Why not come up with a cooler, more original talent to invest in that replaces lore – and get rid of identification as well? The designers behind this game are, I believe, ahead of their time, and have come up with so many original ideas that pushing these clichés of the genre undermines the cleverness of everything else.
What would you propose? I would personally be a big fan of something like Gather Information or Spellcraft from D&D, which tells you neato tidbits about the lore behind items, people and concepts. Heck, they wouldn't even have to rename it. Just call it Loremaster, and have it involve examining things for detailed information, including enemy's stats and item's hidden attributes, such as range, attribute scaling, and they could even hide other stats like crit chance until you get a high enough level in loremaster. By not requiring identification, it circumvents tedium, while also still being useful, especially in the case of things like random loot, where you wouldn't be able to look up the specific stats on a wiki. Also, it would provide a civil skill for the more "casual" or story focused amongst us, that allows the writers to explicate without bogging down the rest of us with lore.
Thoughts?
