There's a lot of text in Dragon Age. As with previous Bioware games, as you play, you fill a codex with entries, divided into categories. There are sections for politics, history, characters, special items, and so forth. I'm like a lot of gamers in that I tend to skip this stuff. But that wasn't quite how it worked out in Dragon Age.

Read about the reading after the jump.

I don't normally read chunks of text in a videogame. There are two reasons for this: 1) it's rarely necessary, and 2) it's usually poorly written. Yeah, sure, when I get stuck on a quest, I'll pore over the necessary text to see what I missed. "Oh, I'm supposed to use Item A at Location B instead of giving it to Character C at Location D! I see." Not everyone conveniently highlights these details as MMOs are wont to do.

At first, Dragon Age was no exception. There are a handful of quests that are impossible to finish unless you read the associated text. I read those. Meanwhile, I let the new codex entries roll in and stack up, neglecting the plaintive white highlighting that indicated I hadn't read an entry. Occasionally, I'd read an optional codex entry, but usually to try to glean some gameplay advantage. Like trying to find out how best to kill an ogre. Or what gifts Sten would like. But for the most part, I ignored the codex whenever possible.

But as I played, as I got more invested in the game systems, as I saw more of the world, I sometimes wanted to peer a little deeper. This was especially true when I started having to make Dragon Age's big decisions. This is a world of realpolitik, and not the facile good/evil choice of feeding the puppy or kicking the puppy. From years of playing videogames with good/evil decisions -- many of them by Bioware -- I know well the difference between feeding a puppy and kicking a puppy. The former lets you shoot blue lightning, the latter lets you shoot red lightning. But I wasn't quite up on the finer points of supporting the [spoiler deleted] or the [spoiler deleted], much less the consequences of such a decision.

So I found myself picking through a few codex entries, curious about why Bioware did some of the things they did. Why would the [spoiler deleted] do something like [spoiler deleted]? What do the [spoiler deleted] have to do with the [spoiler deleted]? Is [spoiler deleted] really [spoiler deleted]?

And although I ended the game with far more codex entries unread than read, I will say this: there is not a single codex entry I read in Dragon Age that I didn't feel was worth the time it took to read. On the contrary, many of the things I read directly resulted in me enjoying the game more, and more willingly suspending my disbelief. It's another example of how Dragon Age gives back to you in proportion to what you give it.

However, I would like to say that elf poetry is horrible. Just horrible. And nothing the elves have written can hold a candle to "Nug Pancakes", a dwarven song about...well, you have to read about nugs to know what it's about. I refer you to the codex entry on nugs.

Up next: Dragon Age's biggest buts

(Click here for the previous Dragon Age entry.)