Have you played an RPG recently on your favorite console? Did you enjoy the story? Were you actually able to read the story? Don’t laugh, because it’s a genuine problem. Too many recent games, RPGs in particular, have had miniscule, sometimes impossible to read text, and it seems like developers don’t care.
For me, the game that made me decide to rant about fonts as though they were kids tromping over my front lawn was Xenoblade Chronicles X . I love Xenoblade Chronicles X . It’s a fantastic game, but I have less trouble reading the eye chart with my glasses off at the optimologist than I do attempting to see what characters are saying in this Wii U game. It’s practically impossible to discern what people are saying, no matter how large your HDTV. I found myself switching to off-screen play so I could see what was going on! It’s ridiculous.
But Xenoblade Chronicles X is hardly the only recent game to enrage people with fonts that remind us that size does matter. The Witcher 3 is all about that eyestrain too. Which is surprising, considering how good CD Projekt Red usually is about taking such UI issues into consideration. BioWare’s a repeat offender too, with the Dragon Age and Mass Effect games routinely offering too tiny text. Good luck trying to read things in Halo: The Master Chief Collection or sometimes in Dark Souls II , which is an even bigger problem due to not being able to stop and lean forward when enemies are right on top of you. It’s been a problem since about 2010, with more and more practically unreadable games appearing every year.
You’d think developers would notice people are talking about the issue. It isn’t as though it’s a surprise that some games are nearly unreadable. We’re taking to message boards and social media to complain about it. Yet there are still no moves to help, with patches that increase UI size or options in menus to enlarge fonts.
It’s especially disappointing, because this tiny text is appearing in games where people are supposed to be reading. Companies like Monolith Soft, CD Projekt Red, and BioWare are paying people good money to spend hours creating stories and developing lore, but then make them practically illegible. It defies all sense of reason. Why go to the trouble of making it in the first place, if you won’t make it easy and possible for us to see and savor it?
Companies need to have a little more consideration. These text issues are happening on HDTVs. It is’t about us not having the proper equipment to play our games. It’s about developers not being thoughtful enough to look at their games and realize a problem is there. They’re willing to patch other problems, so why aren’t they adding the ability to adjust font sizes as an option?