Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Does the Mind Flayer retain memory?

Actually the question. Does the Mind Flayer remember who he was before the transformation?
Technically, this is the same soul as before cerebromorphosis?
If so, maybe we will be allowed to play as the Mind Flayer in one of the walkthrough, it would be funny (but definitely not for 1 walkthrough)

Nope. While these are a few scattered examples of some vestiges of the host’s personality lingering in an illithid, in the overwhelming majority of instances the host is utterly destroyed. The illithid does not have the host’s soul.

That I get, but the question of memories is also an interesting one. I could see the argument going both ways.

https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Ceremorphosis ceremorphosis process

It was only possible to interrupt ceremorphosis and save the host before this initial stage was completed, and even so it was only possible to do so by killing the tadpole, which was complicated by its location. The safest way was to incinerate or crush the host's head and then use spells such as resurrection, or true resurrection. Destroyed parts of the victim's personality could then be reconstructed via restoration and heal spells, as long as the damage was not complete


hmm, so that's it cure

Only gnomes might keep any of their personality and memories. Though it took heavy modifications from the normal process, and was highly unlikely to work.

Also, an illithid with their host's mind and memories completely still intact is the greatest fear of the race because of a legend about a creature called "The Adversary" so even those illithids with even small telltale signs of their former host, like wistiling a tune the host used to like in it's life before the ceremorphosis, go to great effort hiding those traits as to not be killed by its peers.

So even if technically the story in BG3 could be about this legend, I find it farstretched.

EDIT: Now that come to think about, how does an illithid whistle? They use telepathy to communicate so I don't see a reason for their anatomy to include vocal cords. But according to lore they are able to speak undercommon and deep speech.

I thought they were based on squid; and that they had a beak for a mouth "under" the tentacles. Parrots can speak and whistle....so that's my suggested theory.

Maybe the Absolute and the Adversary are one and the same person?

I supposed the brain gets squashed so not much memories there

If so, it would be more fitting to call her the Upgrade, since the Absolute doesn't seem to differ that much from normal illithids in her goals and methods. She simply has more advanced tools at her disposal.