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You biased twords assassin

I now just re-watched the video and I just want to say that it was worth suffering through hours of Unity's story just to get to see this. Please keep making video essays of political analysis on Assassin's Creed and Ubisoft. You're the only one doing it and the world needs it. Despite it not knowing it yet because of the terrible under-appreciation by the algorithm. If you're consistent with the videos your audience will find you, I'm sure of it. I already said that you're the Noah Caldwell-Gervais of popcorn games and now I see that SoSaysJay compared you to the fenomenal Jacob Geller (I completely agree in terms of quality). I'd recommend AC 1 and 3. They're the most interesting politically. Thank you for another great essay.

i just realized i never left a comment but this video only ages better and better every month

"Umm acktually I enjoyed the game so you clearly dont get it and also you're wrong" - Signed, a gamer that can't read titles

*TL;DR:* As someone who had no prior experiences with Pokemon, I liked Palworld because it turned out to be a fun and solid experience (for me) and its devs are pretty goated and down-to-earth. And thank you for a level-headed discussion on the matter. Good video. I'm someone who, for all my time spent in gaming these past 29 years of my life, was never into Pokemon, ever. Couldn't get myself into it. Tried a couple times, it just fell to the wayside. So when Palworld was revealed two years ago, my best reaction to it was "Oh cool that they're doing this" and moved on with my day and would be forgotten until it got released to Early Access and was blowing up. Picked it up along with Lethal Company because I was bored and wanted to try out new things. So yea, I'm not a Pokemon guy and by proxy shouldn't have been a Palworld guy either. Yet here I am today, a big advocate for Pokemon Gun. How'd it end up this way? It certainly wasn't because I wanted to stick it to big Nintendo or some other stupid reason, that's for sure. I'm a fan because I see great potential here, greater than any other game I've seen in the past years. The ideas they have, cobbled together as they are, somehow still work together to create a simple enjoyable game loop even though it should've been impossible. The simplicity of it isn't overwhelming at all and is a small part of why I like it. And because it's such a solid foundation for an early access game, they could simply build it up from there and even try out newer and crazier ideas, which I feel won't be restricted by things like what would fly in today's gaming landscape since the very premise of the game never gives a damn in the first place. There's so much to look forward to, it's crazy. Another thing that sold me was the devs' attitude towards Palworld's sudden boost in popularity and even its so-called "decline". They never capitalized on it, nor did they try desperate attempts to keep everyone playing. Time and time again their statements prove that they aren't pressured by numbers on the graph, and at one point even encouraged players to go explore and try out other indie games while they cook up new stuff for the future. That's honestly an attitude and mindset that I can get behind with. They are very transparent with the community and, while sometimes there are disagreements, still value peoples' opinions and listens to feedback constantly. They know how to respect the player's time. Palworld is an anomaly in gaming, and it never should've gotten successful as it did. It is Early Access Survival Crafting which is already an over-saturated market at this point, clearly riding on its edgy marketing and Pokemon's success, is EXTREMELY derivative as some people had said, and was already Pocketpair's last-ditch effort in making a game (Seriously, they would've already gone under had this game been a flop). Yet it still stands strong today because it ended up being simple and fun, and is being handled by people who cares not for getting big numbers, but for actually creating a game which in turn created a community that would still happily play for years to come. There's more exciting things to come from it and I can't wait to see what's in store in the future, even more so now that they've formed a joint venture with Sony Music Entertainment to expand the (Pal)world beyond just the game. There are many reasons to like it just as there are as many reasons to dislike it. I for one am just satisfied that this was a level-headed take and, despite not liking it, still tried to understand why other people do. We need more discussions like this. ✌ Some extra blurbs meant for Internet Couch: ----------------------------------------------------------------------- - While *OW THE EDGE* is a big driving force behind its marketing, the reason you don't see it much in actual gameplay is because you are never forced to do any of it. In fact, playing like a monster benefits you LESS in the long run. It's like they're telling you "Hey, you can totally do this and that.... ?" You can choose to play as a power-hungry dictator and work your Pals to the ground, or play it as benevolent as you possibly can (still you can never be a true saint in this game) It's why for me it's rather telling of a person's character when their argument for PALWORLD BAD is the excessive animal cruelty, or they only see Pals as tools and workers. - 6:49 - These are just meant to tell you what your Base Pals are doing and act accordingly. Sometimes it's just Fluff - you see "Hard Working! It seems they're a good worker" if the Pal in question has a "Artisan" Passive Skill or "They're slacking on the job" when they have a "Slacker" Passive Skill. Little details like that can sometimes go a long way. And while you can do it if you wish, no, you are not expected to Kill your Pals when you see these. You're meant to fix what's causing these behaviors so they can go back to working efficiently. - I've always wondered why is it that people are so turned off by seeing mechanics from other games in Palworld. Is it an "Uncanny Valley" type of reaction? Was it a reaction that was magnified by the whole "They copied Pokemon" thing? Was it because there's too much of it? I personally never had such a visceral reaction to it - in fact, as stated above, I find it impressive that they managed to tie it all together when it shouldn't have worked conceptually. Is it really just me? - Gunplay is pretty aight. On PC it's very responsive and flexible and it never felt like you're fighting against yourself. I don't have any strong opinions on Melee as I've only ever stayed on Melee in the early game when that's all you have. Once you get ranged (which is fairly quickly) you forget about melee combat. Still, I hope they expand on that in the future. - When did you drop the game? As of the latest Summer Update there have been a sizable content drop and some much-requested QOL stuff being introduced to the game. Palworld is still far from refined, but what we have currently is still pretty solid!

I also saw Palworld as predictive of a great game which will come in the future, but which Palworld itself definitely isn't.

I've leveled to max in Palworld 3 times now with ~150 hours played. Off the jump I went to max 50 in the default normal settings, then 50 on default hard, and with the recent update I started fresh again and hit the new cap of 55 hard again. I've caught every pal, ran every dungeon, bested every boss. I'm not a pokemon fan, haven't played one of those since Yellow. You're right that the game doesn't have much to it -- nonexistent story and fairly barebones on mechanics. That being said, I'd still argue that it's in the top 1% of games that release early access - the fact they didn't just take the paycheck and abandon development when it hit big is reason enough for me to keep up with updates and continue to give it a chance. It's still v0.3.3, so there is a lot of time for them to shore up the game and have a decent v1.0 in a few years.

combat feels better on hard. watching all this gameplay is mind blowing to me the entire 200 hrs i have, and not 1 time has anyone survived 3+ hits in a row from anything unless its 20 levels under any of us. huge difference.. i mean 1 shot for shield 1 shot for hp. never seen it any different

Honestly Palworld is the single most derivative game I've ever played. Pokemon is the obvious one -- I just called half the pals by their obvious 'mon they ripped off because it was easier for me to remember. But the entire world itself is like Elden Ring stole Breath of the Wild's art style and wore it, the typeface and musical stings are Breath of the Wild and Ark: Survival Evolved, the progression is Ark: Survival Evolved, the build system is Ark: Survival Evolved. Conan Exiles did clearing camps to rescue thralls (Palword's syndicate camps to rescue pals) with the Isle of Siptah 3 years ago. You're suspicious of the cute dinosaur thing (Goodra) but when you've played through everything this game is 'inspired by' it's a sort of suspicion of where anything you don't immediately recognize comes from even beyond just the Pokemon. Basically all I can give them is the gathering of resources that, while not original, is so endemic to the genre that it's difficult to call it stolen at all, and it's as basic and bare bones as it gets. I got farther than you did in less time, but I wouldn't say I really had more fun. When you get to the non-Pokemon guns, they're too expensive to use so it's not really much a leg up until, I suspect, a bit later in the game when the resources to craft bullets are flowing more freely. It was fun with a friend, but as Nick Frost says, that's the fun *we* made, not the fun the game made. We enjoyed Enshrouded a lot more.

This opinion piece screams, "I don't get it." Which is fine. The rest of us DO get it, and are having fun.

Palworld is fun until you hit the grind wall, where you need to focus on breeding/improving your pals in order to progress in challenges. That's the biggest issue I have with Palworld, is that it makes grinding for the best pals feel mandatory to progress in the game. And grinding is just boring. There are good things in the game, but overall it feels poor even for early access releases. The fact is the novelty wears off quickly, and there is no point in some item tears afterwhile, like I got a Legendary lower level armor built ... the base armor at the next tier of armors was better when I played, so there is no reason to grind out legendary schematics of anything but the end game weapons and armors, you aren't rewarded for the material and effort in producing the lower level ones. It isn't bad, but it is definitely not something that is going to have staying power in the game world.

I remember watching you play this and feeling almost disappointed there wasn't anything to really comment on asides from its cheap aesthetics. I suppose that's usually the case for games that try and market themselves as edgy and wild and audacious like this one did.

Oh boy...............i will so trash him so bad as almost 1000 hour player. You can get a gun on lvl 1 pretty much, if you just run araund map and collect chest and swim a bit. (you buy from vendor at vulcano) Each pal has cooldown on specific skills, you can adjust those (or find skill trees) and get the attacks you want out of them. Taking good ideas and implenting them in your game is a good game design (when they work). As for morality, the game design is that players on online servers police it. You can get a lot of roleplaying out of it. I know a guy who realy doesnt want players to have lovelander in base and ask you to sell them to you, then he takes out a knife and butchers them. And important -- you can set your world settings if you hate farming and you make your own experience. Only issue is have with game is sound problems causing lag sometimes or some bad bugs with constant battle music. And instances need some serios re-work to generate fully when you load in and not piece by piece.

I think you're really missing the point of a game like palworld. It also feels like you haven't played since they've done some of the larger updates. Realistically just another contrarian troll who can't let people enjoy something fun without putting your shitty two cents in.

i do need to say, most of the stuff you said that isnt present in game literally is. you just need to actually read the lore in game. plus 10 hours is absolutely nothing in RPGs. this game is supposed to be a slow start. if they made it easy to get everything there would be 0 reason to actually play the game, you got effigys, your paldeck, your player stats, building, and so much more to look forward to doing, 10 hours is just disrespectful lol, plus the game is literally in active development, its early access right now and things are still changing.

I figured I'd throw some engagement in here. Heres my two cents: I absolutely agree that this game and its popularity are a reaction to how the Pokemon Company, Creatures Inc., Game Freak, and Nintendo are collectively running things. That said, I find many of your complaints either lacking merit or context. First off, as others have said, 10 hours in an open-world survival game is inadequate. I doubt even Skyrim feels super great the first 10 hours, and this game is meant to scale much more slowly. Secondly, and I think this is my draw, is that there's something for everyone. It has Souls-like, Monster Taming, Survival, RPG, and Base Building game elements, and these make for a compelling gameplay loop. "Have you gotten tired of grinding dungeons? Try breeding, Lifmunk Effigy hunting, Oil Rig assault, Pal rescue, Building Desgin...!" You get the idea. Regarding the strategy side, you can directly control some Pals, when you ride them. That said, I'd argue that being unable to control their every move is the point. You're the sixth member of your team. It's meant to evoke training a real animal, in a way. In the thick of combat, you wouldn't want to rely on shouting commands. You need to adapt your personal combat style and your pals' movesets to work together, if you want to min/max. I get that catching humans and such feels like edgey nonsense, but the ideas explored in Palworld are natural progressions of what might happen in a more realistic Pokemon setting. We get snippets in Pokémon Red (1996), where things like genetically engineering pokemon as weapons and using them for war is mentioned in passing. This is just showing more of those ideas. Also, a lot of your questions regarding the setting, characters, and motivations ARE answered in-game. There's a LOT of lore, its just hidden in those journal entries you can pick up and the Paldeck, rather than spoonfed to the player. The real value of the game for me is choice. The CEO of PocketPair said it best: he wasn't overly concerned with making the most creative or message-laden game. He just wanted to make one that was fun. And honestly, even with the lack of polish it has in its early access, it was fun enough for me to sink 500+ hours in so far. Its right up there with No Man's Sky, Subnautica, and Skyrim as one of my most-played games of all time.

I would've of agreed with this take but lots of successfull game stole lots of mechanics from other games. Fromsoft created the soulslike tag which other games like Lords of the fallen,Niho, and Lies of P ect. Plus not alot of people like Pokémons turn base game play witch is why being able to catch them by beating or weakening first yourself is fun. As for putting the pals to work, they have different task they can do and they come in different sizes, if you put a big pal in a small space yes it will bug and get stuck, which is why you manage and fix the placement of work. Plus alot of the issue have been fixed since the beginning of the games release, dont forget this game is in early access. Which is funny because it has more to offer than pokemon has done is the last recent years 😂.

I mostly agree, though I think the Palworld core gameplay loop is genuinely fun despite all the lack of polish. There is a paradox here that despite blatantly copying ideas from left and right, the dev team somehow managed to accidentally create something genuinely new. You nailed it towards the end, it's not that Palworld is particuliarly good at what it does, but that it's the only game currently doing it. I wouldn't however put the sole responsibility of the missed opportunities on Game Freak, there are plenty of companies which had the resources to do this. It's an industry-wide issue that large companies tends to not experiment novel gameplay mechanics, which leads to vacuums like this. I wouldn't be surprised if we started seeing emerge one or more major monster-taming survivals within a few years now that it has been shown the genre has wide appeal.

3:18 10hrs is nothing for a RPG game. You should not play this game if u have limited time, you shouldn't play any game of this nature with limited time. Take single player WOW it takes 490-5548hrs to beat it. Average length to beat elden ring is 59hrs. This game is commonly compared to ARK, ark is 77hrs for the main story, Completionist is 699hrs. If you could get level 25 in 10hrs palworld would lowkey suck, RPG games are known to take a long time to complete it would be completely out of the genre for a RPG game to be that short

I think your spot on with your analysis. 90's kids grew up with an amazing franchise that has been diluted down to a money printing machine for Nintendo. Personally I stopped paying attention to Pokémon after Ruby and Sapphire as I didn't want to keep buying their new handheld to play the new games. Palworld isn't offering anything novel, there are a whole slew of games out there that do the same things, but baking in the "old pokemon" feel to an open world PC game allowed for a repressed player base to finally play the game on something more powerful than a cell phone. Nintendo's business model is "sell the system with the game" so I doubt they ever pursue a PC release, however, like you said, whoever does pick up the idea is going to make a killing off of a bunch of repressed pokemon fans that just want to scratch the itch they haven't quite been able to scratch in the last 20ish years.

Neat! I’m fascinated by Palworlds success mostly cause I don’t think I want “adult Pokémon” the same way other people do, I’ll see ads for a fake Pokémon game and it’s usually “in this game you actually murder the Pokémon, that’s cool!!!” and that to me isn’t what’s missing with current Pokémon lol. I thought it was interesting how you concluded that most people liked just farting around with their friends in a world, I think that’s why things like Fall Guys or Among Us were able to take off the way they did. Great video!

Just got to the native bit. Not sure why you found it off putting, but I think it was supposed to tie into the cave painting side quest, which suggests this particular tribe worshipped a 'deity' far more in line with the templars. Most likely an Isu that led their ancestors after the solar flare. This Isu was kind and rewarded them with protection and a modicum of freedom for their obedience. There was another Isu or just chaos itself which threatened that. I can't remember exactly, but it was there to flesh out the concept that this conflict of order and chaos permeated all of humanity regardless of race, creed, or history. At least that is my guess. I think there was supposed to be more, but 8 months isn't a lot of time to make a game out of reused assets, paper clips, and crossed fingers

Finally a kindred spirit. I think this and the first game are the only 2 with any soul. And you know it is way deeper than other reviewers. The game is almost bad because of how much potential it has. But the 8 month development time also makes it a miracle. The assassins and the Templar used Shay. But he proved he is his own man. Too many story fumbles to count. But I still love what we got. I just wish there was something better to compare assassins to than antifa. I don't think i could side with lame violent hipsters ever

Hell yeah we're eating tonight! Glad you're getting kinda consistent with the vids. Hope your next stuff is about things you actually do enjoy! Also 12:40 is a brilliant update idea. Give the workers too many guns and see what happens.

Yep I stole shadow hearts underwear instantly for my dark urge

Awesome video my guy. It shows that through everything Shay Patrick Cormac did, he was still used as a pawn/tool. I like to focus on more of the human side of him as well. Deep down, he had no real friends once he defected. 😢. I could be wrong but maybe his last chance of having a true friend was George Monroe? 😢. Overall, I agree that both sides used shay for their own goals.

I don’t accept. The templers mention many times Shay and thanks him for his abilities. He actually strive socially in the temples and have much better chemistry with them on the ship.

least obvious leftist

I think the only problem i have with rogue is the colonial brotherhood. Everybody acts like complete dickheads for no reason and are arrogant asf. I understand that its supposed to be this way for Achilles' redemption and making the player be okay with Shay becoming a templar but they could've gone about it in a different way other than assassins bad templars good

От нас не уйдешь 😉

#TommyWasInnocent and I won’t refollow your Tumblr until you admit it

Thank you CouchGoob for bringing awareness to my favorite Two Worlds let's player. I will never sleep until Timmy is found!

So then why is it your favourite game? I think it's mine as well but I'm not sure, it's pretty clear I don't notice as much as you do. I find too many problems with Black Flag and the narrative too rocky to really enjoy. Ezio games are cool but I like Revelations the best and even that felt like there wasn't much to it, I don't even remember who he killed just that he was looking for what Altair left behind. AC1 has a really cool feel to me and the story is arguably the best but the gameplay is just too undeveloped to justify being my favourite, I already know Rogue took like everything from Black Flag and improved it. There's a lot of things I'm going to miss going into Unity, things they got rid of and never came back to. AC 3 seems very good, the story isn't messy, arguably has less holes than Rogue (But I probably just missed them) but I also like a game with a nicer ending than what happened to Connor. Most satisfaction he got was probably killing Charles Lee, everything else was just a failure. You really should make more videos on the other games, especially AC 3.

This was a great video!! Thank you so much for covering Rogue, It’s definitely the most underrated game in the mainline series :( I think the character of Shay is so goddamn interesting and I really wish Ubisoft did more with him (especially with how amazing his VA did like goddamn I would have never guessed he wasn’t actually Irish). It was so cool to see the narrative from a (sorta) Templar pov (at least in the latter half) and I really hope they try this idea out again in the future. Thank you so much for your hard work on making this video!

Yo this was a great analysis, seriously underated. I just finished the game and I love your reading of it. Wrapping it with gaslighting is much more compelling than what I was feeling while playing it. Which was that the executives at Ubisoft really wanted to do marketing for a rehash of the well recieved previous game but "what if you're the baddies now?!". So the story was constantly trying to barely justify its existence because some corpos wanted it. I did like Shay as a character. But I was distracted by the way they changed the Assassins' behaviour from previous games just to justify you being an authoritarian as a good thing. Reading the objective "kill the criminals" in the first flash-forward was so odd. They created the joker just so that batman doesn't look like a complete fascist. It was so weird seeing the Assassins act like a mob for no reason. And even if there was a mob, being a cop is not the solution. I kept thinking that the solution to some bad "activist organization" wasn't joining the government or some shit. The solution in that case would be to change and better the Assassins (like Altaïr did) not just to join their authoritarian enemy. But your analysis makes me enjoy the story a bit more. Shay is not a philosopher like Altaïr was, he's kind of a blue collar grunt and doesn't really think things through. I don't think that your interpretation of the story was intentional by the writers. Honestly I think they were the ones gaslighting us into thinking that this story makes sense. But I appreciate your dedication to having a coherent understanding of it. I hope you keep making videos like this. If you're consistent, I'm sure the people will come to watch. I'd love a Noah Caldwell-Gervais for popcorn games like Assassin's Creed.

There was originally going to be about 3 missions with each assassin before his betrayal, but they really "needed" to drop the game the same day as unity.

Yo I'm a huge Abigail Thorne fan and had no idea she was in the game. Now I'm more interested in playing it. The only other game I can think of with a trans character is Watch Dogs 2. And according to Noah Caldwell-Gervais it's done surprisingly tastefully for Ubisoft. Cool video! Hope you do 'em more frequently.

Damn you're the only youtuber I know who's done Assassin's Creed political analysis. I'll definitely check 'em out once I play those, since you seem to be pretty progressive. Hopefully those takes won't be as bad as this video's lmao You should approach reading in videogames as supplementary footnotes if you want to expand on a topic. You're right about Ubisoft though. I think the only time they've done this well is the first time. With Assassin's Creed II. The codex is significant to the universe, it pops up in brief and interesting times and enriches the context you're playing in. I would've loved it if it was in the original Assassin's Creed (my favourite one). The later codex' felt like they had to be there because it was in the previous product (just like everything else after AC II). They started being either too long and uninteresting (AC Revelations, III, Syndicate) or too brief and inconsequential (AC IV, Valhalla). Also if pop-up entries are too long or too frequent they just kill the pacing of the game. Good videogame reading: Red Dead Redemption II. You're doing it in real time with a phisical object and not as a menu. It presents itself as if you could read whole books but it's actually a brief couple of summary pages. It feels like it's completely optional to make the world feel deeper but if you chose to read it it informs about the universe and the philosophy of the characters. Also The Last of Us.

My biggest gripe on this topic is useless entries into said codex. Like, a random poem in skyrim written by a homeless poet. Why does this exist?

Reading is better then cutscene.

There is ONE exception to all these audio log journal entries in other games. That game is horizon zero dawn. (and it's sequel) Because the very narrative involved exploring the lands to find out the mystery of the old ones, going to a new location and scanning for audio logs and journal entries helps highlight the immediate environment you're in. It's also not something that disrupts your experience, because you are searching for answers in those spots anyway. And the best part is that after I got used to reading them, the quality of each of them was memorable enough for me to actively read every one I come across no matter where I stumble upon them during my natural progression of the game. If I did pick up something during a combat encounter, I'm not gonna go out of my way to remember to read that or something, but yeah.

things that have more lore - they are ok tales, legends, fairytele bullshit - ok if there is a book that says "101 things you wanted to know about the monsters but were afraid to ask" then it's fine NOT fine however are logs left around the place for no reason, and they don't even pretend it's a diary or something just quick info dump or a literal waste of time that brings nothing to the world any "characters" sheet that does not have a full 3d model right next to wall of text - if we are given all info that they won't even speak then why not give us proper look at them considering some are only in cutscenes your rant is "oh my god reading words i'm here to play" you can't be bothered to put effort you want to be told things and not find it out on your own you are everything wrong with modern gaming too lazy to put effort too stubborn to stop playing

I do think the issue with reading in games is that they rarely do a good job at providing a compelling reason to take the time and read. The most obvious reason would be to learn gameplay mechanics. Like with the Witcher 3: I would've loved if they didn't just tell you what works and what doesn't with icons at each monster and instead forced you to read the entries with thought. Another is solving puzzles: These almost always have a waypoint, breadcrumb trail or an "misty area" telling you that "search this area for treasure." Audio logs suffer the same fate: They are just text read to you. But if you don't need the content for anything, you won't bother listening or remembering. It's just set dressing, some additional lore. But then item descriptions too: Why are they always just boring flavor text lore that nobody actually ever reads? Why not suggest how to use the item? Or some other little quirks or use cases? Maybe explain a hidden stat? Like, I've yearned a quest in an RPG where there's a character that quizzes you on a fictional book found all around the world. The game just says "read the book" and you do. But more than likely, as devs have little faith in gamers, they'd keep the story like 5 sentences max. It's this lack of faith in gamers that makes reading such an optional chore. But of course, some of that reading might have to be kept optional if the player doesn't know the language that well and can't change it in the settings.

4:00 Except those gloves will be tied to lore about the guy who made them, or the people who wear them? Say you think an enemy is cool and you get him to drop gear, you can read the one or two sentences attached to it to learn about them. As much as you're being satirical, you're prefacing your argument by knowingly misrepresenting the texts that you're going to be dismissing. Another example is Hades, which you subtly criticise for requiring you to gradually unlock text logs, but doesn't this fix a big problem with journals? That you have too much to read all at one. Hades paces out its journal across a possibly 100 hours of gameplay, requiring you to actively talk to the npcs you want to learn more about, both through their dialogue and what Achilles' journal says about them.

I love this video, but I can't imagine Pokemon with zero explanation

Im confused on what the conplaint is? In none of the examples is reading the information required, so not wanting it there feels weird, and if your conplaint is presentation then i agree it could generally overall be better but its still not in the way of anything, its just optional. I dont know what youd prefer, a huge walk of text that tells you literally every single thing in the game that you would otherwise find in a book or codex or menu? And where would this wall of text be if not in a codex or journal? How would you keep track of quest or anything if not for a journal or quest log that updates? Elden Ring doesnt have a quest log but has so many quest that its super easy to get lost so i almost wish it did. And because it doesnt have a codex or anything, everyone just looks up lore videos, something else you said is bad because it breaks immersion, but then having a codex is bad? You offer no solution to whatever problem you have and your complaints feel super arbitrary

You missed the worst crime. Audio logs that stop playing if you leave the menu.

You got a sub for the dark roast joke😂

Great video! As others have said I've enjoyed a codex or bestiary or two. I'll name Lethal Co as another fun example of the bestiary containing relevant info for how to deal with certain monsters. I wonder if you have any positive examples of a game with reading you did enjoy. What about audio logs like bioshock?

This is quite validating to watch. I'm one of those people that gets annoyed by "unread" icons that games love to smack on top of codex entries, and I feel like I have to fully read them to "earn" getting rid of that mark. It rarely makes the game feel more interesting, and it just feels like a chore. I'm getting better at ignoring them, but it's pretty irritating to have notification icons deliberately designed to catch your attention and prompt you to clear them built into games for features that have nothing to do with the gameplay. It's feels a lot like smartphone notifications, except at least those have the excuse of trying to get me to open the app and browse it. I'm already playing the game! You won my attention already! Stop making me feel like I have unread emails when I'm trying to forget that email exists!