Baldur’s Gate 3 players have spent more time playing than human civilisation has existed

HomeNewsBaldur’s Gate 3

Baldur’s Gate 3 players have spent more time playing than human civilisation has existedAnd nearly more time making characters than the wheel has been around (ha, ha)

And nearly more time making characters than the wheel has been around (ha, ha)

Image credit:Larian

Baldur’s Gate 3 character Astarion about to kiss a bear.

Baldur’s Gate 3is pretty popular, it turns out. So popular that more collective human time has been spent chatting up hot vampires, shagging bears and being turned into sentient cheese than human civilisation has existed for.

To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settings

Baldur’s Gate 3 makers Larian dropped a bag of holding’s worth of stats in the wake of the Dungeons & Dragons CRPG’slatest - and biggest - patcharriving last week, just after the game marked its four-month anniversary on PC.

It’s also a good few millennia before dogs were domesticated (23,000 BC) and human civilisation as a whole began to emerge from the prehistoric era around 10,000 BC. In other words, a while.

💀 Number of you who started an Honour Mode playthrough? 158'000🩻 Of those players, 464 parties have made it to the end already. 34'000 of you…have already met your match. Better luck next time.pic.twitter.com/sLZ53yxHS4— Larian Studios (@larianstudios)December 5, 2023

Of that massive number, 8,196 years alone have been spent just in Baldur’s Gate 3’s character creator - with pretty much everyone (94% of players, to be precise) making a custom character. Jumping back eight millennia puts us before the Bronze Age, around the literal invention of the wheel, the first board game and the adoption of writing, FYI.

While most players seem to have preferred making their own character, those who went with Larian’s pre-made ‘origin’ characters favoured Gale, with the internet’s favourite bloodsucker Astarion second.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Larian Studios

A close up of a wheel of cheese in Baldur’s Gate 3, the player character suffering under a polymorph spell

If you preferred to romance those characters, there’s a good chance you ended up with top romance pick Shadowheart, who had over half of players reach the final act of her arc. After the cleric, Karlach and Lae’zel took players’ hearts.

Disappointingly, only a third of players apparently take Halsin up on the offer of shagging an actual, literal bear, whereas 66% asked the shapeshifting druid to ditch the furry form.

Far fewer players have finished Baldur’s Gate 3’s new hardcore Honour mode, with just 464 parties making it through the extremely challenging difficulty since it was added just shy of a week ago. Over 34,000 players have died trying in more than 158,000 playthroughs, though.