Shadow of Light Dragon wrote..
But it's lore that's not of particular note for the *game*. The Codex covers a heap of stuff, from mechanics monsters to random books about countries you don't even have to care about. Nothing in 'The Cardinal Rules of Magic' is stuff you have to know, or even get to talk about with people.
I think it's something interesting
to know. It lets you get an idea of what is and isn't impossible in the game. And I think it's something that should be incorporated in the game over (for example) a merchant getting harrased to give over his goods.
It's impractical and illogical to dispense with written books, notes and letters. I'd find it jarring to have my PC walk into a library and not be able to read any of the books.
I don't think books should be missing. I just think the codex should only touch on places & things never part of the game (and magic is certainly part of the game).
They're also convenient for lore nerds who want to fire up the game and make a reference check.
And they're also a source of heart attacks when the lore doesn't fit with the game.
Which is great, for a quest. DA2 quests are not as sophisticated and twisty-turny as TW2 quests, but you don't have to read any codices to solve them. Not one. Even the quest with the Fell Grimoires, which *are* books, you don't read as codex entries.
Right. I'm not saying you have to do this in DA2; I'm saying I think it would be better designed if the lore was integrated in the quests.
Even The Witcher 2 had reading. You could buy books or find books. There was stuff on geography, history, NPCs and monsters. How is that any different to the codex in DA2?
I'm not praising TW2 as a whole. I was just using that one quest as an example of lore being dictated actively to the player through a quest instead of passively through a codex (e.g. the Enigma of Kirkwall).
The only DA2 codex-based information I really wanted to see in the game was evidence of the Enigma of Kirkwall, because that could have been hugely important for the mage/templar conflict. Sadly it was only reading material that you couldn't even show or talk to anyone about. It's because the material was so *good* that I wanted it to go beyond a few codices.
I think everything on the characters developing year-to-year should have been in-game.