Baldur’s Gate 3 and the 17,000 endings: Screenwriter Adam Smith clarifies the statement

Larian Studio’s statement yesterday about Ben’s existence caused quite a stir 17,000 different endings in Baldur’s Gate 3But it was more than that Explained and illustrated by Adam Smiththe first responsible for the narration in the game.

As was easily understood, the number does not refer precisely to the amount of different endings that can be reached in Baldur’s Gate 3, but rather to the amount of possible variations You can follow the story to get to the end.

basically,”You will reach the same pointBut what happens before you get there can be very different” from game to game, Smith explained. In essence, the application of the “branching narrative” principle is typical of classic RPGs.

In the case of Baldur’s Gate 3, there will be 17,000 possible combinations to build your own story, which will likely be different from many others. However, this does not seem to mean that there are actually many different endings from one another.

Counting around the total amount of Changes and permutations The narrative can receive them based on the players’ choices: these can relate to the fact of encountering one mission rather than another, addressing it in one way rather than another or meeting a character and making it into the party or not.

Baldur’s Gate 3: History is like a spider’s web

So the amount of possible combinations becomes very large. Smith invites us to see Baldur’s Gate 3’s narrative as one world Wide Web: The center of this is the ending, which everyone leans towards, but the canvas around it is made up of all the possible narrative lines that could be built from choices in the game.

In this way, the 17,000 endings become rather 17,000 viable paths to getting to the end, which in itself probably wouldn’t change much dramatically. Director Sven Vieke made an example of this when he stated that the 170 hours of footage would not be seen all in one game, but would depend on the paths chosen.