No, I Don't Want to Stop Playing to Listen to An Audio Log | Extra Punctuation

[@kataphrut7740]

Bioshock mastered this years ago! For me, a crucial part of that game’s atmosphere is the sound of the audio logs playing as I’m creeping through the halls of rapture.

[@dzmcroy]

But then for some idiotic reason, Infinite decided that you shouldn’t get on-screen subtitles for audio logs, not even an option to turn them on. Logs that often end up muted by gameplay noise. Logs that are absolutely *vital* to putting together the story puzzle. So loads of players end up completely blanking on vital story clues because they didn’t hear anything that the logs were saying!

[@Midnight-Starfish]

If I had one minor nitpick about Bioshock audiotapes, it's that it feels clunky to hold a button to play them after picking them up. It wasn't horrible since after an hour of gameplay it became second nature, but I wish they would play automatically after I picked them up.

[@bradleymallard6347]

@Espeonage the Espeon Spy the required ones play automatically but still picking up then giving you the option to listen to it or not is fine if you pick it by mistake. and having the ability to play the last log you pick up with one button is the best system.

[@pyrojinn]

"...As a boy, I had a dog named Bill"

[@yourgameisstupid]

Yeah Bioshock mastered it, definitely not System Shock 2 🙄

[@MissSallyB1]

Random documents and audio logs: We find them stuck to notice boards, We find them under dogs. We're gonna put them in a file And give it a review When we're bored of all the gameplay, But we've nothing else to do. *head drops on table*

[@SpyHunter89]

Goodness, I was just thinking about that song. If only I could remember what ZP episode that came from (without looking it up)...

[@ciphergacha9100]

@@SpyHunter89 the talos principle

[@crystanubis]

Thank you.

[@2Scribble]

Recorded just for us but they were scattered all around We'll get trophies and achievements coz there's hundreds to be found So we're hacking those computers and we're raiding all the drawers For some optional objectives and the codes to all the doors Look at all this rancid junk that we have gone and found Springs and scissors - screws and bolts and other metal things abound I made a bomb with naught but dirty felt and glitter glue And I must make fifty more to see completing this game through Random documents and images as well Scouring each inch of the map - completionism hell We aren’t even reading the things - we’re simply bored as fuck But it takes less work then going out in traffic and just waiting to be struck Random documents and audio logs We find em stuck to notice boards - we find em under dogs We're gonna put em in a file and give it a review When we're bored of all the gameplay but we've nothing else to do

[@cloverandanais]

I believe it was less *head drops on table* and more *thuds to the floor in a drunken stupor.* Still pretty fucking relateable. 🌙

[@HenriBlavatski]

Heh. I've got a fun memory from Bioshock. I played audiolog at Lower wharf of Neptune's plaza and that's when Atlas began talking to me on radio. And that's when pile of splicers attacked. Who then aggroed the Big daddy that was lurking around. The end result was a glorious cacophone of spoken memoirs, game objectives, combat noises and enemy screams. I think I also died at the combat so not much of info on pomegranate trade of Rapture was gained that day.

[@vespenegas261]

Things like that do happen yet I would rather have that over buggering the entire game with constant speed bumps. Hell, System Shock did it right in 1994 dammit which is propably before most of the gaming community were born!

[@BreakingBlake1]

Halo 3 ODST audio logs were my favourite, they play once picked up and unlocked in order despite which order you collected them in

[@dozergames2395]

Man i remmber hunting for all the audio logs in that game That games atmosphere was elite Id love to see ole yatz shit all over it

[@CODDE117]

Those were amazing. Honestly one of the most atmospheric FPSs to date

[@BreakingBlake1]

@retrobeats You have to actively activate them, they are glowing yellow…

[@BreakingBlake1]

@@CODDE117 Here, here.

[@BreakingBlake1]

@@dozergames2395 ODST was amazing. Of course Yahtzee would hate it, it’s not a boomer shooter.

[@Rick586]

Bioshock had this completely figured out. It even gave you a hotkey to replay the most recent audio log you picked up in case a sentence or two got drowned out by screams and gunfire.

[@ethai1]

Oh god I made the mistake of replaying the dog audio log. More than once.

[@CmdrShepard95]

Another game that mostly figured this out was Arkham Asylum. And then they fucked it up in Arkham City

[@flarfo348]

i was annoyed how i couldn't listen to music in death stranding without staying in a menu compared to being able to play while listening like in MGS5

[@umarthdc]

Made me quit the game lol

[@appelofdoom8211]

Which is especially weird since death stranding is an excellent listen to a podcast while you play game.

[@ilfardrachadi2318]

Doubly annoying since the moments scripted to start playing music were really great and showed just how much music could add to the experience.

[@berengerchristy6256]

@@ilfardrachadi2318 or do it the doom way and make music essentially part of the gameplay

[@87agomes]

Huh... could have swore you could... but I havent played the game in a while

[@katsasgeorge]

The epitome of this for me is in Spiderman, where the audio logs not only happen while you are swinging, Insomniac had two recordings for each convo: one in which you're swinging and Pete is straining and sounds a bit winded and one if you are standing still. Yeah, blew my mind once I figured that out. Dedication.

[@sandjack7294]

That stealth game point at the end makes me think we need a stealth game where the protagonist also has to juggle his busy social life. Your sneaking past a security guard can be ruined by a sudden ringtone if you forgot to set your phone to silent before the mission, occasionally your clingy girlfriend texts you asking where you are and you have to find a cupboard to hide in and reply or else you sleep on the sofa that night.

[@victorwagner2423]

Should they also take their malaria pills while they're at it?

[@ianrocco8453]

Catherine meets metal gear solid. My god the internet would love that.

[@ComicWriter-ml3qt]

This sounds like a more mundane version of alien isolation.

[@patrickbone5993]

This honestly sounds super fun and I want to see a concept like this executed. The only games where we've had an inkling of balancing the character's social life with other elements is like, Spider-Man? And I've almost never seen it intervene between gameplay elements except only lightly in Spider-man, and it wasnt even something you ACTUALLY dealt with, it was usually just a bit of dialogue that pops out with no actual consequence. Which is totally fine and I love, its hilarious, but having some games where those dialogue interruptions change up gameplay would be really fun.

[@ACGreviews]

It's awesome to hear others finally talking about this stuff. Been a problem for years.

[@Tralfazz74]

I've played so few new Triple A games in the last 8 years, I didn't even know this was a problem. I remember playing Subnautica and listening to Degasi logs while ransacking their bases, collecting their leftover supplies as they talk about journeying deeper, wondering about what could make 3 people so desperate as to leave what looks like a good life. If I had to stop and listen, I likely would have forgotten most of what they said, and the connection between story and world would've been severed. I certainly wouldn't remember it well enough to mention it now

[@Lugbzurg]

Even Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus got it right! A platformer with cartoony shooting and deployable jack-in-the-box ghosts as enemies!

[@TheDavidjakeson]

This is exactly the game I was thinking about

[@thegardenofeatin5965]

In Subnautica, you still have to open the menu and press play. My first playthrough I didn't always register I had picked one up, so the context was often lost.

[@Tralfazz74]

@@thegardenofeatin5965 That was definitely a problem. A friend pointed it out to me. If you open the tablet immediately, it'll play the log you just picked up, but you still have the option to dig into the menus later and catch up. It was fine once I knew, but I definitely didn't intuit it.

[@mattw99280]

This is why any argument made zero sense to me. As the designer, you can just put the 2 minute audio log right before a 1 minute room search, a 2 minute hallway walk, a 3 minute combat encounter, and 15 minutes between any important story segment. You are LITERALLY the designer! YOU control where things go!!! Also minor aside but this annoyed me in Control with the TV segments too. Y’all really spent the time and money filming these but you won’t let us play them on a little window in the corner of the screen? 😐 Edit: Didn’t realize how much attention this got, so I’d like to reemphasize that yes, this is a _psychotic_ level of user testing, but if a dev is psychotic enough to care about this, they should just go all the way and delegate one QA engineer to spend a few hours to move stuff around. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of Yahtzee calling you a twat on the internet.

[@aleksanderolbrych9157]

Because you'd get distracted between watching the video and playing the game and get killed, run into a room triggering dialogue *over* the TV or some cutscene could break up the timing... Tons of things could happen given that game's gameplay loop, it's fully understandable they wanted this optional stuff to only happen in specific rooms at player discretion. Sometimes the simplest solutions work best.

[@MazeFrame]

@@aleksanderolbrych9157 In all SciFi games with virtual assistance and fancy HUDs, having some video/audio log playing be interrupted and the assistant going "I detect stress, we will resume later" and fade the video/audio away is an option, you know?

[@beefpelican]

It’s at least a little more forgivable with video. You aren’t staring at a menu while it plays.

[@aleksanderolbrych9157]

@@MazeFrame We're talking about Control's TV ads, not audio logs in general. Having logs stop and restart before and after a cutscene is unintentional comedy waiting to happen, better just pace them out so that the player won't find them right before a story break.

[@aleksanderolbrych9157]

@@beefpelican Yeap, video requires a lot more attention and focus than just a podcast from the background.

[@davidnaber4325]

Horizon Zero Dawn was soooo frustrating to me because they got it half right. When you pick up an audio log, it would auto-play over gameplay, but they overloaded the button for “pick up this item” with “stop playing this audio log”, and I accidentally hit that ALL THE TIME when I was collecting stuff. Then if you wanted to go back and play the audio log again because you accidentally stopped playing it, there was no way to play it outside of the inventory menu! I think I listened to maybe 3 audio logs in that entire game because of that problem, which is sad because I’ve heard that game had some cool world building in the audio logs.

[@CaptainMcAwesomepan]

I'm literally playing HZD right this moment, and yeah, while it doesn't fall into the issue Yahtzee's talking about, the audio logs have proven to be a source of super frustration in an otherwise pretty awesome game. The fact you'll go hours without seeing one, and then you're in a bunker and there's like, 8 every 2 minutes, and you have to wait for one to finish before starting the next, it effectively -did- wind up feeling like it's a 'play me from the inventory' thing, because you're forced to just stand there listening to audio.

[@friedipar]

Playing audio logs of the intimste feelings of your Friends/Comrades from massive loudspeakers on your helicopter while flying over enemy territory in MGSV sure hit different!

[@chrisavenell3172]

It's funny cause the dead space games had it so when you picked up an audio/video/text log you had a button to immediately play or pull it up

[@thegoldencaulk2742]

Dead Space 1 auto-played the logs, but still had a button prompt to cancel them. Frankly bizarre that neither solution was implement in Callisto.

[@Ineedgames]

How does a dev take a major downgrade like that?

[@fellow9939]

i remember bioshock doing this well by giving the player a prompt to play a log when picked up, which really helped, because sometimes i wanted to listen to it and sometimes i didn't.

[@echomjp]

It's such a simple thing that the fact games can still mess it up astounds me. Allow players the option to play it. Allow players the option to not play it (maybe have a hotkey/button combo to turn it off, or turn it off during important scenes - not combat). That's all you need. Making us dig through our inventory screens breaks immersion and the flow of the game.

[@777SilverPhoenix777]

fallout managed to do it right as well despite Bethesda's programming issues. I listened to holotapes will killing enemies all the time.

[@TheOneGreat]

God, I couldn't agree more. Another thing I hate is that audio logs get interrupted because you walked too far and a set piece starts. Please design the length around the walking distance to the next big thing so it doesn't get interrupted, like, I dunno, an actual game designer. Or go the GoW way and at least try to pause the dialogue naturally. Edit: Spoke too soon. It also got mentioned.

[@808pitfallseed]

I really like how in portal 2 they extend the elevator rides to let dialogue finish playing so you don't have to wait around outside to hear it all

[@Monocular0]

Or dialogue. Happened to me multiple times in the last Supermassive game I played. Characters were talking, I am walking through some cave assuming they’ve programmed it so this conversation happens in a moment with no gameplay, and suddenly it triggers a cutscene and cuts off the conversation. Multiple times in one game.

[@SirMisterMr]

There is sooooooo much unique banter you can miss in The Last Story like this. Ok team, let’s give the player a tiny section of running between this combat encounter and the next cutscene, and fill it with 20 seconds worth of a unique party conversation that will break off the moment the player reaches the cutscene trigger zone.

[@SirMisterMr]

Which if the player starts moving, happens in 3 seconds.

[@fallouthirteen]

That's why I don't mind when they don't play automatically. I figure it's going to be interrupted anyway so I go "I'll listen to it later" and then I never do.

[@jonlangthorne7924]

Fallout does this perfectly. Have the audiolog and then if the player doesn’t want to listen to it right away, then they can go into the menu, stick the log in the pip boy with a nice animation and then it plays over the gameplay. Smooth and consistently fits into the world immersively

[@AuroDHikoshi]

It needs to be extra information, you find out the basics in world, but for deeper it's there for when you're ready.

[@nowaynowaynottoday]

only issue is ux. accessing holotapes isnt as intuitive as it should be

[@gwen9939]

Of all the games to bring up the borderlands series actually does this really well. Not only audio logs necessarily but dialogue will play normally when you're in the vicinity of the character but if you move too far our of audible range it will continue over comms. I got so used to this that I half-expected it to happen when I was playing Dishonored and would start audio logs scattered around and just move on to the next area. Being a game that rewards patience like most stealth-based immersive sims, it would've been a perfect fit to have some story tidbit play while you plan your angle of attack.

[@jollybritishchap485]

I will say you're right. However the problem I have with Fallout's audio log system is that the menu tends to get pretty cluttered after a while. Especially since half of the choices are passwords to terminals you'll never use again or random letters you picked off dead people which hold no real value after being chuckled at. Could benefit from some sort've in-game filing system to filter useful notes out from the crap.

[@AuroDHikoshi]

@@nowaynowaynottoday i don't think the fallout games would focus on "digital copies" as much as they are a tapeformat...

[@UnfertigeGedanken]

i liked the part in "stick of truth" on the spaceship/ufo where, i think its randy, in one audiolog even says that he doesnt even know why hes not looking for an escape or something but instead records audiologs about whats happening to him ^^

[@jkitty542]

The journal that Arthur keeps in RDR2 is one of the best story bits of the game that I didn't even bother looking at until my third playthrough. I wish they could just be read outloud to you by Roger Clark as you gallopped half way across the map for the 700th time.

[@ItsYaBoyYogi]

MGSV allowed you to play the cassettes in any order, at any time, while you were in the heat of intense stealth or riding in your copter or wandering the desert. I loved how it did that

[@robonerd125]

unfortunately for me i didn't realize i was getting story cassettes until i beat Sahelanthropus, so it was an hour and a half of listening to Code-Talker and Miller talk about burger additives on MB, interspersed by me buying research and rocket punching so many guard dicks.

[@Petabik]

AND you could also use the speaker with some sound effect recordings to trick the guards. AND you could play music on it. AND, if you were on PC, put in your own music. It worked so well that they put over half the fucking story in that thing and it still was bearable

[@danilooliveira6580]

and it had auto-play, so you could listen to the whole thing while fucking around with a guardpost.

[@samlipton7872]

I was actually taken aback when I realized I had to stay on the menu to listen to audio logs in Callisto Protocol. Absurd behavior

[@ISolNacienteI]

You don't. Look at Markipliers first Episode of his Let's Play around 42:03.

[@samlipton7872]

@@ISolNacienteI wow, that’s wild. I attempted the same thing multiple times during my playthrough and it always stopped the recording.

[@SapphireDragon357]

@@samlipton7872 Based on that clip from Markiplier, looks like backing out of the menu stops the recording, but closing the menu entirely skips the stop. The game never tells you this and it's still very badly designed, but also is kinda funny that it kicked off this whole video when it turns out you actually can play the audio logs during gameplay.

[@Silverizael]

@@SapphireDragon357 Are we sure that's an intended feature and not just a bug that players are exploiting for their benefit?

[@setcheck67]

@@Silverizael As a designer it is 99% likely to be a bug. If I was going to have such a thing exist I would at least have put a prompt so the player isn't confused. In virtually every game engine it takes at most 10 minutes to insert a "Would you like the audio log to keep playing? Press F to continue or X to stop". I mean to put it as bluntly as I can, one of the first things I remember learning in Computer Science was DOS/Terminal style input entries. It is possible some scripter on the team recognized how shitty it is that the audio logs stopped and put in this secret bug though as a form of resistance to the other hive minded idiots.

[@petergaley314]

The first Infamous did this pretty well, I think. The audio logs were little sidequests in their own right, so you were in the right mode to listen to them during continued gameplay. I do remember one time in the first Lone Echo that an audio log and Important Plot Dialogue were happening at once and it drove me mad enough to take the headset off for a few minutes. Something about the clash was extra aggravating in VR, maybe because they were both right in your ear. That said, you've never been truly bored until you've waited for something to finish in VR since you can't even glance at your phone without taking the headset off. So maybe just don't have audio logs at all in VR.

[@hitmandude49]

A VR game that does this pretty well imo is Into the Radius, there are audio logs and music tapes that you can pick up as you wander around and loot things in the barren wasteland that you're trying to survive in, so having a nice audio background while you go around opening cabinets and searching shelves for food and ammo was pretty fun, and I wasn't bored while doing it, it even enhanced both experiences for me. But then again, there is hardly any Important Plot Dialogue in that game in the first place, and when you do find them you have to activate them manually, so maybe that's why haha

[@Kriss_ch.]

Audio logs are cool for an open world. Like if I'm swinging around as Spidey for the 6th hour, might as well put on the radio you know?

[@godminnette2]

Honestly, a one-line description of what the audiolog seems to be about and a prompt of "do you want to listen to this right now?" would do wonders, especially if when I click "yes" I can keep playing the game. I'm also a big fan of mixing the audio so that if something more important starts happening, the audiolog is greatly diminished. As you said, we can always go back afterwards. But this is also something that could be in a settings menu regarding them... let the player choose if it pauses, is diminished, or keeps playing as-is during these moments.

[@lisaziperman8114]

South Park SOT got this right. And they were making a joke about useless audio logs.

[@BroAnarchy]

Lol of course... Go Figure!

[@K4RN4GE911]

Making the Dead Space comparison again, audio logs in that game were handled BEAUTIFULLY. They almost never meandered, with the longest ones going on slightly over a minute and they were paced out to end right around when you made it to a part of the game that threw enemies at you or an important cutscene was about to happen. They also were more prevalent during puzzles, giving you some downtime to listen to them while you were putting out a fire or something similar.

[@mtveltri]

Yahtzee's Persona waifu being Chie is both surprising and completely expected at the same time

[@CmdrBrannick]

I love the way they did it in Halo 3 ODST. Hold interact to play, press to just pick up.

[@al-muthannaathamneh120]

I really wish there was an audiobook equivalent for the books in Skyrim, I know it would not make sense from a setting perspective but there is so much lore I skipped because I don’t want to stop playing to sit down and read 😂

[@Sadarak1980]

There's def a mod for this I had used it before in skyrim vr. Fairly well done too considering fan made.

[@gogauze]

This is something I hadn't realized I needed. Maybe after another year, or so, I'll pick up the new remaster of the remaster of Skyrim on Steam-I mean, you know they're going to do it-and then install that mod talked about right above me.

[@OverdramaticAngel]

I was thinking the exact same thing, weirdly.

[@meganbeaudoin8085]

As someone who painstakingly spent hours upon hours collecting the damn Wolf Queen books in Skyrim (one is a rarer spawn that I didn't realize I'd missed until I was locked out of that quest room) before doing the quest, the lore makes stuff that much more fun. Also, you can steal the Autobiography of the Wolf Queen from the Whiterun merchant if you put a basket on his head and discovering that myself was amazing.

[@zipzapper0]

Like a magical recording crystal, covered in runes, and 80 percent are voiced by Belethor?

[@manavsridharan3811]

The thing is, this is not something unheard of. Batman Arkham Asylum did it. And it was great.

[@AHCOMICS]

Bioshock did it as well right?

[@dosbilliam]

@@AHCOMICS Bioshock had them play automatically and even had a keybinding for replaying the most recent one on command without going into a menu screen in the first place. :P

[@JanitoRiceMeister]

That was nice, though weirdly enough Arkham City dropped that feature. Strange.

[@lazydroidproductions1087]

Most modern games do, it’s not a new thing

[@MrPerfect2000Z]

That's because you could keep playing the game while listening to them. A feature they get rid of in the sequels

[@TheHardWay71]

*I don't know if this is possible on PS5* but on PC you can actually listen to the audio logs while moving around. However, you need to press Tab instead of Escape after you start playing it. Both Escape and Tab perform the same action of closing the inventory, but if you press Escape, the audio log stops playing. Specifically Tab needs to be pressed for it to continue playing. Fun. Also Yahtzee, fun fact: if you go to the video "How The Callisto Protocol's Gameplay Was Perfected Months Before Release | Ars Technica" and go to 5:20 into the video, you'll actually hear a UI/UX designer talk about why she chose to go with just a notification over auto-play, and they even show a snippet of gameplay where there are UI elements actually made for auto-playing! And they still chose not to go with it! They actively developed and finished the feature and decided against it. Even though playing while in gameplay is possible if you specifically press Tab, that "waveform" UI that is visible in that video does not exist in the final game, and you still MUST navigate your way to the audio log you just picked up (if you can remember it) and start playing it before you can even listen while playing. Just very odd decisions. If they're not gonna implement auto-play, why not just make the inventory screen automatically open to the audio log we just picked up for us to play?! There should never be an issue as you never pick up more than one audio log at once as far as I am aware and they're always during downtime moments anyway. Why do I have to try and memorize which one I picked up in case I can't listen to it at that exact second, and then go and try to find it in the menu? It's just more additional unnecessary slow down for no reason!

[@Some_Really_Random_Dude.]

I can't help but imagine solid snake sitting behind cover playing tetris, and when the guard spots you, it plays a sound effect and gives you a bit longer to react, because the guard is so confused as to why anyone infiltrating the heavily guarded compound, would sit around a corner playing tetris of all things.

[@zennvirus7980]

Oh, how I miss good ol' Cave Johnson's "recordings". Well placed, well orchestrated, funny as hell, and RELEVANT. That's how you do audio logs. We seriously need his combustible lemons.

[@s7robin105]

The thing that’s extremely annoying with colisto’s audio logs, is that DEAD SPACE, a game the team worked on before. Allowed you to walk around with audio logs.

[@justinsinke2088]

For being touted as a successor to Dead Space, which DID play audio logs during gameplay when you picked them up (I don't recall offhand if you could play with the audio going if you replayed it later from the menu), the fact that The Calisto Protocol doesn't do the same thing surprises me to say the least. I mean, were they trying to convey that whatever device he's using is so cumbersome that he has to stop to use it with any practicality? I mean, it looks like it uses holographic projections, so it can't be that low tech and cumbersome. Some games it's more tolerable at least, like in Spider-Man: Miles Morales, which I belatedly recently finished. You can relisten to podcasts that'll pop-up while traveling because sometimes parts will get drowned out by traffic if you're swinging low or it cuts out completely if you trigger an activity like a crime in progress or other story beat. You can replay them in the menu (and I believe stay in the menu), but they're pretty short and largely inconsequential, so they're things you catch up on when you just want to take a little break from what you're doing to listen to that podcast audio that got cut off halfway through before deciding on what activity you want to tackle next. But it's a different type of game, and you don't "collect" the podcasts, they just pop up semi-randomly while traversing and then get added to your collections for later review if interested. I agree though, especially for survival horror, if there are audio logs to find and collect, as long as there isn't an established lore reason why the audio can't be played on the move, the logs should either be played automatically over gameplay, or the player given a prompt to play now which goes away if they ignore it, and then have the audio play to the end unless actively paused (or automatically paused in the case of a cutscene or otherwise important story beat). That way, the player has the option to stand there and listen if they want to put all their focus on the audio, or multi-task if they desire, and the log stays in the inventory to be played again at any time. If you want me to stand still and listen, then the audio better be coming from a non-portable device that I have to be in proximity of to listen to making me choose whether I want to stand and listen or move on (AKA, I'll stay if I care about background lore and move on if all I care about is the shooty shooty bang bang).

[@DizzyScorpia]

Yep replaying the log would actually throw you out of the menus. In saying that, there were also text logs that would give you extra background info but you couldn’t do anything if you wanted to read them. As a spiritual successor and having a member from DS helping the Callisto team flopped.

[@CocoNut-yd1ri]

It wasn't touted as a Dead Space successor, the devs said they did not want people to see it as dead space 4, but as its own thing. Which it apparently succeeded in because everyone keeps complaining how much it isn't like Dead Space

[@justinsinke2088]

@@CocoNut-yd1ri Even if the devs weren't doing it explicitly, the fact that it came from some of the original dev of Dead Space and having at least some notable (if maybe superficial) similarities meant that the media was going to compare the two. Yes, it's not "Dead Space with the serial number filed off", but it still holds in my opinion that things they did right with that earlier survival horror project didn't carry over into the new project to its apparent detriment.

[@okagron]

@@CocoNut-yd1ri But you have to be blind to not notice that it apes so much from Dead Space. Even the freaking menus where the character is on the left looking at them is ripped straight from Dead Space. The game doesn't suck because it's not Dead Space, the game sucks because the combat is terrible.

[@graphite7898]

@@CocoNut-yd1ri I don't understand how people can keep saying that the game devs "Didn't want it to be Dead Space 4." The game is very clearly trying to be a knock-off Dead Space with how much it rips off from the series, even the most superficial of elements are taken directly from it.

[@haildallamas]

I use these extra punctuations as audio logs I can listen to in the background while I get on with the gameplay of cleaning my bathroom

[@maidenless_tarnished]

This makes me think of Remnant and Control. The log would just play right there from the device. You'd leave the room and come back and it would still be playing. Like it would in real life. When I first noticed that in Remnant I thought it was pretty cool. Also, if you haven't played Remnant: From the Ashes go play it now!

[@dillondelaney4347]

Just bought it for 20 bucks with the expansions as well, any tips?

[@maidenless_tarnished]

@@dillondelaney4347 have you play a Soulslike game before?

[@RiKSh4w]

@@dillondelaney4347 Control or Remnant?

[@Cloud-vn4nx]

@@dillondelaney4347 Bosses have alternate kills. So after killing them once, reroll the area, and if you come across them again, look them up for alternate kill. Also don't be afraid to die. There are no major punishments to death. In online play, ammo drops from enemies are shared. So make every bullet count. Have fun! It's a great game.

[@Brian-tn4cd]

@@dillondelaney4347 if you feel like you've missed out on something in the campaign, dont worry about it and check out places in Adventure mode, for campaign and adventure everytime you start one, the rewards and specific areas are randomly selected from a pool of stuff you can get in each world, and there are exclusive campaign rewards you may not get on your first run, also campaigns are great for grinding the material needed to max out weapons

[@gerardotejada2531]

I love the Lore in Control, I know is more "Imersive" that you need to stay close to the sound source to hear the audio, but for god sake I want to keep exploring!!! Just turn the audio into a podcast I can hear while playing!!!

[@TBP]

If the thought process is that; if you aren't sitting and intently listening to the audio logs with nothing to distract you, you might miss important details, it's been proven multiple times that this thought process is a load of balls.

[@doifhg]

I kind of like the fallout method, you can do both, either play it as soon as you get a holotape or just pick it up. Most of the time I just want it to play like bioshock but sometimes I want to just listen to it while walking around or something, but I don't understand the stop in menu to listen.

[@pasta8tp727]

What’s even funnier is that the thing Callisto is attempting to copy, (Dead Space) already handled audio logs perfectly by holding the pick up button when you get it.

[@CCHAWC717]

Something I equally hate is when banter, that is plot important/character development important. Doesn't happen fast enough , that you can outpace it while moving forward and trigger the next part of the conversation. Because the developers didn't take five seconds to realize you could walk faster than necessary (much like the annoyance of having NPCs escort you somewhere, and they walk slower than you, or walk slightly faster than you, but not as fast as you run.)

[@ZoinkMeisterPatrick]

I actually really liked the approach that _Atomic Heart_ took for this where can choose to play it or not when you pick it up (without needing to navigate through menus) and the audio log will pause if something else important starts happening. It might have been nice if it rolling things back a smidge when it resumed so you weren't lost, but that's hardly it's worst issue. A far bigger problem is when character dialogue cuts itself off when you've walked too far and never comes back. Some of those early dialogue triggers are stupidly close together.

[@monkeeee]

Random documents and audio logs We find them stuck to notice boards, we find them under dogs We’re gonna put them in a file and give it to review When we’re bored of all the gameplay but we’ve nothing else to do *thud*

[@matthewmuir8884]

I knew there would be at least one comment that remembered that old song. That song was hilarious.

[@devinphillips9704]

Dammit, someone beat me to it :)

[@Tinfoilpain]

If you press TAB instead of Escape to close the menu, it keeps playing as you move around. It's a bug not intentional.

[@Tyler-gg6xt]

Wow, exactly how bad was the Callisto Protocol? I've never seen him need to kick a bad game twice.

[@utisti4976]

It was pretty bad. Probably one of the worst games of the year. The only good thing it had were the graphics.

[@Tyler-gg6xt]

@@utisti4976 thank you for clarifying. I generally want to know exactly how bad this thing was.

[@josueayala1249]

Arguably, the banter of modern games like God of War Ragnarok is the spiritual sister of the audio log seeing as how they fulfil largely the same purpose, that being fleshing out the characters and/ or the world.

[@masterofdoom5000]

"What if design problem possibly occurs" that...is in the job description....of the designer, to design things well :)

[@gingerinajacket8519]

Could you imagine a person designing anything else with that in mind? "Well what if we put the viral disease research lab next to the children's play area of this museum?" "Have you considered not doing that? Why are they even on the same floor as eachother? Isn't it your job to make sure that the building flows naturally? That seems like a dereliction of duty."

[@synthetic1]

I agree with this so hard. Although I must be one of the select few who can't pay attention to dialog in the midst of combat. I think that's why I have zero recollection of the events of Borderlands 2. I swear, Handsome Jack would only ever get on the comm as soon as you were getting swarmed. I just can't remember any of it

[@fishpop]

I think you can disable the controller speaker in the PS5 options. I know the PS4 did it too and i disabled it immediately, so the PS5 should too.

[@HA-ot6uf]

Using headphones should disable it too if the PS4's anything to go by.

[@rayanderson5797]

I'd say the ability to quickly pause or stop the audiolog with a simple button press would solve basically all the contrarian issues brought up. I think Space Marine did that, although I'm also pretty sure that if you stopped the log prematurely, the only way to go back and listen to it later was to go into the menu again.

[@joeyparkhill8751]

Although it is nearly 8 years after the fact, I created more lyrics for Yahtzee's Random Documents & Audio Logs song from the Talos Principle episode of Zero Punctuation because I love that jingle: Random Documents and Audio Logs We find 'em stuck to noticeboards We find 'em under dogs We're gonna gonna put it in a file And give it a review 'Cause we're bored of all the gameplay but we've nothing else to do. Random Documents and Audio Logs They're hidden in the basement They're cast out into bogs We shuffle 'round the floorboards Until we've stubbed a toe Looking for that box With that cursed Audio Random Documents & Audio Logs Got us spinnin' 'round 'n round Like Sonic the Hedgehog We'll boggle at the lore 'Til we're all blue in the face Now, get my baseball bat So I can put in its place. *THUD* What do you guys think? Should I record it? & yes I know that I posted this yesterday on ZP's The Callisto Protocol video but I figured it would be relevant here too!

[@zennvirus7980]

Please.

[@TheSUGA1202]

You can do many creative things with the audios playing, for example, creating a jumpscare is a silent corridor, or making it play the robot guard sounds at the same time as one is close by to mess with the player, make someone creeply sing a song to make ambient while you have to run from monsters.Make someone in the audio tell a lie that can be figured out if you watch the scenary close enough, give vague clue of what the next enemies abilities are...

[@hanniballahr94]

Here's a thought, game designers... Don't put your audio logs that close to important cutscenes and dialogue moments. If you put a 60 second audio log 20 seconds away from a vital scene then maybe redesign your level layout a bit.

[@ich3730]

these projects cost so much money, if you notice something miniscule like audio-log placement too late, there is simply no way to change it.

[@quasitonality3887]

The whole time I was thinking about how Unknown Worlds did their audio logs in Subnautica completely right and exactly the way Yahtzee described it when talking about how to do it right

[@spartangerm2122]

Same. I was thinking of Subnautica as well, cus they did Audio logs the exact same way as Yahtzee was describing and I do not recall being annoyed of it… which is odd cus now that I think of it, it does seem like such a pace killer. Yet subnautica didn’t seem to have this problem… I now wonder how the devs manage to make it like that?

[@Modie]

Remember when there was actual environmental storytelling in games? Nowadays, everyone seems to think that environmental storytelling is just putting a letter or log on the ground that tells you what happened.

[@ryonalionthunder]

It’s not enough to open a sealed chamber with a skeleton and empty bottles, we must have a log detailing they got stuck and died of thirst.

[@Modie]

@@ryonalionthunder The main problem is that they will only do the chamber with then log inside. And if they feel really adventurous, they spawn a corpse of a random NPC.

[@Mr.Maguro]

I think Arkham Asylum has my favourite use of audio logs. Even though it's mostly narration of the graphic novel the game is loosely inspired by, it adds a lot more history to the decrepit asylum, and the game's gloomy atmosphere makes the dialogue even more melancholic. Also, getting all the audio logs and finding out who you actually been listening to is a cool reward.

[@leeroyjenkins1529]

My favorite ones are when an audio log let's you keep playing but then stops when you walk an arbitrarily short distance away.

[@EllieBerryPie]

I instantly think of MGS5. And how it got so close to doing this perfect. If was an open world game with dozens of audio logs that you could play while dicking around in the open world. BUT if any enemy talked over the radio it would cut over the audio log and you would miss something. So it got to the point that I had to just sit in the menus and listen to them, it was so annoying because it felt so close to finally fixing the issue of MGS's annoyingly long info dumps

[@firefool125]

Most folk do not like this design pattern. So it's pretty amazing how it keeps perpetuating

[@UltraxEmerald]

I remember one of the Dead Space games let’s you press a button to play audio logs you just picked up.

[@philipcollier4883]

I wonder why designers never tried this: what if during a quiet part of the game the Protagonist just automatically starts the next audiolog collected to fill the dead air?

[@mylesfrost9302]

maybe that would work but i would rather get a prompt pop up to give me that option also what is the "next audiolog" as MOST audiologs play on pickup

[@Alganoob]

The Division 2 did a good job with audio logs, the audio plays while you continue playing, with an easy key press to skip the audio.

[@beady123]

In games that allow audio over gameplay I usually hang around in the room I've been searching in in case moving on triggers anything, never a probl5for me. As you said let people play the game how they wamt

[@Juliett-A]

I love listening to audio logs IF I can do so while playing the game. They should auto start on pickup and also have a button to pause/stop them in case we need to focus on playing.

[@puffthecatpuff8931]

Have a memory menu, where you can "remember" witnessed encounters.

[@Josearnaldomanuel2]

I remembered Yahtz's song on the Talos Principle Random documents and audio logs: We find them stuck to notice boards, We find them under dogs. We're gonna put them in a file And give it a review When we're bored of all the gameplay, But we've nothing else to do.

[@linksbro1]

You actually CAN listen to the audio logs during gameplay in Callisto Protocol, you just close the inventory with tab and it keeps playing.

[@tommiller5505]

Glad someone has said this, press start twice and you're sorted

[@Shotblur]

I don't think they have "Tab" on PlayStation

[@15oClock]

The moment I tend to like recreating in Fallout 4 sometimes is listening to the one soldier's audio log as I don power armor for the first time. It hits something different.

[@Toby_Kat]

The fewer submenus I need to access, the better the gameplay can flow, and the more I'm engaged and immersed. BioShock did it perfectly, and the fact that games still insist on doing it worse kinda makes me sick. Also _great_ call on that point about handheld minigames for the protagonist! If I'm waiting for unskippable BS, it's a lot less grating if I can beep and boop on my little PDA friend in the meantime :3

[@Lucifer_Crowe]

honestly a minigame during stealth sounds amazing, especially if it's something else that can help your mission

[@michaelp785]

I've been playing System Shock Remake, and seeing this, I realized how much I like being able press (or hold) a button to play the auto log I just picked up, so I can keep wandering the room I'm in, picking stuff it up and vaporize it for money, and defend myself if something ugly approaches.

[@bificommander7472]

If the audiologs start playing when you pick them up, you can simply not place audiologs one room away from the important character scene.

[@thegoldencaulk2742]

I'm baffled at how Callisto Protocol can get something so wrong that it's primary influence got so right. Dead Space even had a cancel button for audio logs, so the developers didn't have to worry about them interfering with the player's experience.

[@CannonGerbil]

Personally I'm actually quite fond of Naoto but she shows up way too late such that by the time she's romancable most people are already committed to Chie

[@DylanYoshi]

I kind of wish fewer games would use the "audio" part. Games like Resident Evil and Metroid Prime just give you readable log entries and those are far less intrusive because reading through them fast is easy, but if I had to listen to them they would take a lot longer. I don't really want my focus to be split between a difficult battle and listening to an audio log, and I definitely don't want to stop everything I'm doing to listen to a bit of lore I just found. Bring back text-only logs they're just better.

[@jayarby8494]

Sonic Frontiers is guilty of this too. If you want to hear the Egg Memos that flesh out Eggman and Sage’s relationship, not only do have to grind for fishing tokens to buy them, but you have to look them up in the Fish-O-Pedia, which makes no logical sense for them to be there, given the whole fishing thing is an optional thing for resource grinding. It would have made more sense for a bunch of to be at each of the Eggman camps. I personally like Frontiers, but that’s one of the game’s weird quirks that hold it back from true greatness.

[@kingsleycy3450]

The Arkham series is the most egregious for this. They let you play the patient interviews over gameplay in the first game but not the sequels. The difference is day and night. In Arkham Asylum you get to hear the patient interviews while soaking in the eerie atmosphere of the Asylum. In the later games you don't get that because you are basically at a pause screen.

[@FishBola1991]

Playing an audio log over a cutscene? Easy, if a level has an important cutscene don’t put any audio logs in it, or at least put them far enough away from the trigger point that they should finish before the player gets there. If the player goes into the menu and starts one up on their own, well you the designer can’t control that. Its on them.

[@mylesfrost9302]

my solution is to fade the audio out if you REALLY cant design around it then when the cutscene finishes, bring up a prompt to play the audio log again as a player i dont know when a cutscene happens and having the both audio sources i find is super distracting and messes with subtitles

[@mayurmanudhanya934]

I love System Shock's implementation of audio logs. Not only you get all of your objectives and hints from audio logs in the remake you have the option to auto-play audio logs as soon as you pick them up which is so convenient.

[@mattmccarthymusic]

I absolutely agree with this. I’d even go the extra step and have it play in the game world. So if you’re sneaking, the guard would be like “what the fuck is that radio playing? Who’s there?” And if you get stuck in combat and don’t want the player to miss audio, have the radio fly off the character and start hissing with static every other encounter or something. You hired writers and voice actors - why skimp on the creativity when implementing? I’m 100% with you on all of this, Yahtzee.

[@jeffs1571]

That sounds very annoying. I'd be super peeved if I could t listen to audio logs during quiet stealthy sections of games. Plus, earbuds exist so it doesn't have to explicitly be playing audibly to the game world. The sound is also technically non-diagetic in most cases, so this just sounds like an overt negative.

[@daaaah_whoosh]

You know what, I probably wouldn't hate it if audio logs needed to be played from devices in the world. Like reading emails in, say, Deus Ex, except once you've hit play you can walk away from the computer and keep listening. Hell that'd be a fun way to add to the stealth sandbox, find an audio log of someone getting eviscerated by mutants and play it any time you wanna creep out the guards.

[@raistlarn]

​@@jeffs1571 depends on the game honestly. I can see it being annoying and cool at the same time. Though I always thought it was weird how they made audiologs sound loud with an echoey sound and yet you are the only one that can hear them (looking at you Metro series.)

[@ethai1]

That bit in system shock is really one of the things that made it scary. Not even while listening to an audio log - I can be inside a room looking for collectables and hear the door behind me suddenly opens. Which always means "oh fuck". Especially if it's a cyborg midwife. I think it also ties into one of the criticisms Yahtzee had on the original Dead Space.

[@jamesbevan9939]

Yahtzee, if you're reading this, maybe your next video essay could be on how games keep fumbling when it comes to comedic writing (see High on Life and Forspoken as the most recent examples)

[@danilooliveira6580]

maybe because that is mostly a personal thing ? a lot of people like the comedy of High on Life or Borderlands, doesn't matter how many edgy people complain about it being the worst and saying only stupid people like it. if you don't like it then its fine, I don't, but doesn't mean its bad.

[@ZombiedWolf]

I think this problem hits harder in The Callisto Protocol is because this game was "supposedly" made by ex Dead Space devs and Audio and even Text logs were pretty much prefect in those games.

[@crisomamber8463]

Magic here: you actually can listen to the audio log out of the menu, just play it there then close the menu(using "tab" key in PC, "option" for playstation maybe) And it brings new problem: first, whenever you want to use that menu for I dunno, inventory maybe? You will have to close that audio log which will stop it from continue playing and manually navigate back to the inventory screen; Second, dead space as it's father and a game that release about 20 years ago, is capable to let you play the audio log when picking it up. "Devs from dead space" haha

[@DontGiveUp_Skeleton]

I was playing Doom 3 yesterday, and besides you having to dig through a menu to find what you picked up, it actually allowed the audio to keep playing out of menu. It was surprisingly refreshing for a game so ancient.

[@bird3713]

It's like Yahtzee knows what my counterarguments are going to be before I do.

[@AuroDHikoshi]

Because it's one he's had and seen many times before... "random documents and audio logs, we find them stuck to building, we find them under dogs, we're going to put it in a file and give it a review, cause we're bored of all the gameplay and we've nothing else to do!"

[@JimmyValentimeNYC]

My fav audio logs and music is mgsv because you have big stretches of forest or desert To explore and it gives like a podcast through a hike

[@WeebJail]

for how much yahtzee claims to not be a weeaboo he sure makes a lot of excuses to tell you about his favourite waifu

[@rade-blunner7824]

I was going to make a comment bringing up System Shock 2 and then you went and brought it up yourself. It's been 20 years since I played the game and I still have strong memories of hiding in a corner terrified to move because I could hear one of those bloody psychic monkeys nearby. I love how the mini-games were all inexplicably pig-based.

[@GreaserMan]

Unless it's Returnal. Because the audio logs in Returnal are incredible.

[@TheDuck1234]

There was also a bug at launch (don't know if they fix it) where you could pause the game and close the menu to make the recording keep playing outside the menu. So if you did this you could keep playing and listen to it at the same time. What makes this funny is that they had it so you could do it in the code, but gated the player from it for some design reason xD

[@SirWallReuploads]

I'm suprised so many people like audio logs in any form whatsoever

[@Uppernorwood976]

They’re certainly better than just giving text to read, and also better than too many cutscenes.

[@TheBfutgreg]

@@Uppernorwood976 Text is superior imo, you can read a lot faster than people talk

[@BombaJead]

@@TheBfutgreg Subnautica had both now that I think about it.

[@Cyan-hide]

If done well, it's an extremely effective tool for exposition. But that requires good voice acting, good writing and good pacing (ie they aren't littered every 3 steps you take). But AAA doesn't consider any of those 3 a priority and just dumps the exposition onto the player. Some of the system shock 2 audio logs are a good example of how it should be done. Just listen to the "glory to the many" audio log

[@danilooliveira6580]

@@TheBfutgreg yes, but you need to stop and pay attention to read, audio-logs can be played while you do other things, hell, the video is literally talking about playing audio-logs during gameplay. but its true, text has its advantages, that is why good games should do both, have the audio-log and a transcription.

[@Hexakinase]

I replayed Dead Space recently, and that game makes use of both audio logs and text logs. Audio logs would play on pickup, but text logs required going into the inventory (which doesn't pause the game) and reading it. Since part of Dead Space's horror design was you were never sure when a monster was going to drop out of a vent, finding a text log sucked all the tension out of the room because the developers knew that if you were rooting for a text log in your inventory, you weren't prepared to deal with a sudden threat, so finding a text log meant you weren't going to get jumped. Of course, later entries in the series didn't follow this rule which led to me stashing the logs to read later and just never doing it.

[@roberttuttle3029]

"I accept the consequence of my own actions" is not a sentiment you hear that often from mainstream audiences. I'd be willing to bet that many devs agree but the way these things function is largely a product of focus testing that caters to the lowest common denominator and/or time and budget constraints. I suspect this was the cast with combat in Callisto too, which has the bones of a more complex dodge-based melee system but appears to have had all the actual mechanics sanded off - they either ran out of resources or it tested badly with audiences, bc there's no way something that shite could have been the intended outcome.

[@NewExile]

Glad you brought up System Shock, because the timing on those audio logs, e-mails and occasional radio communications was usually something that they actually put some thought into. First audio log in System Shock 2? Tells you immediately that there's something off about throwing some grunt (you) into cryosleep and then gives you the code to the door. Most communications you get from other characters tell you something about the area you're in and usually give you a moment to take stock of the area you're in, what you've got to do next, and how you're going to go about doing it. There's a LOT of e-mails and audio logs in that game, but there's very little story for story's sake. Even the guy rambling about virtual hookers tells you he left his nanites in the holosuite. It's not just something that might be useful, it's usually short enough to explore the environment you're in without running into too much trouble.

[@thetruemandalorian2637]

I really love these. They are such nice little nuggets of thought that spur discussions on interesting topics. Of course these discussions are done in my head so they get drowned out by anxiety and depression, but it's a nice distraction for a few seconds anyway!

[@wolorpg]

I can remember Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines. It does not really do audio logs, but there is a insane asylum where you need to hear the audio logs of the Malkavian Primogen. They're little tape based machines that start prattling and do not stop when you go away, they even get harder to hear when you are too far away. Combat Happens, you search rooms, come to place with your existential dread, all while some Psychologist is talking about what it means to be a vampire in modern society. This is how audio logs should work.

[@icicle_ai]

Idea for audio logs interrupting main events. have them play when you initially pick them up, but have them be in a side menu that you can close and still have the audio log play for replaying them/playing them after the story event. Hell even add a bookmark feature or a fast forward/rewind feature so that you can get to where you want to in said log

[@betchaos7383]

I'm always a little confused when small little quality of life things like this are missed out on by developers. Like when I was playing Metroid prime 2, when I was doing the keyhunt, I was looking through all the scan logs for hints. And I was like "man. I REALLY wish there was some sort of search index." Like, I type in the word 'war' and it shows me a list of logs that contain that word. It doesn't seem like it'd take that long or be that difficult. But really, I'm not a programmer, maybe these seemingly small things are actually really difficult to implement. Just seems like a missed opportunity that's all.

[@savant4646]

This also happens with the 2018 Spider-Man games, hearing JJJ is funny and all but for some forsaken reason, you can't listen to it outside of its first appearance or the audio log menu screen. You can't even put it on while you're swinging about

[@Patchnote2.0]

You'd think with the popularity of audio books these days that game designers would put 2 and 2 together. For all its flaws, MGSV was the first game I played where you could play and listen to audio logs and in that game it worked particularly well since stealth games (and especially MGSV) tend to already have so much down time. It also had the best me menuing controls I've seen since. WASD to navigate, Esc for back, space for select, and Q and E for switching tabs (not weird keys like Z and X). We've achieved perfection just copy it already.