Cuathon

In real life we have a perfect physics and rendering engine. But people still read books. Shocking.

But people don't read EULAs - because by the time you see it, it isn't going to change whether or not they accept nor influence how they use the software.  That's the closest analogy that exists to quest text in the real world.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

So? Movies are inanimate worlds too .. but the feel is totally different from reading a book.

And computers are different from books and movies ... so why try to recreate books and movies in this new medium?  That's exactly my point.

( that said, I'm completely unhappy with quest-driven games - I get as hooked on the Skinner Box effect as anyone.  I realize that this psychological addiction is the core of questing games, no matter how much I may dream of my living worlds )

Originally posted by maplestone

Originally posted by Cuathon

In real life we have a perfect physics and rendering engine. But people still read books. Shocking.

But people don't read EULAs - because by the time you see it, it isn't going to change whether or not they accept nor influence how they use the software.  That's the closest analogy that exists to quest text in the real world.

Well obvious quest text is useless if you have a giant fucking arrow pointing towards your goal and a little indicator saying 10 wolves killed.

Of course I don't consider the chores of modern MMOs to even be quests. Not even the multi part ones.

In TTS there are no game defined quests at all but you might have tiers of directives to cause you to make your own:

Get magic spells to become powerful

Spells are found in ruins or caves and what not

You know the ruins of a great ancient city are submerged in the waters of a massive cavern

Find a way to drain the cave

Maybe fight some monsters

Solve some puzzles in the city

Learn the magic words

Make spells

Save your city from the demon army

The player goal was to save their city. They knew powerful magic could aid them. They understood from the lore of the planescape that the words for magic spells were stored in libraries and wizards enclaves in old cities and towers.

They identified one of those ruins. They found a way to access them and find the words of power inside.

They could have used a water breathing spell, built a submersible, or some other method, they picked draining the city.

No quest arrows, any text was from books describing the locations of lost cities, no counters sayin oh you killed 10 wolves, you saved the whole world. You still had to read through some books.

The implementation of quest text is shit because you aren't on an actual quest. Its more properly refered to as a to do list with excess flavor to cover up how utterly boring it is.