Literature’s had a pretty good run, much of it without any fancy graphics and animations and particle effects to bolster the words. Games love text too. Text is cheap. You can paint a picture of galactic chaos or epic history in about the same time it takes to type ‘and then something cool happened’, without having to spend the next week designing armour and creating 3D characters to act it out. Yet despite centuries of practice, most games still haven’t worked out how to present all this (which let’s face it, is often there more for the writers’ satisfaction than our actual enjoyment) in a punchy, satisfying way. What works? What doesn’t? Let’s take a quick look at some of the ways games have handled books, letters, codexes and more. 

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Even when you don’t affect a world that much, it’s nice when it pretends. News stories are one of the best and cheapest ways to both highlight your achievements, and reframe them in interesting ways, from acts of heroism to outright terrorism. Human Revolution wrapped them in one of the sleekest packages for this—the Picus Daily Standard. At once a chance to see what was taking place out of your sphere, and see the effect of your adventures on the world. While even a few years later, the futuristic look feels distinctly retro compared to iPad news apps, to say nothing of whatever direct-brain interfaces we’ll likely have by the time of Deus Ex’s dark not-too-distant-future, Picus keeps it pretty, keeps it punchy, and above all, keeps it brief. 

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Ah, but when it comes to eBooks, things aren’t so smooth. Look at this. Even the original Kindle would wince at these datapad layouts, complete with non-slidable panels, slow refresh rate, poor quality fonts and typography, and non-consistent use of glows. Sure, it’s readable, but it’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to, even before factoring in that in the wasteful future of Deus Ex you apparently need a new device for every Wikipedia entry. The crappy quality of this design only stands out more amongst Mankind Divided’s otherwise superbly rendered future, where everything you encounter seems to have emerged fully formed from the brain of a maverick product genius. This, meanwhile, feels like a first attempt at customising Twine. 

Fallout 4

In the not-too-distant future, who needs books? We’ll have computers! Specifically, ghastly green teletype machines that would be tolerable for simple acts like opening doors, but could be much more of a nightmare if the cast of Five Nights At Freddy’s occasionally popped up for a jump-scare. The horrible font. The clackering of the text. The endless pages that try their best  to tell stories of post-apocalyptic horror, despite being locked in an interface that would make even a hardened wasteland explorer decide that whatever happened probably doesn’t matter that much. Even accounting for the 50s vibe of the rest of the game, these are hideous technological throwbacks that knife their own storytelling in the back. The closest they come to being appropriate to the setting is that in using them, the living definitely envy the dead. 

Skyrim / Ultima

What’s an RPG shelf without a few strangely short books that probably don’t need hundreds of pages and a stiff leather jacket? While RPGs have always been wise enough to realise that most players will accept this deviation from reality, it’s still interesting to look at the differences between these two great franchises. Skyrim for instance clearly assumes that all of Tamriel’s readers are half-blind—or possibly playing on a television screen—leading to very slow-paced tales on glorified flashcards. Ultima meanwhile wanted you to squint. But at least Ultima had the advantage that unless a book was specifically screaming ‘crucial plot element’, it was most likely to be flavour, sparing you tediously flicking through shelves in the hope of finding a boost to one of your skills. At least both franchises keep their tongues firmly in their cheeks, whether it’s The Elder Scrolls’ obsession with the Lusty Argonian Mage, or Ultima’s fine line of joke books, occasional explosive booby-trap pranks, and the revelation that wise Lord British, founder of Britannia’s favourite story is “Hubert the Lion”. Can’t sleep without it, apparently... 

Mass Effect

A controversial one here, perhaps, but Mass Effect is one of the games where the built-in Codex arguably makes the world less enjoyable. The game does a fantastic job of introducing everything that’s actually important without relying on it as a crutch, with the dry writing and endless unlockable pages of SF guff coming across as homework rather than a gripping read. Do we really need to know, for example, the origins of every last whiffle-bolt supplier on the Citadel? No. It’s just not that important. Save it for the design bible and tie-in books.

While there are a few interesting flourishes, including Codex entries based on what the universe thinks rather than necessarily the actual truth, the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy it is not. And ironically, it shows the difference itself, in the form of Mass Effect 2’s fantastic Shadow Broker DLC and the unlockable files within, which actually do give you a chance to peer at your party’s dirty little secrets. Jack’s secret love of poetry. Miranda’s online dating life. Tali’s repeated installation of a suit tool called ‘Nerve Stim Pro’. Oh, the blackmail opportunities...

Dishonored 2

Dishonored is a great example of how just a little thing can really annoy. Its text isn’t difficult to read, the font is pretty well chosen, if not exactly conveying the sense of a written document in the same way as many other games with this level of texture and detail, but does it really have to sway back and forth while you’re reading? There’s a time for ambient animation to breathe life into a scene, and a time to make the player feel slightly sea-sick. No. Scratch that. True for the first, not so much for the second. Swish… swish… it’s an effect applied to all the menus and other data screens and really contributes to making reading the lore an unpleasant experience. A shame, because that lore is actually interesting. Dunwall and Karnaca are two of gaming’s best cities, and their depth and backstory is fascinating. If you can stand to actually read it.

The Longest Journey and Life Is Strange

I'm bundling these together because they do the same basic concept—the primary text in the game is our main character’s diary. This serves several purposes, including offering a potted version of the story if you dip away for a while and forget things, but most importantly giving us a direct look inside their head. It’s a technique that only works if you actually like the main character, but fortunately that’s not a problem for either series and its charismatic leading ladies. In particular, it’s a way of bridging the gap between our perception of the game, as an untouchable god-figure, and theirs, as someone for whom all these moral decisions are actual life-changing events. Simply seeing the game from that perspective is enough to make everything carry that much more weight, and it doesn’t hurt that they’re fun reads too.

The Witcher 3

What separates The Witcher from most in-game codexes is its sense of character, with everything being described from the perspective of in-game poet, lover and occasional sidekick Dandelion. The nature of the game also rewarded taking the time to dip into the Codex, given that for a travelling monster-slayer, knowledge is power, and never took away from the fact that while us as players might not know our drowners from our necrophages, Geralt himself was always able to be a reliable source of information and provide the condensed version.

Realms of the Haunting

Here’s a retro classic, sadly not helped by the low-resolutions of the mid-90s. Nothing damages the mood of an otherwise well-made document like peering at it through a letter-box and finding it more poorly compressed than an old JPEG from a lost Geocities page. It’s not quite as bad blown up to full screen though, and even with its technical problems, it demonstrated how to write documents that actually fit the world and contributed to the lore without feeling like extracts from the design bible. Most took the form of letters between the characters, their identities not always immediately obvious, and turning the relatively simple battle between good and evil at the heart of the story into an epic tale of Faustian deals, ancient cults, doomed love, and a deep mythology stretching between multiple worlds. The visual look certainly didn’t hurt, with everything presented as aged pages, hand-drawn maps and messily scrawled journals. And if you didn’t like them, you got to burn several of them as part of a puzzle. Splendid.

The Neverhood

Of course, if you really, really want to make sure nobody misses your game’s lore, there’s always the Hall of Records—aka The Place Where Basically All The Game’s Backstory Is, as carved onto the walls of a corridor that takes about five minutes to trudge through even if you ignore all of the words. Oh, and when you get to the other end? You have to walk back, obviously. You know it’s good stuff when even a game’s own wiki states, and we quote, “it is suggested by most not to read all of it.” Truly great literature. Who could ask for anything less?

But of course, these are just a few cases. Which games have convinced you to pause saving the world to flick through a good book, and when has that background just been so much blah? It’s fun to get lost in backstory, just as long as the writers aren’t too obsessed with their own lore.

Oh, snap! It's yet another PCG Q&A, where every Saturday we ask the panel of PC Gamer writers a question about PC gaming. You're also very welcome to share your thoughts in the comments below. This week: which game actually lived up to the hype?

Jody Macgregor: The Witcher 3

I hated the first Witcher game, and although the second one's an improvement in a lot of ways I still thought most of it was dull—apart from the bit where you get drunk and wake up with a tattoo, obviously. So when glowing reviews came out for The Witcher 3 I ignored them. There was plenty of other stuff to play in 2015: Tales From the Borderlands, Rocket League, Life is Strange, Pillars of Eternity, Devil Daggers, Her Story. I was busy.

It took a solid year's worth of articles about how incredible every aspect of The Witcher 3 was, from the side quests to the potion-making to the characters to the wind in the goddamn trees, before I finally caved and tried it. Everyone was right, it's now on my "best games of all time" list, and I've become one of those people who says you should turn the music down so you can hear the wind in Velen. There's an entire subreddit devoted to whinging about games journalism's never-ending love affair with writing about The Witcher 3, but without that constant praise I wouldn't have pushed past my disinterest to give it the chance it deserved. And now I've become one of those people who won't shut up about The Witcher 3.

Samuel Roberts: Metal Gear Solid V

Not everyone will agree with this one, but I've lived through multiple Metal Gear hype cycles (MGS2 and MGS4 most memorably), and this is the one game that really deserved it. While this Metal Gear has the worst story in the series by far, it's also a superior stealth game. With its suite of upgrades and repeatable missions, I easily played MGSV for over 100 hours, and I have no doubt I'll reinstall it someday. 

Chris Livingston: Portal 2

I think the original Portal was a near-perfect experience. You learned to play as you played and each test chamber increased in complexity at a rate that was challenging but never frustrating. It was funny and surprising and satisfying, and short enough that it didn't have time to wear out its welcome. When trailers for Portal 2 began appearing, I was just as excited as anyone else, though I wasn't really expecting to love it in the same way. More complex, more characters, more story, more puzzles, more more more. I just couldn't imagine it matching the original, which proved (to me at least) that less is more.

It definitely lived up to the hype, though. Portal 2 is amazing, funny, challenging, surprising, and every bit as brilliant as the first. Maybe it's still true that less is more, but that doesn't mean more is less.

Jarred Walton: Half-Life 2

Piggybacking off Chris here, Half-Life 2 was an incredible follow-up to one of the best (if not the best) games of the '90s. The original Half-Life surprised the hell out of me with ways it changed the first-person shooter. After playing a ton of Quake and Quake 2, story seemed to be an afterthought, but Half-Life revolutionized the genre. Okay, the Xen levels at the end almost ruined it, but I still wanted more.

And then I waited, waited, and waited some more. Daikatana proved that games too long in development could suck, and HL2 felt like it might be doomed to the same fate. But with the addition of the gravity gun and physics, plus a great setting and story that made you care about the characters, it exceeded its source material in every way. I'm still holding out hope for HL3, naturally, but those are some massive shoes to fill.

Tom Senior: Deus Ex: Human Revolution

I was dangerously excited when a new Deus Ex was announced. I was hyped to the extent that it would have really stung if a new Deus Ex fell well short of expectations. Human Revolution had a few problems, but it was exactly the atmospheric cyberpunk playground I wanted and the art direction added a new dimension to the Deus Ex universe. Due to the technological limitations of the era the old Deus Ex games struggled to show art or architecture (apart from that silly Earth-in-a-giant-claw statue at the start). Human Revolution decided that everything would be gold, and full of triangles, and its depiction of futuristic augments was gorgeous. I would quite like a pair of Jensen arms.

Human Revolution really got Deus Ex. It had hacking, vents, and intricate levels. But it also had something else, something new: retractable arm-swords. Not many people would look at the groundbreaking masterpiece of Deus Ex and think 'this needs retractable arm-swords', but Eidos Montreal had the vision to make retractable arm-swords happen. I will always respect them for that. 

Andy Kelly: Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

I remember the buzz around Vice City vividly. Every time I saw that stylish advert on TV, the one with 'I Ran' by Flock of Seagulls, I got a tingle of excitement. Magazines were full of gushing previews, treating every morsel of information like it was the biggest scoop since Watergate. And then when it came out, it was everything I dreamed it would be. A bigger, more detailed city. An incredible soundtrack. More fun and varied missions. A better story. An all-star cast. HELICOPTERS. Being able to fly around a city of that size back then was a genuine thrill.

GTA III was great, but it felt like an experiment in places; a concept for what a 3D Grand Theft Auto game could be. But Vice City was the first time Rockstar really nailed it, and laid a solid foundation for the 3D era of their world-conquering series. The '80s (or at least some exaggerated, romanticised version of it) has begun to saturate pop culture to an annoying degree lately, so I can't see Rockstar returning to that setting. It's too obvious. But I would like to see Vice City again in a different, more contemporary era, perhaps showing the bleak, faded aftermath of its hedonistic '80s heyday.

Andy Chalk: Deus Ex: Human Revolution

The first time I saw this teaser I made a noise like a ten-year-old opening the latest issue of Tiger Beat. Then I saw this teaser, and I pretty much hyperventilated and passed out. I knew in my heart that DX: Human Revolution couldn't be that good, because Deus Ex was lightning in a bottle: Ugly, clunky, with terrible voice acting and a ridiculous, incoherent story, all of which somehow got smushed together into basically the best game ever made. How do you fall down a flight of stairs and land in a bed of roses twice? 

But then Human Revolution came out, and it was that good. Not perfect, and I will never not be mad about those boss fights. But Adam Jensen is the perfect successor (predecessor, I suppose) to JC Denton, I loved the visual style (including the piss filter) and the music (because it's not Deus Ex without a great soundtrack), and the whole thing just felt right: Not as off-the-conspiracy-theory-hook as the original, but big and sprawling and unpredictable—a legitimate point of entry into that world. It took more than a decade to get from Deus Ex to Human Revolution, and it was worth the wait. 

There is a long history of religion in games, and RPGs provide a good space for conversations about faith that could have felt flippant in other genres. In The Witcher 3, religion is more than just window dressing. Set in a world outgrowing magic, the game depicts religion in varied ways: tackling philosophy, corruption and misconception, while allowing room for players to interact with gods, decide peoples' fate and support or condemn religious practices.

Geralt's own beliefs, or lack thereof, are notable, as he must regularly interact with religious characters. Geralt is magical, yet likely wouldn't describe himself as a magic user, and has a distaste for certain elements of the practice. Despite this, Geralt can be played as a supporter of religion (and his aversion to magic isn't so strong that he wouldn't date a sorceress or two). 

Magic is often used as a way of portraying seemingly religious rituals within games. Think of Yuna's summoning of the spirits of the dead in Final Fantasy X, or the magic used to resurrect characters in World of Warcraft. Magic rituals are performed repeatedly in Skyrim, another game that, similar to The Witcher 3, uses standing stones as a source of power. The Witcher 3's own Places of Power are quite similar to those we see today at Stonehenge or Avebury.

Also of note is that Geralt recharges himself by meditating. While meditation today does not have to be directly linked to religion or belief, meditation has been a core aspect of multiple religions, from Buddhism to Christianity, since ancient times. Geralt's relationship with religion and faith is a constant foil to his character, a reflecting point that the game repeatedly dwells on. The Witcher 3 repeatedly asks us what we believe by challenging Geralt's own beliefs. 

Matters of faith

The Witcher 3 presents us with many different forms of belief. The Church of the Eternal Fire, for instance, is depicted as civilised but corrupt, operating with near-medieval cruelty. For the Church of the Eternal Fire, religion is all about appearances. Sitting at the highest peak of the city of Novigrad, in a wealthy neighbourhood, the church is ever-so-subtly painted gold. You can't go into the building yourself, so there's no way to know what kind of rituals go on in there. By separating the church itself from the player, the organisation gives off a feeling of inaccessibility. It's clear that Geralt isn't welcome, and if the multiple scenes of people burning at the stake for being magical don't get the point across, the sneering remarks of the rich churchgoers do. 

It’s telling that the majority of quests in which you interact with members of the Church of Eternal Fire are negative. There's corruption, fanaticism and racially-motivated murder, not unlike the Crusades carried out by the Roman Catholic Church in the Middle Ages.

A roadside priest tasks Geralt with burning the bodies of dead soldiers in one of the first quests to include the Church. On the surface, this seems like a standard 'go here, do this, come back for a reward' quest. However, when one of the bodies turns out to be not quite dead, it's revealed that the priest is actually getting you to burn the evidence of his illegal fisstech trade. If you confront the priest and refuse to accept his bribe to look the other way, you're forced into a three-on-one fight, but with a larger reward if you win. Maybe this is the game suggesting this is the ethical choice to make, but the implication is the same: corruption and organised religion go hand in hand in the world of The Witcher 3.Quests that revolve around folklore are more open-ended. In Velen, rituals are common roadside occurrences, frequently featured in quests that ask you to protect people during acts of worship, or participate in them yourself. 

In 'A Greedy God', Geralt comes across a destroyed building which is now the site of worship for a local deity (imaginatively called the Allgod). Villagers are complaining that the Allgod has cursed them for not providing adequate offerings. With a little digging you discover that the assumed deity is actually a sylvan living in a cellar underneath the worship site, greedily scoffing the villagers’ offerings. Sylvans are traditionally woodland spirits or deities—relations to the Roman god of woods and fields, Silvanus (not to be confused with the Blizzard character of a similar name). 

This quest is often described as funny, yet your options for what to do once you've discovered that the deity is a monster scamming his way into obesity aren't great. If you kill the sylvan, you gleefully tell the villagers that you have righted the wrongs against them. They were being fleeced after all, and now they’re free! The villagers react badly to this—they think they’ve been doomed and rush off to organise a group prayer session.

If you tell them to check the cellar below, you'll later discover they followed your advice, confronted the sylvan, and are now all dead. The only way to please both parties is to threaten the sylvan but not kill it, effectively maintaining a lie, but keeping everyone alive. The game doesn’t comment either way, so we're left wondering: is that a positive result? Have you saved anyone or really achieved anything? Does Geralt even care? 

Making a believer

In 'Defender of the Faith', Geralt is asked to fix a series of shrines that have been vandalised. There’s little reason for you to actually do this quest—it doesn’t add to the overall story of the game—but as Geralt is told by the villager who hires him, if he doesn't help out, the local children will grow warts and the dogs will get the mange. 

Geralt doesn't want to go out of his way, and that's understandable for a man with a policy of 'live and let live' when it comes to religious practices. And besides, this isn't strictly Witcher-work—he's not a religious repairman. As it turns out, though, the true villains of this quest are the worst monsters of all… students from Oxenfurt Academy quoting Nietzsche and Marx ("Religion is the opiate of the masses!"). 

It's clear that Geralt thinks this is a waste of his time. "Sheesh, students!" he exclaims, rolling his eyes. Yet he never truly condemns the belief aspect of this quest. Here we get to see both extremes of an argument about faith: from an elderly woman who believes that wooden shrines will ensure good health, to students who think destroying said shrines will force the locals into a life free of superstition. This quest lays the foundation for a conflict that reemerges throughout the entire game: the pagan beliefs of down-on-their-luck villagers, against the more atheistic views of their well-off counterparts.

Despite making a fantasy RPG about magic and belief, at times it feels as if CD Projekt Red thinks the majority of its audience are sceptics. Stories of villagers sending their children to mysterious witches in the middle of a swamp, in the hope it will bring them good fortune, are presented as being wildly superstitious. The Ladies of the Wood are at the heart of one of The Witcher 3's most beloved series of quests, presented as a terrifying reality in the shape of an old wives' tale. The fact that the Ladies are proven to be horribly real, and that they eat children while dancing naked around a cauldron, feels like a smack in a doubter's face. 

The Witcher 3 does this time and time again: showing us something completely fantastical, allowing us to revel in doubt and suspicion, before pulling back the curtain and revealing it all to be true. Geralt is often sceptical of the problems he's brought in to solve—"A ghost is ruining our water supply!" "A villager has turned into a werewolf!" "The witches in the swamp are eating children"—yet they're all real. It's as if we’re being told to look closer into what we assume is the stuff of fairytales. By comparing the natural wildness of pagan belief with the rigid cruelty of organised cults, we're being shown that not everything fantastical is fantasy and not everything reputable is respectable. 

Despite having a sceptic for a protagonist, The Witcher 3 depicts religion in a surprisingly even-handed way. It portrays a medieval church that's clearly meant to resemble historical realities, and pagan belief systems that replicate both fairy tales and real-life rituals. We're never given a clear sense of who or what to believe, which unlike the many RPGs that have come before it, leaves the choice up to us. 

Geralt of Rivia is set to make his first appearance outside of the Witcher universe later this year, according to CD Projekt Red's head of community. Marcin Momot tweeted earlier today that our favourite bathtub dweller could step into another "upcoming game", without hinting at what that game might be.

Fighting game Soulcalibur 6—the first in the series to come to PC—seems to be the favourite. CD Projekt Red already has a relationship with that game's developer Bandai Namco, and the series has a history of pulling in characters from other universes, including Star Wars.

A couple of more left-field suggestions are flying around, including Monster Hunter: World. Developer Capcom is willing to work with other teams to bring in familiar faces, and even though the game is already out it is technically "upcoming" on PC.

Other potential homes for Geralt include Final Fantasy 15, which has shown it's no stranger to crossovers by parachuting in Gordon Freeman and a bunch of weird Sims 4 costumes.

Whatever it is, it may just be the last time we get to see Geralt in the flesh: CD Projekt Red has said it has no plans to pick up his story again, although it may return to the Witcher world some day.

Where would you like to see him pop up? While we wait to find out, check out our roleplay of Geralt in a winery tycoon game.