On Audio Logs

[The Sorrow]

They CAN be used well, however.
Vault 92 in Fallout 3 was very well explained through a combination of journals and audiologs, making it way creepier than overt exposition could have accomplished.

 

[Jhales]

I'd like to see a horror game that involves both an insane/malfunctioning AI and monsters/aliens/demons. Like if you, a normal civi caught in the wrong place at the wrong time on board SS Deathtrap, were following a squad of marines and then the AI separates you from them with a door and unleashes the monsters on them. And conveniently, you can hear the bloody murder take place until the doors open for you to precede. That would be interesting.

 

[Sentient6]

VCRs as earmuffs... That's new, gotta remember that one..
Anyways, about audio logs - "don't use them" is a bit harsh. When they work, they work beautifully. Take Bioshock, as obvious example. Yes, you'd still experience the city at it's finest without the logs, but the characters? A bit tougher without logs, considering that now they're hanging from walls or are pierced throught the chest by a giant drill...

 

[teknoarcanist]

@ZippyDSMlee
I would, however, make an exception and agree with you for anything by Valve.

 

[Paddin]

as previous comments have said, ODST featured an audio-log system, which covered the backstory of some girl trying to find her father in the war-torn city. However, disagreeing with the previous comments, I hated the audio logs in ODST.

For me, they were a boring distraction that revealed nothing to the player, other than how the AI came into control of the city. I wouldnt have bothered with them had there been an acheivement for collecting them all. Plus I hated the ***** who the logs followed, she was a predictable "independent" woman that developers feel they have to add to the game to fill the quota

 

[Falseprophet]

I'm starting to get the same idea about the "them thinking we are stupid" thing. The other option I see is that developers want to explain everything... EVERYTHING. They don't want to leave anything to the gamer's imagination because it's the dev's game and they want things explained the way they want to explain them.

This. Now, I like when the writers/dev have thought about everything. There are novelists who write novella-length backstories for their main characters, or pull one single fact from the 400-page book they read for their research. This comes across in the finished product, where everything seems to connect together seamlessly, hinting at the greater depths of the characters and setting.

But they don't have to shove everything in your face. If they want to post their bibliography and other research and development resources up on their website, that's a nice added bonus. If they want to reveal these details on a blog or in a dev diary, that's cool too. But we don't need it thrust in our face in-game. Not at the expense of flow or immersion.

 

[walsfeo]

All the paper has been used to wipe the backsides of the monsters.

 

[thebreadbinman]

arkham asylum did the whole audio log thing pretty well
they were well voice acted, not too central to the story that they were telling it, but not too far away as to be pointless

 

[Mr_Paisley]

 

[CyanLink]

I'm starting to get the same idea about the "them thinking we are stupid" thing. The other option I see is that developers want to explain everything... EVERYTHING. They don't want to leave anything to the gamer's imagination because it's the dev's game and they want things explained the way they want to explain them.

This. Now, I like when the writers/dev have thought about everything. There are novelists who write novella-length backstories for their main characters, or pull one single fact from the 400-page book they read for their research. This comes across in the finished product, where everything seems to connect together seamlessly, hinting at the greater depths of the characters and setting.

But they don't have to shove everything in your face. If they want to post their bibliography and other research and development resources up on their website, that's a nice added bonus. If they want to reveal these details on a blog or in a dev diary, that's cool too. But we don't need it thrust in our face in-game. Not at the expense of flow or immersion.

Yes, outside media is perfectly acceptable. It gives the hard core fans the ability to have their nerdgasm while still making the product enjoyable to a larger audience.

 

[beema]

Excellent read. One thing that has always struck me as odd about audio logs is that they are usually in a setting that is futuristic or otherwise technologically advanced in some ways. Why would they still be using answering machine cassettes at that point? In BioShock it made sense because of the time period (audio logs might of even been pretty advanced for that time), but in Doom3 they made no sense. Wouldn't you think they'd be using video logs by then at least?
I guess it's done because it's much easier to produce for the game than something more advanced would be, but more often than not it feels rather anachronistic.

 

[Agricola]

I'd like to see a mainstream game these days about a man in a top hat jumping down a toilet.

We already have that, roughly, only his name is Mario, it's a personalized painter's cap, and the pipes are simple allegories to the can, rather than actually being the can.

...I assume. Oh dear God.

Im not 100% sure but I think he may be referring to jet set willy, but he didnt jusmp down a toilet, Im not sure id like to know what hes talking about though

Willy *did* jump headfirst into a toilet if you completed the game, but it was so unutterably tedious that only three people ever discovered that - unless they disabled the "Maria" guarding the toilet with a POKE command.

 

[I_AM_D]

The only audio-log I can remember working in the game is in Killer 7, the Holborn tapes. They made sense (unlike most of the game!), as Holborn was a detective who was investigating the place where you were going through, and because they chronicle the insanity of the building itself as well as his own growing madness, the make sense in context. And the reason why they are scattered is actually explained by Holborn himself in the first tape; he is hiding the tapes around the area to leave traces of his investigation, and of his own fate in order for someone else to possibly find and continue his work.
Being that thats the very reason you are there, to investigate the same area and situation, they play directly into your playing of the game, the relate to what you are doing. In stuff like bioshock, the people who leave these tape about seem to have recorded audio diaries, then discarded them wherever. That's kinda slipshod, and serves only to distance myself from the story of the game, it breaks immersion.

 

[Wing Dairu]

Probably not the first to mention it, but...A man in a top hat jumping down a toilet?
Uhhhh...The Mario games are about two guys in old-fashioned caps jumping down a bathtub drain...