Standard Baldur’s Gate 3 playthrough will take 75 to 100 hours, Larian says

This dungeon is large enough to house all of the dragons

Swen Vincke of Larian, the studio behind the Divinity series, has just told IGN that Baldur’s Gate 3 will be huge. Vincke says the team is seeing one regular playthrough taking from 75 to 100 hours, and a run where you do everything there is to do will take about 200 hours.

He also says that players going for multiplayer runs could see it run for over a year, as players organize regular sessions similar to a tabletop D&D campaign.

In fact, they made the game with multiplayer sessions in mind. Like classic Baldur’s Gate, this one is divided into chapters. Everybody knows that fitting games and real life into the same schedule is tough, so many will be glad to know that players will be able to drop in and out of sessions without keeping the campaign in an endless cliffhanger.

We can’t yet fully attest to Baldur’s Gate 3’s quality as a multiplayer title, but if Divinity 2 is anything to go by, then yes, multiplayer will be a fun way to play it.

What’s making it this big?

The key to D&D’s longevity is the freedom it provides, and the replayability that naturally comes with it. As we’ve previously reported, Baldur’s Gate 3 will feature over 600 different spells and 7 playable Origin characters at launch. Anyone not phased by that will get the option to create their own character. That’ll allow players to pick between 11 playable races, 31 subraces, 12 classes, and 46 subclasses.

And Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t only huge when it comes to stuff you get to do

The Witcher 3 made headlines in 2015 when we learned that its script was as long as four regular-sized books. That was an unprecedented feat back in the day, one that Baldur’s Gate 3 absolutely dwarfs with its 170 hours of cinematics and a cinematic dialog script three times longer than the three Lord Of The Rings novels put together.

The PC version of Baldur’s Gate 3 arrives on August 3, a month earlier than originally announced to avoid facing off against other big releases like Starfield. The PS5 version will come out on September 6. There’s still no release window for an Xbox version.

For more news about Baldur’s Gate 3, tune in to Larian’s Panel From Hell: Release Showcase on July 7.

Tiago Manuel

Tiago is a freelancer who used to write about video games, cults, and video game cults. He now writes for Destructoid in an attempt to find himself on the winning side when the robot uprising comes.

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