Just do it like MGS and MGS2 - thats the gold standard of video game storytelling. Auydi logs are cheap and not realistic. You can put narrative in to cutscenes. Movies have been able to exposition all the various things you've mentioned for decades upon decades now. You dont need audio logs for it.

 Big difference. Codec was realistic, because it was basically radio transmission back and forth. Audio logs just arent realistic. That's the main problem with them. They break immersion, because every time I see or hear them I'm totally disconnected from the game, wondering why on earth would this info be here in audio log style? Who would do that? Usually the answer is no one.

Come on now, did you even read all of the Reception seciton of the wiki? Here are the following three sentences:

Maximum PC believed that the game did not reach "blockbuster" status, but was successful enough to "keep Looking Glass afloat".^[44] GameSpy's Bill Hiles said, "Though it sold well, it never reached the frenzied popularity of [Doom]".^[45] Paul Neurath later said that the game "was not a flop", but that it ultimately "lost money" for the company, which he attributed to its steep learning curve.

I also mentioned that SS2 (although not System Shock 1 strangely) did well on Steam and GOG. That still has nothing to do with our conversation of what game inspired the industry to use audio logs (System Shock 2 didn't release on Steam or GOG until 2013). Bioshock sold well over 4m when it was still relevant. No telling how much it's shipped across the re-releases and such. It's very fair to say that Bioshock was the source of the inspiration because that style proliferated after its release in 2007.

Audiologs are fine so long as they don't clash with the game audio. One thing that bugged me in Horizon was listening to a log and then Alloy would begin a brief conversation; it happened a few times, leading me to stand and listen to the logs as I got them rather than continue moving to avoid that. A quick & easy fix would have been have the game automatically end any log playing before a conversation would start.

Audiologs also live and die on good voice acting. Bad writing hurts, but bad voice acting makes them unbearable. I personally like text files better, but a well-executed reading of the text is welcome too.

Text log sucks too

I read the whole thing, but it's still not an tuter disaster and doom of the franchise, let alone the impact it clearly gave to other devs who were inspried by it.

It's about System Shock, so it will include 2, not just 1, that would be picking one because it fits the view of appearing weaker than the other or what it even added from the otehr game. 

I disagree, I feel it's fair to give credit to System shock for clearly inspiring the Bioshock devs into carrying on the audio log system.

They are far, far more realistic than a cut-scene for something that happened years before your character was present.  Also, the thought of hundreds of cut-scenes for minor content isn't close to being practical.  It would be enormously expensive, add on a lot of development time, and it would often make no sense in the character's world--and it would be annoying.

I also find the thought kind of confusing.  I have an imagination that is easily able to visualize what I'm hearing if it's well done.  For example, in Fallout 4, you find the body of a Brotherhood of Steel member in a building surrounded by ghouls.  She has left behind a poignant audio log expressing her thoughts and explaining her situation as ghouls were about to break down the door.  My imagination is better than a cut-scene in a situation like that with the limits of current consoles.

I don't even understand the complaint, to be honest.

The complaint is about realism - having audio logs through the world, generally every 5-20 minutes of character walking time is unrealistic. There is no such world, there would never be such a world. It's immersion killing. Maybe one person out of a million creates an audio log, well then the game should contain 1 or 2 max with the rest being something more realistic. Like I said movies explain stuff that happened in the past all the time. Just do it through a cutscene.

They've been fine in the games I played. Like others have pointed out, audio logs are optional and generally about something that happened in the past. That could be a small story that fits with the general theme of the game or something interesting that ties with game's background or universe. Those things are difficult to do in cutscenes that generally play during the progression of the main story.

Having less or no audio logs doesn't mean the game will have more of the story told through cutscenes. It means the game will have less story and less ways to tell the main story and optional side stories.

I agree with the OP