It's probably rather have neither of the story can be progressed some other way. Journey, Abzu, Minecraft and Valheim manage with minimal or no text and they are among my favourite games.
Subnautica had almost no reading or listening...
It's narration/voice acting I hate more than anything. With a very small number of exceptions.
I completely agree for myself, but can't agree for everyone.
I game occasionally with a good friend who struggles to read. It's not that he's unintelligent or illiterate, it's just not something that he's had as much practice in as I have. I was a straight A student who got in trouble for reading during lectures; he got Cs and didn't read anything he didn't have to. I read for pleasure and education and have bookshelves in most rooms of my house, he doesn't have any books on any shelves in his house. I spend all day reading and typing at work, he really just talks to people and listens to them. He reads about 100 words per minute, slower and more inaccurately on multisyllabic, setting-invented, or technical words. I speed-read/skim at 500 wpm or subvocalize for complete comprehension at about 250.
In games where we're presented with a wall of text for a quest or infodump I'm done in seconds and ready to jump back into the action he's on the second line and has forgotten what we were doing when the text popped up.
It's a completely different experience for him. He'd always prefer narration and voice acting, I'm always chomping at the bit waiting for these slow speakers to get to the end of the sentence. It's a lot less vexatious for me if there's no text, because I can't read ahead, but the cutscenes are more of an interruption.
The ideal combination is voice acting with a skip button that skips a line of dialogue at a time. That way you get a sense for the character’s voice and style of speaking, but you don’t have to waste your time waiting for them to deliver each line. The Forgotten City (a Skyrim mod that was so good it got turned into a standalone game) is a great example of a game where this works really well.
I'd take that over pure narration, but would go a step further and suggest the ideal is doing away with cinematics for every little interaction. It is jarring and pulls you out of immersion. I enjoy the FromSoftware approach (as in Dark Souls) of skippable dialog when you interact with NPCs but staying in the field map. No camera weirdness. In old CRPGs and JRGPs also it was like this, some of them even had voiceover but didn't pull you away from the game to view cinematics every 60 seconds.
And failing that, pure text is fine. But I maintain that the primary gripe I have is not whether to hear voices, but the way it's implemented.
Currently playing the new Horizon Forbidden West and they adapt this model. The voice acting and character animations are BEAUTIFUL, but sometimes... I just want to get along with it and pressing a button lets me skip the current delivered line without the whole conversation.
Also I appreciate them NOT putting extremely important quest information in text that can't be replayed (something other games do and can be quite frustrating)
Many people can’t read as quickly as you can. My husband for instance speaks English as a second language. Reading is a large investment of time for him; conversely if he does read something, his comprehension is greater than mine. On the flip side, for spoken content I tune out almost immediately, while he is immersed.
I know not everyone is ESL, but it shouldn’t be surprising that different people have different levels of speed and comfort with reading vs audio content.
> I can't understand why people tolerate spoken instruction
Not only do people tolerate it, some people prefer it! I'm going out on a limb here as I have no data to back this up but I'm willing to bet that the average person has not done any dense reading since they finished their schooling. With that context, it's probably not hard to imagine why most people prefer video instruction over blog post and what not.
Count me among the minority then - one of the first things I do in a game is turn the sound effects and background music as low as possible - but I don't care either way as long as I can skip it. Especially if I've already seen/heard the dialog before, making me sit and wait through cut scenes or scrolling dialog is a good way to get me to find another game.
It's not like this for everyone! Some people really enjoy looking at the art or listening to the voice acting or whatever. But please give me a skip button; I'm not watching a program, I'm trying to play a game.
I probably mildly prefer reading... but I very much prefer all the advantages that a game without narration has. It's like the difference between a movie and a book. A movie can have spectacle, but it's expensive, short, and constrained. A book is limitless.
Same with narration. Narration requires a fixed script; don't dare try to give your character a unique name. Text can be generated and modified on the fly to reflect a dynamic game environment. Adding a new sidequest doesn't require actors and studio time; just a gamedev.
> It's probably rather have neither of the story can be progressed some other way. Journey, Abzu, Minecraft and Valheim manage with minimal or no text and they are among my favourite games.
Offtopic, but if you haven't yet, you ought to try The Witness.
It's probably rather have neither of the story can be progressed some other way. Journey, Abzu, Minecraft and Valheim manage with minimal or no text and they are among my favourite games.
Subnautica had almost no reading or listening...
It's narration/voice acting I hate more than anything. With a very small number of exceptions.