An item's description that's subject to growth or refinement. This can go hand-in-hand with the item itself evolving, like an Evolving Attack or Evolving Weapon, giving you more information so new abilities don't become Hidden Mechanics just because you forgot what the game said after not playing for a while.
It's important to be sure whether an item evolved instead of replaced by a Equipment Upgrade though. If the name changed, it's more of a replacement than an evolution.
Speaking of, it's an Anti-Frustration Feature for Hidden Mechanics to reveal their description if they were hidden beforehand. But this trope also applies if it's an Event Flag that causes a description to grow by changing the item.
However, the revealing of an Item Compendium or Monster Compendium's entries don't count, unless you can reveal at least the name of the item first, and then the description is revealed later. Speaking of Monster Compendium, information might be gotten by an Enemy Scan ability that can be improved.
Sometimes this mechanic is to make Level Grinding more rewarding than just numerical Experience Points, getting a more emotional reward of more Flavor Text to read as well.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Digimon V-Tamer 01: The purpose of the Digivice 01 was to facilitate non-verbal communication, but Taichi and Neo quickly learn how to gather enemy data with it. Since it's not directly built for that, though, they have to actively scan various enemy actions on a case-by-case basis to get the full story.
- The Pokédex in Pokémon the Series scans monsters and pulls up a database written by either the main series professors or a Prof. Westwood who made a one-off appearance. In the Sinnoh arc, it was revealed it could identify the stats and moves of individual caught Pokémon, evolving their description one-by-one basically.
Video Games
- Cassette Beasts: Seeing a monster gives knowledge of its existence, but it needs to be caught then levelled enough to see all the info.
- Castlevania: Circle of the Moon: The DSS Spells' effects aren't described until the player uses them, even if it's obvious in the status menu for Status Buffs. Meaning getting a Random Drop for a Luck Stat boost, or Regenerating Mana for an Intelligence boost.
- Curse of the Dead Gods: Filling out all the information of an enemy or boss' Bestiary entry requires you to kill it a certain number of times, and colorizing the image requires you to do something even harder, usually killing them without getting hit.
- Deathstate: Monsters need some condition to be fulfilled to fully research them and get a complete description of them in the Monster Compendium, instead of just a basic one after being killed / encountered.
- Devil May Cry 1: The monster descriptions (called "Enemy Files") are individually unlocked upon encountering a demon, but their contents grow more detailed as you fight said demon. Just like a built-in strategy guide, the Files record information and provide tips about every attack the demons use against you, and vice versa if Dante's attacks have a unique interaction against them.
- Fate/Samurai Remnant: Some descriptions get evolved, while others get inverted, a.k.a devolved, losing information:
- The character profiles in the Logbook get more information added to them as the player progresses through the routes and completes digressions, signifying Iori learning more about his allies, enemies, and himself.
- After enough of her Digressions have been completed, Circe hijacks her logbook entries to go on nonsensical tangents about how awesome kykeon is, rewrite her character profile to excise the unsavory details of her backstory, and try to coerce the reader (Iori) into giving up on the Waxing Moon Ritual and taking up her offer of a fulfilling career as a piglet.
- Final Fantasy XII: The bestiary entry for each of the regular monsters consists of 2 parts — the 1st part unlocks for encountering the monster and the 2nd unlocks for slaying a certain number of them.
- Genshin Impact: To avoid Interface Spoilers from defeating a Weekly Boss early for materials and viewing their biographies before having gotten to that point in the story, later bosses only have a short description when viewed in the Archive if defeated early. The full description is only unlocked once they've been encountered in the story proper.
- Hades: Achilles' Codex contains entries on the characters, creatures and items that Zagreus encounters throughout the underworld. As Zagreus encounters, gathers, speaks to, or slays the subjects of the Codex, he is able to access Achilles' knowledge more deeply, and the entries become more complete.
- Have a Nice Death (2022): Most entries in the Pitbook start off incomplete, but completing a certain task (e.g killing a certain number of a specific enemy, upgrading a weapon to max level, talking to an NPC enough times) reveals more information in the entry.
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom: Whenever a piece of armor is upgraded by a Great Fairy, its description is updated to mention it.
- Pillars of Eternity: Soulbound weapons require their wielder to achieve specific objectives, gradually unlocking both combat bonuses and their backstory.
- Pokémon: In the games, seeing a Pokemon puts some of their information in the Pokedex, but they need to be caught to get all the info.
- Pressure: Whenever you die to a monster, you're given a file on it in the form of Classified Information, with much of the document redacted by black lines. The more you die to a monster, the more info you can unlock until the document is almost entirely unredacted.
- The Respawn Banter: When interacting with the Winged Humanoid statues before the sword:
- Before doing anything else:
It's the statue of the life goddess, responsible for bringing new life to the world.I bet it's a real cushy job!
- After the first death:
It's the statue of the life goddess, responsible for bringing new life to the world.I don't know if it was the influence of this statue, but I just dreamed of her.Weird.
- Before doing anything else:
- Returnal: Monsters need a certain number of kills to fully research them and get a complete description of them in the Monster Compendium.
- SINoALICE: Each weapon comes with brief description of its lore, divided into four sections. Only the first section is visible when the weapon is first obtained, and the other sections are unlocked by expending duplicate copies of the weapon to increase its level cap.
- Splatoon 3: Side Order: The game has databases for both the Color Chips (which strengthen your abilities) and the Jelleton enemies. When you first use a type of chip or defeat a type of Jelleton, the databases include a description from Acht on how to best use it or defeat it, respectively. Getting multiples of the same chip in one go and defeating a certain amount of Jeletons will unlock further hints in the description from Marina and Pearl (the exceptions are chips that can only work once and the first boss that can never be repeated within a run, in which cases the full description will be unlocked immediately).
- Standstill Girl: Descriptions in the Glossary update as Alice learns new information, such as Tiska's when talking to him outside the Info Hut, changing from the following to something more wordy:
Tiska: A human boy serving
as warden of time.
A sort of caretaker to Alice. - Tales of Symphonia: Monsters need to be scanned by Raine unless that's impossible, to get a complete description of them, otherwise they'll be missing their locations and the loot they have. So the best case is getting it all the first time, or the information evolves due to not scanning them with Raine the first time.
Visual Novels
- Ace Attorney: Each piece of evidence in the games has an entry in the court record or organizer with a short description. As new things are discovered about the evidence, these descriptions may change over time.