When authors don’t know what to say, they turn to the quotations of others. When video games don’t know how to fill time on loading screens, they do the same.

In a military shooting game, for instance, an epigraph from Patton might set the stage for a grand battle. Early in “Dragon’s Dogma,” a role-playing game from Capcom, we’re treated, while we wait for the machine to do its business, to Henri de Regnier’s praise of “the delightful and always novel pleasure of a useless occupation.” An apt description of playing video games in general, perhaps, but not of “Dragon’s Dogma.” The game is useless, but not delightful; probably because it is anything but novel.

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