Act 3 of 'Baldur's Gate 3' Is Incredibly Long — Or Short, Depending Who You Ask

When Larian Studios' long-awaited Baldur's Gate 3 finally dropped, no one was expecting the behemoth of a game the developers delivered. The game's main story is split into three acts, which each part including a variety of area-specific side-quests for players to complete. Getting through Acts 1 and 2 can seem like a chore for those not used to long story-driven games, but once you've trudged through those two parts, just how long is Act 3? There's a lot of debate, so lets dive in.

As noted by various Reddit posts on the subject, it seems that no one wants to confess just how long they spent on Act 3, as most of the comments on posts about it focus primarily on how long a player spent on the preceding acts. Most players report spending upward of 50 hours on Act 1 and Act 2 individually, though it really depends on how many sidequests a player pursues.

Similarly to the first two parts of Baldur's Gate 3, it seems that Act 3 has a large variation in how long it takes to complete. It's incredibly easy to miss a lot of the content in Act 3, especially if you don't explore certain parts of the map thoroughly, and it seems those who managed to complete the final act quickly skipped a lot of side quests and dialogue options.

The consensus seems to be that Act 3 takes about 40 hours to complete, though others have said that exploring everything the act has to offer will easily take as much time as both of the previous acts combined.

"Maybe I suck but Act 3 is taking me twice as long as the others," Reddit user Sav237 wrote. "I love it. Everything is so in depth and has multiple ways to get to the end. I’ve been [Level] 12 for at least 20 [hours] now and still have so much left to do."

It's no secret that Baldur's Gate 3's sprawling narrative is part of what makes it such an iconic game. Players completing the game with less than 80 hours in a single save file are decidedly rushing through it, and its replay value is part of what earned it Game of the Year.

In total, there are more than 17,000 variations of the ending players can encounter when reaching the end of Baldur's Gate 3. That doesn't mean each ending is entirely unique, as there are a select few choices that decide some of the major components of the game's ending. For example, choosing to side with The Emperor or with Orpheus will produce different results, as will deciding to destroy or control the Netherbrain.

Beyond that, there's a series of small decisions players make that influence what goes into the final scenes before the game's newly-added epilogue. The consensus, though, is that no matter how many times you play through the game, it's incredibly hard to get the same final cutscene twice.

Baldur's Gate 3 is now available for PC, Xbox, and PlayStation.