The Etrian Odyssey had quite a bit of reading, but not books worth, and it was always broken up into smaller chunks inbetween gameplay.

As far as I know, people like reading novels, so whatever you do, it cant be bad.

People like reading good novels. Uh, well, alot of people like reading Twilight and Eragon, and those aren't 'good', so I guess that disproves that. Harry Potter was very enjoyable, but it wasn't particularly well written (the world and plot were interesting, but the writing quality itself was merely average, and the characters were above average, but not fantastic. Still was enjoyable though, and apparently about a third of a billion other people also thought so).

@Syrena: If you are going to have alot of writing in your game, I suggest you get it peer-reviewed by a two or three people, and get some heavy constructive criticism to refine it and refine it some more (then have the same three people review it again, to give more advice and critique the changes).

@doghouse - The idea of switching perspectives and allowing the player to play a different characters crossed my mind, but to be honest, it doesn't work well for me. I rather develop and let the player play though one character.

@kseh - I know the mechanic you're talking about, and seen it before. The problem is I'm building a spy adventure, and i mostly see that type of mechanic in RPGs (particularly medieval RPGs). I could work it in another way, like debriefing files or hidden disk/flash drive within the game that contain information.

@Norman Barrows - I will indeed try it out and see what happens.

@Servant of the Lord - I will indeed do that, problem is finding people you trust, not only to give honest feedback, but won't steal your game.

Very nice topic.

I really wish you good luck with your text-based game! (I am huge fun of such kind of games)

The answer to your question is: yes, and it's not only unusual, it's hard. Story needs to be compelling, characters and their replics - interesting. It's a hard task for even such giants who've made Planescape, Arcanum or Fallout. And if games with graphics can compensate poor dialogs and scenes descriptions with action and awesome level design (for example), text-based games can't.

Check Make It Good game. Sometimes it prints a lot of text. It's a really good example (but game itself is a bit difficult to play).

I know it's been a little while since this thread was active, but I just wanted to add in my own two cents real quick :)

The people who play text-based games should know what they're signing up for. The audience you're creating for is very different from the audience Doom was created for, which is very different from the audience Mario was created for, and so on. So (to some extent) I wouldn't worry TOO much about how much text is being thrown at the player, as long as the story/characters/world is engaging and creative enough to keep the player interested! They should be there for the story and the challenge of the game itself.

As for the perspective stuff, I personally would find it super refreshing and interesting to play a text-based game which switches perspectives, but you'll have to make sure it's very clear when the game switches, or it could become confusing to follow. But it sounds like a fun challenge!! I'd be interested to hear what you come up with :)