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We've got two absolutely massive RPGs on the way in 2023 between Starfield and Baldur's Gate 3, and the latter might be even bigger than previously thought, since developer Larian has revealed that the game has around 17,000 ending variations.
The detail was revealed through a Fextralife video on YouTube, based on an interview with the team at Larian. "I spent some time talking to Chrystal [Ding], who's one of the lead writers on the project, and she's working predominantly on the ending of the game. She's been working on that for six months, just the ending of the game, which is incredible. I asked her 'how many variations of the ending are there?' And she told me that there were 17,000 variations of the ending."
It seems this '17,000' figure is well-known within Larian, as another member of the dev team has expressed some trepidation on Twitter about fans learning the number.
Oh no they found the 17,000 number https://t.co/54zAaGsfYjJuly 17, 2023
Of course, it's important to emphasize that we're talking about '17,000 variations' rather than 17,000 entirely different endings. Fextralife says the devs didn't have an immediate answer for how many main endings the game will feature, though it'll certainly be way fewer than 17,000. But if there are that many variations to reflect the course of numerous small decisions made over the course of the game, you can still color me impressed.
We already know that Baldur's Gate 3 features a ton of writing, with triple the word count of Lord of the Rings and cutscenes that are twice as long as Game of Thrones - though again, that accounts for what you'd see only after a multitude of completionist playthroughs, 17,000 of them, apparently.
Baldur's Gate 3 is the closest we've ever come to a full simulation of D&D, right down to that weird one in your group who wants to have sex with a druid currently in the throes of wild shape.
