| (Image property of Bethesda Softworks) In the case of many Bethesda games like Starfield and Skyrim, they like to do this through straightforward in-game books that you can pick up and read. For me, these have always been like sandpaper for the eyes telling me oodles and oodles of information in an impenetrable medieval font-type about characters I’d never heard of before who have little to nothing to do with the main plot. This is partly an RPG thing because there will always be some players that like to role-play as homeless librarians who have to pick up every discarded cigarette packet in case it reveals what Rathgar the Iron-Cocked used to eat for breakfast. For me though, I really don’t see the appeal. To my eye, these so called flavour texts always tasted more like wet cement than a sugary treat. So, if I don’t like in-game books then what do I like and how would I fix in-game texts to make them feel a little less dry? Well, that’s what I’m hoping to explore today so strap in and let’s talk about in-game text! Who, what, when, where? Like most snobbish video game essayists, I've made it very clear before that I'm a big fan of the Dark Souls series. While there are many reasons for this, like its inventive gameplay decisions, one of the key factors in my idyllic marriage to the franchise is its dark, nihilistic and intricate world.  | | (Image property of FromSoftware and Bandai Namco) This might seem strange based on the previous paragraph seeing as, in Dark Souls, most of this world-building is presented through in-game text like item descriptions, the very same thing that I was bemoaning in Bethesda's games. This thought made me wonder why seemingly similar text-dumps can elicit everything from dread to disdain to delirium depending on the device being deployed. One of the key deciding factors for me is how relevant the information is to the rest of the game. Dark Souls has two layers of storytelling. On the surface level, you have the story being told through gameplay about your character repeatedly banging their head against whichever brick wall of a boss they've come up against this time. However, there's also a deeper level of storytelling that tells you more about the world, the characters you meet and the bosses you fight which is constituted by in-game text and item descriptions. The game's minimal surface-level storytelling means that all of the juicy tid-bits and relevant info can be packed into the item descriptions to make them worth reading.  | | (Image property of Bethesda Softworks) By contrast, Bethesda games have a very different structure for storytelling. Bethesda games still have the story told through gameplay of whatever chaos your character is causing by slipping live grenades into people's pockets and putting buckets on their heads. Alongside this, they also have the main story with its own plotline that, unlike Dark Souls, you must engage with to complete the game. In this way, Bethesda games already have a complete set of stories for both the world and the player before you even get into the in-game books. As a result, every time I pick up a book in one of those games I find myself straining to work out what on earth they're talking about and what the point is when I already know everything that I need to to understand the events of the story. I never felt in Skyrim, for example, like I needed an entire library to understand the concept of a dragon wanting to eat the world outside of the practicalities of how many mouthfuls he thought he'd need. Therefore, if you want most of your playerbase to engage with your in-game world-building, it's important to understand why they would want to know more about the world to begin with. Listening to my granddad tell me about the price of a banana in 1938 is a lot less interesting than hearing a story explaining why my best man just arrived at my wedding with a severed goat's horn poking out of his eye socket. I'm interested in the latter because it directly pertains to my situation, which is what Dark Souls does consistently and Bethesda games manage infrequently. Easy peasy, booky ready So, that's it right? There are good in-game texts that tell you about the world and characters you are currently engaging with and those that are bad because they don't, simple right? Well, no. You see, while I like Dark Souls's in-game storytelling through item descriptions, I don't like Elden Ring's. Same method, same genre, same developer, similar themes and yet one breaks the mould for me while the other only breaks its neck falling into a roadside ditch. Assuming that it isn't caused by the inexorable decay of my contorted brain chemistry, this distinction comes down to one simple factor; how easy it is to access the items' descriptions. In principle, both Elden Ring and Dark Souls both have you access items' descriptions by highlighting them in a menu and pressing a button. However, this is irrelevant because what gives Dark Souls the edge is that you can see item descriptions another way; through loading screens.  | | (Image property of FromSoftware and Bandai Namco) You see, just like with books in Bethesda games, I don't actually like the process of reading item descriptions because it slams the brakes on the pace of the game while you trawl through the lore of whatever malformed body part you just picked up. However, if your game has loading screens, as most 3D console RPGs do, then the brakes are already being slammed on for those, creating a prime opportunity for in-game text to be delivered to a captive audience.  | | (Image property of FromSoftware and Bandai Namco) As someone who first took an interest in item descriptions in Dark Souls thanks to their appearance on loading screens, it is beyond me that Elden Ring got rid of them. Instead, they were replaced with tips on how to play the game which felt like the game burning down the library of Alexandria to make more space for children's colouring books. Much like how people talk about the prospect of having mini-games for loading screens to pass the time, I feel like delivering otherwise pace-killing lore dumps in these already slow moments is a no-brainer. Tips and Tricks So, with these axioms of relevance and ease of access in mind, how would I go about implementing in-game texts and lore dumps in my games. Here's an idea: rather than having to stop and read every book you pick up in an Elder Scrolls game, why not have the loading screen cycle through pages from books so that players can read to pass the time? Hell, it might even incentivise players to actually seek out these books so that they have something new to look at. If you were really worried about players being bored of your books, why not let them select which book appears on the loading screens from their inventory so that they can always come back to the same one before moving on to the next?  | | (Image property of Irrational Games and 2K) Alternatively, you could always do what Bioshock did and sack off books all together and buy stocks in the audio log market. In principle, these are easy to make relevant to your world as they can be voiced by the characters in the main story who you're already employing voice actors for. Then they can also be listened to while on the go which would make them easy to access as well. Yet, despite Bioshock providing the template for this sixteen years ago, lots of modern games still fail to implement audio logs properly. The usual barb in my urethra with these is when, having turned all of their in-game text into audio, games still force you to stand still and listen to them in a menu. Why?! The whole benefit of audio logs over books is being able to multitask with them so why are you still insisting upon killing the pacing when you play them? If you're worried about something important happening while they're still playing, you can just pause them you know? I won't stop playing just because you paused my podcast of someone's suicide note so that I could beat a zombie to death, I promise.  | | (Image property of QLOC and Warner Bros Montreal) ConclusionOverall then, I have nothing against the concept of in-game text, I just feel like it could be streamlined somewhat. Be it through making proper use of loading screens, making sure text is relevant to the plot or just binning the whole thing and making audio logs instead, there are many options open to developers. The obstacle, I believe, is that this sort of player interaction isn't really a priority for most developers. The notable exception is Dark Souls and FromSoftware's other series because of how important it is to their brand of storytelling but, beyond them, very few developers can afford to spend the time and money required to streamline their in-game lore dumps. Hopefully, spreading ideas like those above might help to reduce some of that workload and give developers a few new ideas on how their in-game books can fit into the tapestries of their games. All images and properties belong to their respective rights holders and are utilised here for the purpose of criticism and review.
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