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"

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.

Considering the scale of development, I can understand his sentiment. When you're dealing with generating hundreds of hours of gameplay in a huge gameworld, the actual numbers can be a hindrance, because they can make you a little too aware of just how big the project is.

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.

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