Baldur's Gate 3 is officially three years old, and developer Larian is ringing in the year ahead with another batch of fascinating, horrifying player data that once again proves there ain't no sicko like an RPG sicko.
In a new Twitter thread, Larian goes over some standout figures from the past three years of all our Faerun fun. Baldur's Gate 3 has crossed 500 million mod downloads, for one, with 13,000 unique mods uploaded across all platforms.
It wouldn't be a Baldur's Gate 3 report without some murder, so Larian quickly delves into the story NPCs who died under mysterious circumstances most frequently. And boy, y'all really hate Zevlor, the Act 1 Tiefling refugee leader. He died more than anybody else, and was the second-most-common victim of Dark Urge players to boot.
"More non-Dark Urge players have managed to murder Alfira than Dark Urge players," Larian adds. "Spawn of Bhaal or not, maybe it’s time to stop pointing fingers." Guilty as charged.
But all that murder pales in comparison to the final stat in the report. A full 9,122 players have outdone every Durge, every thief and cultist, and every last Baldur's Gate ne'er-do-well by playing the game in unspeakable resolutions.
"114 of you decided a 1:1 ratio would be the best way to play," Larian explains, suggesting over 100 players managed to get Baldur's Gate 3 to display on, I don't know, an Apple Watch? A Game Boy? An in-flight airplane media screen? Or, in their defense, perhaps the best screen they had access to.
A further "9,008 of you thought it would be fun to play in a 9:16 aspect ratio," the report adds. That'd be the sort of vertical-oriented resolution commonly used as a third screen in bigger setups, especially for programmers who want to see a lot of code at once, writers or researchers displaying search results or editorial tasks, or possibly Twitch or YouTube streamers popping out their chat view.
It is not a very good resolution for playing games, with the possible exception of games like vertical shoot-'em-ups or the likes of Downwell. Paying Baldur's Gate 3 vertically sounds like going to an IMAX theater just to watch while laying on your side – or worse, Baldur's Gate 3 for the short-form video-rotted brain. That said, I do wonder how some of this was measured. Could split-screen co-op affect the numbers somehow? If someone accidentally booted the game on the wrong monitor, would that factor in? I'm assuming Larian accounted for how long people played with these resolutions. Whatever the case, jail.
