Most Baldur’s Gate 3 players still haven’t finished a single playthrough

A screenshot featuring Raphael in Baldur's Gate 3.Larian Studios

Baldur’s Gate 3 has celebrated its first anniversary, achieving unprecedented acclaim and millions of sales. Despite this, plenty of people have never seen any of the game’s endings and are still wandering around the Forgotten Realms.

It’s common for interest in a video game to die down after a few months if not weeks. This is par for the course for single-player games, while it means death for live-service and multiplayer titles.

Baldur’s Gate 3 hasn’t seen a slowdown in interest despite being around for a year. If anything, the fandom has only grown more rabid, tearing the game apart for secrets and experimenting with all kinds of unusual character builds.

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Despite the game’s overwhelming popularity, a surprising number of players have never actually completed Baldur’s Gate 3. A thread on the BG3 Reddit discusses that only 22.2% of Steam players have finished the story.

“I have friends who have played 10 playthroughs…..to Act II,” one user wrote, while another said, “I hear a lot of folks also get stuck on the character creation level.”

The length of the final Act also has something to do with it. “Yeah, I was surprised by this but also not;” one player explained, “Act III is a beast and I always end up abandoning a playthrough then and starting a new one. That said, it does feel good to finish the entire game at least once!”

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“I’m literally at the last battle but I can’t bring up the courage to actually finish my game yet,” one player lamented, “I feel like it’s ending and that hurts my feelings.”

It’s not just the ending that lots of players haven’t seen, as nearly 10% of people haven’t even escaped the Nautiloid. Some people just can’t bring themselves to finish building a character.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is a massive game, one that involves a huge time investment to complete. The reason the low completion number is surprising is due to how dedicated the fans are to the game’s characters and stories, despite never experiencing the whole thing for themselves.

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Then again, maybe it’s just Act I and II they’re in love with. The city of Baldur’s Gate has a way of causing people to lose themselves on its streets, to the point where fans would rather hit the “New Game” button than make it to the credits.