D&D: Clear Out Those Hard Drives, ‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ is How Many Gigabytes?!

And you thought Total War: Warhammer 3 was a hefty game. Baldur’s Gate 3 promises to take up 150 gigabytes of your hard drive.

Say what you will, but Baldur’s Gate 3 will certainly be one of the biggest games of the year. Both metaphorically (if one listens to the hype) and literally. An update from developer Larian Studios revealed that the game would take up a lot of space.

But this is because Larian wants Baldur’s Gate 3 to be one of the definitive cRPGs out there. And they’ve employed “rockstar level development” to accomplish this. The game isn’t even out yet and it’s already drawing speculation/comment from other developers who are quick to point out that the circumstances around this game are extremely rare in the industry.

All of which goes to say, here’s hoping Baldur’s Gate 3 ends up being the perfect result of the perfect storm it took to make the development happen. And to look at Larian’s goals, it may very well be.

A big part of the reason the game is so big is because of just how much is crammed into every crevice of the game. Scratching the surface numbers, the game boasts 174 hours of cinematics alone, which is twice the length of all of the seasons of Game of Thrones. Even the bad ones!

The game boasts a newspaper that reflects your choices. And, according to a chat with Baldur’s Gate 3 associate writing lead, “17,000 variations” on the ending. Which is a lot. But presumably, they’re 17,000 variations spread out over a much more digestible number of endings.

Baldur’s Gate 3 – Bigger and Bolder

A big part of the incredible variation comes from the sheer reactiveness of Baldur’s Gate 3. There are many, many dialogue points, some of which can happen in the middle of combat, or that can lead to combat if you’re not careful. Aiding this? The skill check mechanic, where you will be called on to make a check. Failure doesn’t necessarily end the conversation, though it does alter the outcome.

Add in some options for each personality, plus a pass/fail dialogue for the appropriate ones, and you’ve got a recipe for millions of lines to go with those 174 hours of cutscenes. But there are so many choices at every turn.

One of Baldur’s Gate 3’s biggest aims, according to Larian, is to be the definitive RPG character creator. That is, they want you to be able to create the character of your dreams in their game. And with a fairly robust character creator, they’re on their way to doing that.

Of course, this is all sort of bound up in the rules of D&D. But even there, they have a ton of room to play. All in all, Baldur’s Gate 3 is shaping up to be worth every one of those 150 gigabytes.

The only question is, what will you clear out to make room for this behemoth?

Author: J.R. Zambrano

Bell of Lost Souls Staff Writer and DM, J.R. covers RPGs of all stripes and on occasion eats sandwiches. You can ask him about either at [email protected]