Does Baldur's Gate 3 Really Have 17,000 Endings?

screenrant.com:

Before its release, promised to include 17,000 different endings — but does it really? There's undeniably a ton of player choice and variation in the game. There are even hundreds of contingencies and failsafes in case players try to break . It wouldn't be too much of a stretch at all to say there are thousands of different ways its story can play out, but 17,000 endings is an entirely different kind of claim.

[Warning: This article contains spoilers for various endings of Baldur's Gate 3.]does have many different endings. This is far from the typical open-ended RPG structure, which typically just includes a good, a bad, and a true/neutral ending to establish consequences for a variety of player choices. Simply put, has way more than three endings. But at the same time, 17,000 different ones is a big promise, and one that few games could truly live up to. Here's how manages it.

In an interview with ahead of 's Game of the Year win, its director Swen Vincke and lead writer Adam Smith addressed the 17,000 endings claim, with Vincke insisting, “.” So, while may not have 17,000 perfectly unique ending sequences, it may be more accurate to say that it has 17,000 subtle permutations of the endings that exist. For one thing, Vincke completely rejected the idea that the ending comes down to a simple choice between two sides: siding with Orpheus or the Emperor in . That's just one of many choices players make leading up to the ending.

It could be argued that the Emperor-Orpheus choice is the «main» variation in 's ending, since it defines how the major conflict of the game comes to a close. But at the same time, there are so many different factors at play in 's ending, and each player responds differently to each aspect of its