Larian Studios has recently announced that it will take about 75-100 hours to complete Baldur’s Gate 3, and even more time to uncover all the secrets. Is this a lot compared to other classic role-playing games? Jakub Blazhevich, the editor of the Polish gaming site GRY-Online, decided to find out by comparing the time required to complete the game – both on average and with the exploration of all the secrets. For this, he used statistics gathered on the HowLongToBeat website.
Of course, it should be noted that in the case of BG 3, only estimates from the developers are available. Yes, developers usually have a good idea of the duration of their games, but sometimes they underestimate the players.
Techland, for example, was right in estimating that it would take about 20 hours to complete Dying Light 2 Stay Human (the average according to the HowLongToBeat website is 24 hours).
However, they missed the mark with 80 hours for exploring all the game content, regardless of interpretation. The average HLTB completion time for DL 2 is 100 hours, and completing all side missions with the main story takes about 49 hours.
Furthermore, it should be noted that the HowLongtoBeat statistics are based on voluntary player data. Therefore, this statistics should not be taken as the ultimate truth. Bearing this in mind, here’s how the estimated duration of Baldur’s Gate 3 compares to the series and several classic role-playing games:
the second column – Average time required to complete the game (Any%), the third column – Average time required for completion of the game (Completionist).
Even before the release of BG 3 in Early Access, Larian Studios estimated the main storyline to be around 40 hours, and the entire game to be about 100 hours. In other words, based on those estimates, the game’s duration wouldn’t stand out much compared to previous installments of the series and other classic role-playing games in general. However, that’s not the case now.
As we can see, none of the games on the list require more than 60 hours before the player sees the credits, including the Baldur’s Gate duology.
Many games can be completed in less than 100 hours. The exception is the complete editions of two games that have three DLCs: the sequel to Pillars of Eternity and the second part of Pathfinder. The third one is the Enhanced Edition of Baldur’s Gate 2, which also includes expansion content, plus four new characters with their own storylines.
Undoubtedly, there will be gamers who, seeing such a huge difference, will conclude that the developers simply overestimated and “padded” the game with additional content. Perhaps that’s the case, but – even if we set aside the aforementioned question of comparing estimates to real statistics – the duration of Baldur’s Gate 3 should primarily be the result of giving players the opportunity to make meaningful decisions rather than just an illusion of choice.
A year ago, Sven Vincke – the head of Larian Studios – mentioned that BG 3 is a dream project for the team: a role-playing game that will give players (almost) as much freedom as paper Dungeons & Dragons and other tabletop role-playing games. It was a challenging task, and in the end, Larian had to significantly increase the scale of the project and, consequently, the size of the team working on it.
Article from www.playground.ru rnrn