: Depends on how well they're written.
: Doom 3 for example, all of its terminals say the same thing essentially:
: "Delta Labs are drawing lots of power lately" "There are
: rumours about Delta Labs" "The people from Delta are starting to
: look funny" (gee, maybe they look like zombies!) "I don't trust
: anyone here, something funny is going on at Delta Labs so I stashed some
: supplies in a locker in Med, code 384."
: They are boring and repetitive. They're written as if you're actually trying
: to avoid reading them, so if you read only one or two you can still get
: the plot. They do reward you occasionally with access codes, but in Doom 3
: it seems more like a chore to read (or listen to) log entries just to get
: access codes.
I felt the exact same thing while playing Doom 3. It seemed as if different parts of the design team were working against each other. One part wanted to bury useful information like access codes into the terminals and diaries, so you'd be forced to pay attention to them to advance in the game, and the other part was trying to create ways of getting around that, so that people could play the game without doing so.
The ultimate expression of that was the coop mode on the Xbox, which even removed the necessity of using terminals at all.
