No In-game notebook?

[Anime]

The fact that game tells you to take notes externally is pretty bizarre.

I use Obsidian to take notes for these types of games, but come on - if you mention taking notes, have an in-game note-taking system.

I hope I don't find a note in game which tells me to use a wiki if I get stuck lol.

[Varsoon]

There was once an era of games where people would regularly keep physical notebooks to help solve the game. Heck, game manuals often even included space for you to take notes in them.

It's clear to me that this was the design idea here.

Would Blue Prince be a better game if there were an organizational journaling system that saved screenshots of every page of every thing you find? Would it be a better game if every time you approached a safe you have solved before, Simon's little hand would lift up a note with the Safe Key written on it? Would players have an easier time getting further if the game had built-in systems for searching any term and presenting you with any document you've found featuring that term?

Sure, absolutely. But that doesn't seem to be the design goal. Blue Prince wants you to have to sort through a massive amount of information to parse what is meaningful and what is chaff. It wants you to feel rewarded for figuring these puzzles out without holding your hand and leading you to each and every one.

Blue Prince often draws comparisons to Outer Wilds. Personally, I see them as very, very different games but I will note here that Outer Wilds has a very robust in-game journal system that massively helped me to solve that game's mysteries. It also robbed the game of a good deal of its mysteries, too. When there's a checklist for what you need to find in that area and all the boxes are ticked, engagement is gone. I don't have that mystery or wonder about "Well, how could this fit in? Maybe I should look around that place some more, maybe there's something more?" The more and more I've played of Blue Prince, the clearer it feels that this sensation is what the game hopes to cultivate. You're always meant to be looking for a new clue. And with how recontextualized a lot of the info in the game becomes, it'd be hard to have any sort of journaling system without it just spoiling the existence of many puzzles, clues, or the connection between things. So getting that same feeling would just mean having an organizational system for taking screenshots which, you know, any device that can run this game already has.

Developers only have so much they can reasonably put in a game. Even ideas that would be great may be cut for any number of reasons. If the developers felt a journal system was fundamental to playing the game, they'd have put it in there. As it is, just take your own notes. That's fine. That's the point.

[Anime]

Originally posted by Varsoon:

There was once an era of games where people would regularly keep physical notebooks to help solve the game.

Ya, and those games didn't directly tell the real life player to take out a notebook. Imagine if in Riven, an NPC looked directly at the screen and said "hey dude, i see you lost, tried making notes?"

I guess bad example, because Riven remakes allow to take screenshots and make notes on those screenshots.

[Varsoon]

You turn on any horror games in the last ten years that tell you upfront to put on headphones? Don't really see this as all too different from that.

It's not as though Herbert Sinclaire was at the end of his will in this and was all, "And, you, the player, yes, watching this cutscene, you will want a pen and some paper, ahah!"

[Anime]

Originally posted by Varsoon:

Would Blue Prince be a better game if there were an organizational journaling system that saved screenshots of every page of every thing you find?

ok nvm, you just misunderstood what i mean by a notebook. I meant that you would still manually be taking notes.

[Varsoon]

I've just kept a .txt document and saved screenshots to a folder.
It'd be alright to have those functionalities baked into the game but I think it's just as reasonable for the game to be like, "Hey, those functionalities aren't here, but we encourage you to take your own notes."

[Anime]

Originally posted by Varsoon:

I've just kept a .txt document and saved screenshots to a folder.
It'd be alright to have those functionalities baked into the game but I think it's just as reasonable for the game to be like, "Hey, those functionalities aren't here, but we encourage you to take your own notes."

Ya, just wanted to point it out. Btw, if you haven't tried Obsidian Vaults, I'd highly recommend trying it out. Txt file and a screenshots folder sounds a bit archaic ngl

[Varsoon]

Ironically, Obsidian Vaults are pretty significant in Blue Prince, too.
I'll check it out.
I'd have kept a physical journal for this, too, but with many visuals there are that are worth returning to / referencing, screenshots are definitely the way to go.

[Plundy]

The steam overlay has a note tab that you can use to keep notes. It is quick to bring up, close, and you can even technically steam screenshot and link your screenshot into the note. They save the notes per-game so it will be cloud synced anytime you play the game.

(I did just use notepad and paint to screenshot and take notes for over a week in-game then a friend reminded me of the system, it is very good. It offers headings, bold, italics, and everything you would need for note-taking other than drawing lines.)

[Anime]

Originally posted by Plundy:

The steam overlay has a note tab that you can use to keep notes. It is quick to bring up, close, and you can even technically steam screenshot and link your screenshot into the note. They save the notes per-game so it will be cloud synced anytime you play the game.

(I did just use notepad and paint to screenshot and take notes for over a week in-game then a friend reminded me of the system, it is very good. It offers headings, bold, italics, and everything you would need for note-taking other than drawing lines.)

damn, completely forgot they added that, will need to try it sometime (already too deep with obsidian for this one)