Especially when it's written from the point of view of the playable character. It can be such a great way to add more characterisation to your protagonist. Silent Hill 3 is a great example, with Heather's attitude really shining through every text box
Some people would probably argue that with modern 4k Pathtraced DLSS4 Unreal Engine 5™ graphics there's no longer any need to rely on workarounds invented for text adventure games in the 70s or that we can just have characters think out loud but to me at least this is way less intrusive and more immersive than the character yapping to themselves
Here's another example, the doll is not relevant to any puzzle or the story at all, it's just there for set dressing but you still get several lines of text about it that set the mood more effectively than just having the doll sit there
They sadly removed them from Resident Evil 2 and 3's remakes, which had some gems like "The desk's disorganization probably reflects the owner's (Chris) personality". RE4R sorta has them, mostly just a zoom-up with Leon/Ada giving a quick voice line.
At least RE9 brought them back to an extent, especially when you're touring around the RPD.
Emulators and upscaling for life. I don’t trust modern game design. Too many coders and mbas.
Thirty years ago people from the arts filtered in. Or at least devs didn’t reject the arts as catastrophically as they do now.
The next time I play RE2 and 3 I really want to try out the Seamless HD Project which upscales all the original 2D art and backgrounds
I guess this is more of a problem specific to indie spiritual successors but with those you sometimes get people who just want to recreate a specific game from their childhood whereas those original games were created by teams with a wide array of influences
The PS2 Fatal Frame games also made pretty good use of flavour text. When you'd examine old drawers or chests it'd often give you a brief description of the items inside, along the lines of "Inside are beautiful and expensive women's kimonos whose colours have faded away with age and that have begun to rot from moisture." They really enhanced the overall feeling of gloom and decay those games' environments had. The new Fatal Frame 2 remake just came out and I wonder if it kept the text descriptions, but I'm wagering they got thrown onto the trash heap of history along with the original fixed camera angles