This may or may not be a terribly significant topic for discussion, but over the break, I logged in more than a little time with Nintendo's Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (a game that might be better known now as the award-winning Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door). I also spent some more time with World of Warcraft over the break (probably just like many of you did). Both are games that have received praise for their personality and charm (and in the case of World of Warcraft, for their consistent ability to tie into the Warcraft lore, and to make this lore interesting even for casual users). I have to say, I find this more than a little strange. No, not because of who made the games. Because of how they convey that personality: through written word.
About five years ago, one of my personal all-time favorite games was released with relatively little fanfare...Planescape: Torment. The game was written by then Black Isle designer/writer Chris Avellone (who also crafted the story for Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords). That game had what I considered to be an incredible amount of character, even though very few of your character's actions were actually represented onscreen. Instead, you read page after page of dialogue and descriptions, skillfully written in a way that posed as many questions as it answered (which was fitting for a story about a mysterious man who has been alive longer than anyone can remember, including himself). People I've talked to have had different opinions on the game, though at least a few have confided to me that they felt there was simply too much writing to read in that game (and "if they wanted to read, they'd get a book," and so on).
Why, then, do new games like World of Warcraft (which relies heavily on written content for its quests--which are the meat of the game) and Paper Mario (which relies entirely on written dialogue to characterize its memorable cast) actually work? That is, why is it people are now actually bothering to read all this stuff in these text-heavy games, let alone enjoying themselves while doing it? I'll say this right now--it's not an indictment of the writing in Planescape: Torment, which as far as I'm concerned, continues to be one of the best-written games of all time. After games like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and EverQuest II, both of which had huge amounts of spoken dialogue, it seemed like role-playing games that relied on lots of silent written text were slowly going to be phased out, yet some of the most important and enjoyable games of 2004 went right back to the drawing board. Or, writing board.
Why would you think text-heavy games work in this day and age? Or do they?