Do you listen to dialogue, or read it and skip ahead?

It’s nice to attach a voice to a character you care about, and actors and directors certainly put a lot of work into fully voiced games. But it’s still tempting to read the subtitles and skip to the end. Sometimes you’re impatient to get to the next bit, or don’t actually want to hear someone put emphasis in all the wrong places. Maybe it makes you feel bad, but it’s tempting to just click or spacebar your way through.

Do you listen to dialogue, or just read it and skip ahead?

Here are our answers, plus some from our forum.

James Davenport: I’m a skipper. Unless the facial animation and voice performances are out of this world, I feel like I can get the gist of the emotional intent without missing anything. I’m a fast reader, too, and don’t like waiting for the voice performers to catch up. I don’t feel like skipping compromised anything in Divinity: Original Sin 2 or the Mass Effect trilogy.