Universal Wolf, I prefer a mix of visualization with writing - i.e. Fallout. IMO RPGs should be like interactive books - lot to read about stuff you see, but you may actually DO something with the text and don't fall asleep after 15 minutes (rarely books keep me interested to read them longer than an hour or so, but when one grabs my attention, I read 'till it's over).
You see, because F3 has every goddamn junk in-game (papers, cans and such), the game looses it's focus. After a while, when you checked 50 cans to see if THIS ONE has anything interesting about it, you begin to ingore the details and thus, often miss out stuff that was meant for aware players (man, I already checked so much stuff, this is probably nothing as well).
Games should have *areas of interest* with uninteractive(is that a word?) areas between them (a world map like Fallout's), so you won't bore to death trying to find anything (which is the main problem of Fallout 3 \ Oblivion \ Stalker - you have to walk through all these empty, dull spaces before you can do anything interesting). Exploration is nice, but damnit, give me some reward for exploring, least it will only be an eye candy show.
Besides, it's totally diffrent to see a broken car and to read something about it, since you can't have a peek inside, get in and check it out. In Fallout 3 it's like "Oh, another broken down car...hell, at least I can blow it up! [unloades the fury of Fatman, goes further and blows more cars\super orcs]". In Fallout 1\2 it's like "A broken down car! [clicks it to examine it] "Even if the Mechanic of the Year suddenly appeared next to you, both of you wouldn't be able to repair this junk" [chuckles]". This makes even the most uninteresting junk be worth of notice, not just a part of background you can blow up.
