Baldur’s Gate 3 is a role-playing game with a fair bit of role-playing. That might seem like a prerequisite for the genre, but we all know that isn’t necessarily true of every game that claims to be an RPG. Larian’s mega-hit allows you to pick your race, subrace, class and subclass, and sprinkles unique dialogue for each of these choices throughout the game.
It’s one of the reasons why Baldur’s Gate 3 was such a successful adaptation of Dungeons & Dragons, a tabletop game that gives the player complete freedom to roleplay their character. However, not every choice in Baldur’s Gate 3 offers the same level of role-playing, as some classes and races are more relevant to the main narrative and receive more dialogue options as a result.
Githyanki, Important and Neglected
Statistics regarding dialogue options were compiled shortly after the game was released (recently reposted by SageTegan after the original post was deleted). These stats reveal that githyanki have by far the most unique dialogue options in the game, with over 260 unique lines available to players who choose to play a githyanki. Humans, meanwhile, only have a single-digit number of unique dialogue options.
The situation becomes comical when you consider the player choice statistics released by Larian in August 2023. They reveal that human is one of the most popular choices for players (narrowly losing out to half-elf) while githyanki is the least popular. In other words, there is an inverse relationship between how popular a race is and how much unique dialogue they are afforded.
Players tend to create conventionally attractive characters, which skews player statistics towards human-like races, such as half-elves and well… humans. The githyanki, with their reptilian features, are unpopular for the same reason.
In terms of dialogue, githyanki play a massive role in Baldur’s Gate 3’s main narrative right from the very beginning. The player gets the opportunity to interact with three of the most famous gith ever, and the githyanki subplot is subsumed by the main plot towards the end of the game. It makes perfect sense that a githyanki character would have a plethora of unique dialogue options, as the narrative is intrinsically linked to the future of their people. Humans, meanwhile, are unremarkable by design and wouldn’t have unique insight into much of the game’s events.
Still, the sheer amount of unique githyanki dialogue would make you wonder if Larian thought the race would be a more popular choice for players. After all, githyanki isn’t a typical choice even in the tabletop version of Dungeons & Dragons, so perhaps the studio thought people would flock to one of the game’s unique offerings.
Unfortunately, in terms of player choice, you can never match the power of symmetrical facial structure.
Baldur’s Gate 3
5.0/5
- Released
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August 3, 2023
- ESRB
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M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Partial Nudity, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Violence
