Journals in CRPGs

[Stormcrowfleet]

They should let you -the player- write in it

Exile had a nice touch on this where you could just "save" a conversation in your journal. That way you only put in there what you think is important and you can edit it later.

 

[DraQ]

They should let you -the player- write in it

Exile had a nice touch on this where you could just "save" a conversation in your journal. That way you only put in there what you think is important and you can edit it later.

Morrowind saves all the conversations by default.
The ultimate autistic archivist simulator.

 

[Stormcrowfleet]

They should let you -the player- write in it

Exile had a nice touch on this where you could just "save" a conversation in your journal. That way you only put in there what you think is important and you can edit it later.

Morrowind saves all the conversations by default.
The ultimate autistic archivist simulator.

Indeed. But saving your own has some advantages, notably that you can more easily find what you what, especially if it's not your first playthrough and you don't save the "obvious" or already-known 'quests'.

 

[Alex]

They should let you -the player- write in it

Exile had a nice touch on this where you could just "save" a conversation in your journal. That way you only put in there what you think is important and you can edit it later.

I have to admit that a nice text editor that allows you to save any dialog would be pretty good. You avoid the decline of having the game tell you what to do, but you still give the player the ability to keep a journal without going outside of the game, and giving him good quality of life tools. That would indeed be better than no journal.

 

[DraQ]

They should let you -the player- write in it

Exile had a nice touch on this where you could just "save" a conversation in your journal. That way you only put in there what you think is important and you can edit it later.

Morrowind saves all the conversations by default.
The ultimate autistic archivist simulator.

Indeed. But saving your own has some advantages, notably that you can more easily find what you what, especially if it's not your first playthrough and you don't save the "obvious" or already-known 'quests'.

I don't see advantages. It's just busywork. Exactly automated enough to not have to pay attention to it and then bitch once you forget to hit the magic button.
If player is to decide what is important in dialogue, have them write their own entries (with automatic time and location stamps), this way they will have to pay attention rather than hitting the awesome button. If it is to be automated just record all the dialogues.
Best option: have both and allow the latter to be disabled in options. Add a filter to the existing entries too.

 

[Fargus]

Morrowind journal was ok, but kinda messy. The journal in Gothic 1-2 is way better with the list of every teacher and all quests.

 

[Falksi]

 

[Fargus]

That shitty pipboy is a hindrance, especially when it comes to inventory. And my armor was always clipping through the wrist.

 

[Hellion]

That pipboy is "immersive" on principle, but it was designed in order to be navigable with a console controller and therefore on PC it's the worst UI in the history of UIs, maybe ever.

 

[pidstuff]

Journal good. No get lost.

 

[visions]

Morrowind's journal.
Apart from chronological entries it features hyperlinked topic/keyword system that allows you to revisit any dialogue on a specific subject and navigate to other subjects mentioned in that dialogue.

Expansions added filtering by quests, but I'm a bit ambivalent towards quest filters because they convey meta information - maybe allow "fake" completion status, where seemingly completed quest becomes active again, or just use follow ups liberally.

Finding things from under popular keywords (like "latest rumours") is annoying af in Morrowind though. Would be better if they were categorized by the location of NPC-s, so that I can quickly go over all rumours I've heard in one settlement. Also the fact that the journal in Morrowind records identical answers for the same topic by different NPC-s as separate entries is annoying as well.

I like how Arcanum handled rumors. You get told each rumor once, then it's written in your journal under rumours and you never have to hear it again when you ask for rumours from NPC-s. Beats every NPC in a location telling you one of the same 3 rumors over and over again and your char writing it down separately every fucking time.

 

[Filthy Sauce]

Ultima Underworld... Well it was actually the map screen, but I had the entire map covered in notes. It's the only game where I actually used the 'type your own shit in' feature.

 

[Ol' Willy]

Good take.

Funny thing is that we have Kerghan and Dustmen from PST, but they just copied the philosophy of this guy.