I fucking love games that have the bare minimum of story in order to tell you who you are and what you’re doing

but then the world is so vibey that you want to read more anyway, and it turns out there’s a bunch of optional lore that you can read to learn about anything you want

Mass Effect’s codex system is my absolute favorite example of this because the lore is unlocked as soon as you start wondering about a topic, and you can access it any time in the pause menu with no bullshit

@kasdeya
I spend an awful lot of time even now thinking about their distributed/cached internet system and the Elcor Hamlet

@kasdeya
I'm working on a project with an in-game codex like Mass Effect's. There's one alien species that lacks the usual taboo against cannibalism, and when playing as that species the codex includes tasting notes and wine pairings for sentient species.

@silvermoon82 okay that sounds incredible lol. I’m reminded of Louie’s notes on the various monsters in Pikmin 2. it sounds like a game I’d want to play just for the lore alone

I’m hoping that that species waits for other sophonts to die of natural causes before eating them?

@kasdeya
Yup. Where I am in the lore, the culture believes that if you eat a sentient, then they live on as part of you. Their historic "Great Tragedy" was their first First Contact; the other species was promptly wiped out by an infection, and because nine of them had been eaten, the race was lost to history. Now they travel space, meeting aliens and eating their dead to ensure their survival into the future.

*Murder* is impolite, but if an alien happens to die it's important to eat them.