Presenting Information: Lore in Context
February 4, 2010 
Tragically, you're still some kind of time-traveling sci-fi memory regression experiment instead of an actual historical agent provocateur.In Assassin's Creed 2, occasional information updates in your game lore library. You press a button that takes you out of play and into the info-dump screen...
...and it works.
This is one of the precise things I railed about Dragon Age doing, and yet it works in Assassin's Creed 2.
I'm not sure why. I've been thinking about it and the strongest reasoning I've been able to come up with is that it feels like part of what I should be doing. In AC2, I'm an assassin, so I'm supposed to be gathering information and compiling intelligence on my location, my allies, and my marks. In the context of AC2 gameplay, gathering information feels like something the character should be doing. In the context of Dragon Age, it feels like something the player might want to do.
Reader Comments (6)
This connects to something I've been scratching at: A lot of great games — FPSs, third-person action, etc. — excel when they adopt RPG elements designed for one particular role. You're playing a character in Assassin's Creed (and in Splinter Cell, and in Thief, and in Call of Duty, and in Dead Space) and the game contains mechanics that you, the player, can make use of that other characters cannot, which reflect your character's skills and personal philosophy. Reading background on your enemies may fall right into Ezio's wheelhouse, but it feels out of place for my warmongering Dwarf Warrior or callous Elf Rogue in Dragon Age.
When you've built a great world, text-dumps can be viable ways to feed the players' hunger for more information. But it can't be the sole delivery system for vital information, I don't think, because you can't expect it to be read until you've earned the player's hunger.
Another consideration is that most of the infodumps in Dragon Age were long, or formatted to appear long. Infodumps in AC2 are short and punchy. The one I can think of that isn't short and punchy -- the love triangle that appears in memory #9 -- is given by video with voice-over, instead of by texty infodumps.
Another consideration is that most of the infodumps in Dragon Age were long, or formatted to appear long. Infodumps in AC2 are short and punchy.
This. Plus, there's a little bit of flavor in the dumps (as they come from characters). I also think, for me at least, I have much more interest in actual history than fictional history.
All three of these comments are spot-on.
They also speak to a greater topic. It's easier to accept these as Ezio's bailiwick because he's a prefabricated character in a story tailored to him. Even though I'm supposed to have more agency and free will with a character I created uniquely for myself, I'm willing to give those up for a tighter gameplay experience about the guy for whom the specific story is written. Halo is about Master Chief. GTA IV is about Niko. These custom-tailored stories and experiences are going to fit their unique characters better than a story designed to fit anyone I create is.
This isn't abad thing, it's a preference and a trade off in one game's features for another's.
Back when i was playing Baldurs Gate / Icewind Dale / etc i'd notice that you could pick up various books during your travels, which had a lot of words in them. To this day i have no idea what they said, as they were entirely unnecessary to play or understand the game.
Which i stopped playing once i hit the level ceiling...
Actually I forgot about another clever infodump method AC2 uses. In some missions you need to sneak around and follow Dude and find out what he and his conspirators are up to. There's gamey stuff going on -- you have to follow close enough that the "you lost them" timer doesn't go off, but stay a safe distance away or obscured, so that you aren't noticed. But they real key is that they've wrapped game mechanics around what is, at its heart, an info dump.