Baldur's Gate 3's Length Compared to Other RPGs

Source: Larian Studios.

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Developers of Baldur's Gate III were to said to have gone a bit overboard with the development of the project and, as a result, we will have to spend a lot of time delving into the secrets of the game. It only begs the question: whether the 75-100 hours needed to complete the third Baldur's Gate is really that much compared to other classic RPGs?

Baldur's Gate 3 and Larian's promises

The easiest way to check this is to compare the time it takes to complete the game - both one-time and with learning all its secrets. To do this, we will use the statistics collected on HowLongToBeat.

There is only one "but": in the case of BG 3 for the time being, we only have the developers' estimates. Of course, developers usually have a good idea of the length of their titles, but they also happen to underestimate the players.

1. For example, Techland was right regarding the time required to complete Dying Light 2 Stay Human: about 20 hours (average according to HowLongToBeat is 24 hours).
2. However, in the case of the so-called "completionist" (i.e., learning all the content of the game), the developers missed by 80 hours, regardless of the interpretation. HLTB's average for total completion of DL2 is 100 hours, and "only" about 49 hours are needed to reach the completion when completing all side missions.

In addition, it falls to note that the statistics from HowLongtoBeat are based on voluntary entries of players. For some games, not much time is given, especially in the context of - let's be honest - a rather niche genre of classic RPGs. As a result, it's better to take some allowance for these statistics.

The issue of "speedruns" is not even worth mentioning. Suffice it to mention that in the case of Fallout the fastest "sprinters" need less than 6 minutes to complete the game (or less than a minute, if we're talking about a bad ending; via speedrun.com). Anyway, already at the time of Baldur's Gate III's early access launch, players managed to complete the game in 7 minutes, and not much later even this record was beaten.

Therefore, treat this text as a curiosity rather than a definitive comparison of Baldur's Gate III with other titles. The time for that will come after the game leaves early access.

Baldur's Gate 3 is an RPG marathon

With all this in mind, here's how the estimated length of Baldur's Gate III compares against the series and a selection of classic RPGs.

Times given after HowLongtoBeat.com (excluding the full version of Baldur's Gate III).

When Larian Studios first mentioned the length of BG 3 (even before it was released in Early Access of Steam), it was expected to take roughly 40 hours to complete the main storyline, and the entire game - approximately 100 hours. Thus, the game's length wouldn't stand out too much compared to previous installments in the series and classic RPGs in general.

However, now the third Baldur's Gate promises to be a small marathon against the competition.

1. None of the included games requires more than 60 hours for the player to see the end credits, including the first two installments of Baldur's Gate.
2. Quite a few of these titles can also be "maxed out" in less than 100 hours, with two exceptions being the complete releases of two games that have three DLCs each: the sequel to Pillars of Eternity and the second Pathfinder. The third is the expanded remaster of Baldur's Gate 2, also incorporating the content of the expansion, plus four new characters with their own story threads.

Comparison of the average time required to complete selected RPGs.Source: own / HowLongtoBeat.com

Baldur's Gate like Dungeons & Dragons

Probably there will be players who, seeing such a huge difference, expect that the developers simply overdid it with artificially riddling the game with additional content. This may be so, but - even leaving aside the aforementioned issue of comparing estimates with actual stats - the length of Baldur's Gate 3 is supposed to be primarily the result of giving players the opportunity to make real meaningful decisions instead of just the "illusion of choice."

Six years and 400 people - that's how long it took Baldur's Gate 3 to fulfill the developers' dreams. Source: Larian Studios.

Already a year ago, Swen Vincke - president of Larian Studios - mentioned (via IGN) that BG 3 is a project that is a dream come true for the team: An RPG to give the players (almost) as much freedom as tabletop Dungeons & Dragons and other games of this type. This was no easy task, and in the end Larian had to significantly increase the scale of the project, and thus the size of the of the team working on it.

We will still have to wait for verification of the developers' promises. Baldur's Gate III will debut on August 3 on PC, and on September 6 on the PlayStation 5 console.