After Baldur's Gate 3 player painstakingly calculates how much spoken dialogue Larian included in its D&D RPG, director admits they didn't actually know themselves: "Which I think was for the better"

Baldur's Gate 3 character Nocturne
(Image credit: Larian Studios/PerfectParadox on YouTube)

An entrepreneurial Baldur's Gate 3 player managed to calculate that Larian’s massive RPG contains over 236 hours of recorded dialogue. This amount surprised even the devs, who weren't keeping track, and now the director isn't sure he wanted to know.

Swen Vincke, the CEO of Larian Studios and director of Baldur's Gate 3, responded to the person's stats on Twitter. "We weren't really keeping track which I think was for the better," he says.

Within Baldur's Gate 3, you have multiple characters whose spoken lines amount to close to 15 hours. That’s a lot of scripting, editing, and then recording sessions to organize, on top of all the coordination with the acting talent. It's probably less helpful to have the amount of time at all, and instead simply see it in terms of narrative and player choice and the conversations therein.

It's probably especially good there was no time counter for the actors, since knowing you had to lay down over 14 hours of vocal work can be extremely daunting. Jennifer English, who voices Shadowheart, believes she would've struggled with the gig if she'd taken it earlier in her career, because of how in-depth it is.

Nonetheless, having the timescale laid out drives home just how much work went into Larian's award-winning sequel at every level. Baldur's Gate 3 is a generation-defining release, and one that'll be revisited for years and years to come.

Baldur's Gate 3 Astarion actor thinks putting "the player first over profit" is why the RPG is so successful, urges other devs to do the same: "You're probably gonna sell a s***-ton of copies."

Anthony McGlynn
Contributing Writer

Anthony is an Irish entertainment and games journalist, now based in Glasgow. He previously served as Senior Anime Writer at Dexerto and News Editor at The Digital Fix, on top of providing work for Variety, IGN, Den of Geek, PC Gamer, and many more. Besides Studio Ghibli, horror movies, and The Muppets, he enjoys action-RPGs, heavy metal, and pro-wrestling. He interviewed Animal once, not that he won’t stop going on about it or anything.

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