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Baldur's Gate 3 contains 174 hours of possible cutscenes and 17,000 ending variations

Guilty_AI

Member
Who has time for this? I didn't even finish P5 due to the length.
I mean, i heard someone who finished the early access build in around 10 minutes. Games has tons of content but the overwhelming majority of it is missable stuff. Kinda how you can just rush to the end in BotW
 

Buggy Loop

Member
Its ending variations. It accounts for stuff like who you romanced between these 9 partners or none, whether you helped a dude who went on to do x famous thing, whose side you picked in this 3 way war or none, etc.

These hypothetical scenarios alone i gave would amount to 80 ending variations already.

Yeah, I’m surprised to see so many peoples not getting it

Just the possibilities of you killing 1, or 2, 3… etc members, or they quit because they don’t like your morals, their own quests, who you helped, who you didn’t, which faction is favorable to you, which are not, who you romanced… etc, it’s a staggering permutation of possibilities on top of probably having very distinct endings story wise.

What this means is that the game will have an ending that takes into account what you did. Such things as the importance of not seeing the dude you backstabbed in act 1 appearing at the ending, you know?

Somehow peoples find a way to turn this into a negative 🤦‍♂️
 

Hendrick's

If only my penis was as big as my GamerScore!
Second most anticipated game this year. Just hope it doesn't feel like a DOS3 clone. I haven't tried early access and have tried to avoid all spoilers.
 

onQ123

Member
At what point does it become too much and they are making a game that 99% of players will never see most of the content which is a total waste of effort and resources?
I think the point is for everyone to have a different experience & not for everyone to play it until they experience everything the game has to offer lol
 

nowhat

Member
I mean, i heard someone who finished the early access build in around 10 minutes. Games has tons of content but the overwhelming majority of it is missable stuff. Kinda how you can just rush to the end in BotW
While I doubt the official "75-100h to finish, 200h for completion" figure, I'm not sure if the early access build is representative of the final game. Seeing as the saves don't carry over and all.
 

Madonis

Member
I imagine we'll see only like 50 or 60 hours of those cutscenes during a regular playthrough. Perhaps even less if you avoid talking to NPCs unless absolutely necessary.

As for the endings...yeah, the math can be confusing. There's likely only about 5, 6 or 7 radically different endings, but with small variables quickly increasing the numbers in a purely technical sense.
 

Guilty_AI

Member
While I doubt the official "75-100h to finish, 200h for completion" figure, I'm not sure if the early access build is representative of the final game. Seeing as the saves don't carry over and all.
They did make very clear the act 1 in the release build will be around 33% bigger than the EA one.

Still, this is not an uncommon design approach for their games, or rpgs in general.
 

Disco Dave

Member
That's way too many endings. How different can they really be?
AE929cp.jpg
 

calistan

Member
marketing the number of endings is worse than the size of the world map imo. im down for 3-4 well crafted endings. im now worried how the plot will keep me playing with that many variations of end game..
Surely it's just extrapolating a giant matrix of minor choices and calling that a 'unique' ending.

Like, you were: Good / Evil / Neutral, you chose Race A / B / C, you were Class X / Y / Z. You befriended this character, you killed that one, you did this side quest and ignored another...

There won't be 17,000 distinct individual outcomes, unless "You become king of the world, with your loyal elf wife at your side" and "You become king of the world, with your loyal bear wife at your side" can be considered massively different. I bet there's a reasonable number of crafted endings with a huge number of insignificant variables.
 

Strangle

Neo Member
You’re thinking of it like a completionist, instead of someone who just uniquely experiences a game for what it is. The developers want the latter. It is highly unlikely you will experience all of the hours and moments listed in one play through or even 2 or 3.

You have to let go of the completionist ideal and just have a good time.

I wish the gaming community had more of this mindset
 

TheInfamousKira

Reseterror Resettler
I've never gotten into Baldur's Gate beyond seeing some cool magazine ads or cultural osmosis, but I gotta say, everything I've read in this thread makes it sound like an experience you can't get anywhere else in gaming.

I mean....I can count the number of games I've played that include bear sex on apparently one finger. In.
 
I wish the gaming community had more of this mindset
True, or at least have this mindset for RPGs with multiple choices.

I played games like Witcher 3, Mass Effect, and Skyrim just once. I made the moral decisions that I personally felt were right, which meant sometimes bad option, sometimes good option. Sometimes I made mistakes, but I kept trucking along because those mistakes made the games more interesting to me.

Most completionists would instead do one playthrough all good, one playthrough all bad, and maybe a third playthrough selecting middle of the road options they never chose before. It just sounds off when you think about it because it makes the main character look more robotic or sociopathic in nature.
 

Guilty_AI

Member
It's entirely possible Playstation will have the better reviewed console-exclusive RPG releasing on September 6.
I wouldn't count on this being a console exclusive for long tho. Xbox version is fully in development and they're just figuring out the Series S split screen.
 

thuGG_pl

Member
How can a story be any good if there is no story? It’s generated by variables.
Is my character or the other character this or that? It’s whatever you want it to be and I don’t see the appeal. But I guess that’s a different topic :p
And who told you that?
17000 endings is just possible states that you influenced the world during playthrough.
Real endings, meaningful ones will be much much less.
I find it strange that such things needs to be explained.
 
I wouldn't count on this being a console exclusive for long tho. Xbox version is fully in development and they're just figuring out the Series S split screen.

I've read that as well, kind of an inadvertent / fortunate temporary console exclusive for Sony. If it does review well they should lean into that a bit though.

After all this hype though I watched some gameplay videos and it does definitely not seem like my type of game.
 

Mercador

Member
"87 bazillion guns"

Seriously, if you count every small variation of each decision, amount stacks quickly. Not sure this article will help the game with those bold statements, people will just be disappointed when there's actually ~12 endings (that's quite a lot though).
 

amigastar

Member
I mean, it will probably be fun , but this would 100% be a game I never finish and just give up on 1/3rd of the way through.
That would not be advisable since you enter full Baldurs Gate City in Act 3 but the devs already said it can be played in Chunks.
 

nowhat

Member
"87 bazillion guns"

Seriously, if you count every small variation of each decision, amount stacks quickly. Not sure this article will help the game with those bold statements, people will just be disappointed when there's actually ~12 endings (that's quite a lot though).
The thing is though, by the time you've completed something like this (assuming it is really is as huge as the devs have said it is), you've spent quite a bit of time with various characters. And while there may only be a handful of "actual" endings, there will a lot more of "where they are now" type of cards.

And that's fine by me. If I've invested dozens of hours into a game, I want to know what my companions are up to. Even if it is just a static image and a bunch of text/voiceover.
 

Alebrije

Member
Hummm??? that amount of endings are a bait..will end like those clone pirate cartdiges that claim have 500 games and most of them are small variations of the original.

2dfa5196-c430-11e5-870f-e72945a43f4e.jpg
 
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Fredrik

Member
I wouldn't count on this being a console exclusive for long tho. Xbox version is fully in development and they're just figuring out the Series S split screen.
He’s still right though, no release date is announce on Xbox, might come next year.

But the release strategy is kinda perfect tbh. I bet MS don’t mind the Xbox delay, they want the RPG fans to play Starfield.
And I bet Sony don’t mind the delay til september 6 either, they don’t want RPG fans to look too closely on what Xbox gamers are playing.

On PC the release date is less optimal, different game but I know I want to focus on Starfield and doubt I would be able to finish BG3 in a month so will probably get it later.
 

StereoVsn

Member
Standalone story, no need to play the old stuff.

Though they're still amazing games on their own right, so no problem to consider playing them in the future.
It's probably worth watching a YouTube 10-15 min summary... Or just play the games, they are excellent.
 

StereoVsn

Member
This is the way.

Don’t think I’ll start before Starfield but after that can’t wait to play this game! Maybe I can go parallell, they’re very different.
You can just start Starfield a few months post initial release. Gives enough time for some big fixing from Bethesda and modders. 😉
 

Kokoloko85

Member
Ok, sure.
I meant people complaining they were a bad thing with FF16. Not My opinion. Pretty sure you could understand that with the…. At the end of the sentence
Ill put a question mark from now on for people who dont understand……

And deleting half the sentence doesnt make it point lol
 
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