Journal Structure Overview

This page provides an overview of the hierarchical structure of the journal. For more on the journal, see the pages linked out in Introduction to the Journal.

Overview

The journal uses the following hierarchical structure:

• Category
  • Quest
    • Objective
      • Steps
    • Subquest (optional)
      • Subquest Objective
        • Subquest Steps

In the game, the quest journal is separated into two sections:

• On the left, there’s a list of categories (e.g. "Companions") with quests (e.g. "The Wizard of Waterdeep"), each of which may have a number of subquests.
• On the right, there's a list of objectives (e.g. "End the conflict.") with steps for a quest (or subquest) (e.g. "Kagha plans to seal [...]"). Their order of appearance is most recent (top) to oldest (bottom).

The quest journal structure in Baldur's Gate 3.

Categories

Categories are used for bundling related quests together. Each category has a sorting priority that determines the order in which these categories appear in the UI.

It's possible to change a quest's category in runtime through an Osiris call in script, for example if a quest starts in one region and continues in a different one, or to send closed quests to the “Completed” category.

Quests

A quest is an adventure with a clear end-goal and multiple steps to reach this end-goal. Each quest has a unique ID and an objective-like title that portrays the end-goal of the quest (e.g. "Remove the Parasite"). A quest can belong to one situation or span across multiple situations.

Quests have a complex structure and usually span across multiple screens and/or require multiple interactions. Situations that are resolved within a screen or a single dialogue don’t require a quest. However, due to the many ways a player can complete a quest, in some cases, they may find a shortcut through a quest and solve it instantly – for instance, they may have found the required item before being asked for it.

Each quest contains a number of objectives with individual steps, and may also contain a number of subquests. Subquests are optional quests that relate to their parent quest, and are used for presenting optional or alternative goals that may help (or alter) the main end-goal of the parent quest they relate to. From a data perspective, subquests are just quests that have a parent. Subquests can’t have their own subquests.

Objectives

Objectives guide the player towards their next goal to progress a quest. Each objective has a priority, and its value is unique within a quest. A quest has only one active objective, and it is always the objective with the highest priority.

All other displayed objectives, and all their quest steps, will be greyed out in the journal. These objectives are technically considered completed, but in the player-facing journal we present them as inactive (greyed out), since the player may skip through them without actually achieving their goal (or even “fail” the objective).

There’s no way to unlock an objective itself; instead, objectives are determined by the quest steps (see Steps below) that are unlocked. Each quest step has an objective attached to it, and when a quest step is unlocked, it is displayed for the player alongside its objective. Multiple steps may refer to the same objective, in which case they will be bundled together in the UI. If a quest step is unlocked and it has a higher-priority objective, that objective will be made the quest's current objective and the previous objective will be marked as completed/inactive.

Quest objectives can have map markers assigned to them. See Working with Map Markers for more formation.

Steps

Quest steps are individual updates the player will receive when they perform concrete actions to progress a quest. Quest steps are unlocked either through dialogue via a quest flag (see Using Quest Flags in Dialogue), or through Osiris in script.

Quest steps may have rewards that will be given to the player when unlocked (this includes XP, items, gold, and generated loot ["treasure"]). See Adding Quest Rewards for more information.

As was mentioned in the Objectives section above, each step is tied to an objective and is displayed alongside it in the journal.