A few days ago, Larian Studios made headlines when one of the studio’s writers told Fextralife that Baldur’s Gate 3 would feature 17,000 variations of the ending. It was immediately clear that the claim couldn’t be exactly taken at face value, as it would be completely impossible for any developer to craft 17K unique endings.
Still, Baldur’s Gate 3 writer Adam Smith clarified with Gamesradar exactly what that means and in doing so, also explained how the game’s narrative is structured.
We’re not going to say this is a world that changes with every choice you make. What we are going to say – and it’s true – is that the characters react to every choice you make. Everything you click will cause something to happen. Sometimes it’s small, sometimes it’s subtle, but it all means something from the very first clicks.
It’s not that you start at point A and then you keep branching and branching and branching. That’s often how people think of it, but the problem with that would be that if I make a choice, then I branch over here, and suddenly I’m over here and I can’t get back.
The narrative of Baldur’s Gate 3 is more like this big spiderweb – the end of the game is the center, and the start of the game is the outer edge. So you’re always heading towards the same point, and what happens when you get there is very different. But it interweaves, so you’re kind of dancing between plots.
Smith also talked about the implications whenever an important character gets killed. While it is still possible to get some information out of them through spells like Speak to the Dead, it’s just not the same thing as having them alive and about, which complicates things for the writers. Ultimately, though, Baldur’s Gate 3 will just roll with it, even if you decide to kill nearly everyone.
The 17K endings claim isn’t the first indication that Baldur’s Gate 3 will be gargantuan by the standards of a cRPG. Larian Studios already revealed that there are over 170 hours of cinematics, a script 2 million words long, 12 classes, 46 subclasses, and over 600 spells.
In fact, Larian CEO Swen Vincke recently expressed the studio’s eagerness to find out if there truly is a market for a triple-A cRPG of this scope.
It won’t be long until he finds out. Baldur’s Gate 3 is out on August 3rd for PC and September 6th for PlayStation 5.
