We already know that Baldur's Gate 3 is going to be an absolute behemoth of an RPG when it launches out of Early Access next month, one that the majority of us will spend the rest of year trying to complete. Larian Studios itself has been boasting about the game's impressive length, claiming earlier this year that the game will have over 174 hours of cinematics, which just so happens to be twice the length of the entire Game of Thrones series.
Another massive number is being thrown around now, this time all to do with the game's endings. Those familiar with the series will know Baldur's Gate 3 has many choices you can make throughout the game, each one determining certain events that take place and so on. This obviously leads to different endings depending on the decisions you make, but Larian has revealed that Baldur's Gate 3 has a whopping 17,000 ending variations.
This info comes from YouTuber FextraLife (thanks GamesRadar), who explains that Chrystal Ding, one of the game's lead writers, revealed that she's been working on Baldur's Gate 3's ending for 6 months, and that there are 17,000 different ending variations for players to experience. This was backed up by Larian's director of publishing Michael Douse, who simply tweeted "Oh no they found the 17,000 number".
Before you go shouting about how having 17,000 different endings is impossible and that it's likely just referring to minor background changes in each ending, Larian has made it very clear that this is the case. A lot of them will be very minor differences, but it still shows how massive Baldur's Gate 3 will be when 17,000 people could see something different, even if they're extremely small changes.
However, it sounds like the number of major ending differences may be quite high too, as FextraLife explains that Chrystal Ding herself doesn't actually know how many there are. If a lead writer that is working on the ending of a game is struggling to tell you how many major ending variations there are off the cuff, then chances are there's quite a few, which wouldn't be a surprise considering how much Baldur's Gate 3 takes your decisions into account.
Thankfully, we don't have to wait too long to experience one of these endings for ourselves, as Baldur's Gate 3 finally launches out of Early Access on August 3, with the PlayStation version of the game launching a month later on September 6. Considering how many games are coming out in the next two months, I'll be lucky to see even one ending at this rate.