Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Creature Codex (potential minor, semi-spoiler?)

So ... Larian just posted something i find interesting.
As im sure you all are aware, but why not talk about it?


Source: https://twitter.com/baldursgate3/status/1637861823935307785/photo/1

And besides questioning why Twitter uses some incredibly weird format that cant be used for img tags around here, nor the picture can be saved and uploaded without changing it ...

I wonder!

Should we hope for Creature Codex?
Would it look like this?
Would such format be acceptable for you?
And if not ... what other information would you add, or remove, or what would you change in general?

Speaking for myself, it looks great!
But i gues i wouldnt mind if it would contain some game information, like resistances, attacks, and stuff.

Btw small joke for you:
I swear to God, if anyone starts asking about loot again, before I finish describing the scene, I will create a monster masquerading as a chest of gold!
*Gary Gygax ... probably.

I like creature codexes. I don't think BG3 needs one specifically, due to the robust "examine" option. It might more sense to expand on that screen, than add seperate codex, somewhere else in the UI. Of course, once you have nice character sheet for each monster, there is no reason NOT to compile them somewhere for future reference.

Or ... we can have nice looking codex ... and when we examine monster, it would just open the corresponding page?

But in that case, maybe renaming "Examine" would be in order as well.
"What is this?" Seems like good substitute.

Why stop at a creature codex? I want a weapons, armors, people, places and events codex too!
Although this one looks more like a meme for social networks like so many content posted by Larian.

Okay, I adore this! It's so fun and funny! I wish they had been putting stuff like this out from the beginning and I'll be so disappointed if this is the only one they release. I wouldn't want a creature codex in this style necessarily, but I think having one could be fun just as a way to learn more lore. Plus this passage almost manages to charm me out of my ever-burning hatred for mimics. I was a theatre kid in high school and I respect his craft. I shall be sure to let him know before I electrocute him with a lightningbolt.

If Marlon Mimic isn't an Origin character, we riot

All for a Creature Codex (and other stuff Codices too) that builds up as we encounter stuff in the world.

And Marlon Mimic made me giggle.

But I would want in-game content to be more serious. Probably. Actually, I could probably come round to a more light-hearted approach, at least for some entries.

+1

By the way, such a nice representation of the items including flavor text in the form as with the codex would also please me very much. That looks a thousand times better than currently and is much easier to read.

as long as everything isn't just a joke, I love the idea.

Anything new about this Codex idea? I didn't face it in-game yet...

I also want to suggest an in-game statistic about kill counters like in the predecessors:

I always loved the idea of a codex (not only creature codex) as long as it serves as a suplementary role, not basically an introduction to a world (as it was done eg. in Pillars of Eternity). I think Dragon Age, Mass Effect or The Witcher 3 did the Codex right, even if each did it a bit differently.

To be honest, currently the inspect button is practically useless, or at least seriously underdeveloped. I'd love to see it as a means to read a more detailed lore info, a much longer flavour text about items, creatures etc. All those details could also go into one Codex for convenience. To spice things even more, it would be great if this additional info could be get after successful roll (eg. History or Arcana), of type depending of the inspected target.

Another thing that bothers me in Larian games in general (not only BG3) are lackluster books. They are often very short, containing only necessary info, without any interesting world details. It doesn't need to be as long as often was in TES games, but something akin BG1/BG2 (which IMO is still the best execution of lorebooks I've seen) would be perfect. And of course all books could be neatly categorized in Codex (so you could read them even after selling the book).

Something new here?