Baldur’s Gate 3 has higher word count than Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings

Baldur's Gate 3 contains three times more words than J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, and the cutscene runtime is twice as long as HBO's Game of Thrones!

Larian Studios executive says that the multi-award-winning role-playing game Baldur’s Gate 3 already has enough content in its base game that there’s no need for the company to release a downloadable content expansion pack.

It is common for developers to release DLC expansions to build up their games for years after their release. However, Larian Studios founder Swen Vincke said during a Game Developers Conference panel on Friday that they don’t plan to release additional content through DLCs for Baldur’s Gate 3.

As for a sequel, Vincke also added that there are currently no plans to develop a Baldur’s Gate 4 despite the apparent popularity of the third installment in the franchise.

Explaining their decision to avoid releasing DLCs, the BG3 director said that Baldur’s Gate 3 contains more than three times the word count of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.

That would be the equivalent of roughly 1.365 million words and around 140 hours of cutscenes, as all three books in Lord of the Rings had a total word count of 455,125 words.

As for video content, Vincke quantified the cutscenes in BG3 as twice the runtime of HBO’s long-running Game of Thrones series.

HBO’s adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones books clocked in 70 hours and 14 minutes throughout the eight seasons of the series.

Indeed, this would be enough to keep people occupied for years playing the RPG, which won the Game of the Year award from The Games Awards in December of last year.

Baldur’s Gate 3 swept the awards ceremony with 9 recognitions, including Best Player’s Voice, Best Score/Soundtrack, Best RPG, and Best Studio/GameDirection. It also won the Best Multiplayer Game and Best Narrative awards as well.