An infographic of stats for Baldur’s Gate 3’s first weekend shows Gale is the most popular Origin character – and also a dangerous companion to have around.
Baldur’s Gate 3 has only been out for a week, but Larian Studios already has a massive critical and commercial success on its hands.
To celebrate, Larian Studios has released a detailed infographic that puts Baldur’s Gate 3’s opening weekend into numbers.
While there’s plenty of interesting information here, such as the most and least popular classes and races and the fact that players have already put over 1,225 years worth of hours into the game, perhaps the most fascinating tidbit is that the most popular Origin character is also responsible for quite a few player deaths.
Gale is Baldur’s Gate 3’s most popular Origin character – and a leading cause of death
According to Larian, 93% of players chose to create their own character, with the Dark Urge Origin counted among them. Gale was the most popular Origin character among the remaining 7%, with over 27,000 players selecting him. Karlach and Astarion are a bit behind with around 22,000 each, while Lae’zel is the least popular at a little under 12,000 players choosing her.
Last weekend, you played 1225 years of Baldur’s Gate 3. As we head into the second weekend of launch, we’ve compiled some tasty stats for you to sink your teeth into.Read more in Community Update #23 – Here’s To You: https://t.co/G2nJGeI2iE pic.twitter.com/wFe1AhqyKZ
— Larian Studios (@larianstudios) August 11, 2023
Interestingly, Gale is also the 7th most common cause of player death.
While no specifics are given, Larian jokes that “you only have yourselves to blame for being so flammable.” That, combined with a later stat revealing 12% of player deaths were caused by friendly fire, makes it safe to assume the wizard’s area-of-effect spells are to blame.
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The graphic doesn’t reveal exactly how many players have been victimized by Gale – or the body counts of any other companions. Still, the fact that Larian felt the need to call him out here indicates that intra-party killing isn’t as much of an issue with other characters.
The rest of the information Larian shared is also interesting. Paladin is currently Baldur’s Gate 3’s most popular class by a decent margin, followed by Sorcerer and Warlock. The least popular class by quite a bit is Cleric, with the rest pretty evenly distributed.
As for race, half-elf, human, and elf are easily the top three. Githyanki is the least popular, closely followed by the halfling. With the exception of the Dragonborn (which is at #4), it appears the more humanoid races are the most popular, while smaller and more monstrous options are chosen less frequently.
Of course, these numbers are just from the very first weekend, meaning things could have changed already. Larian noted that it expects more players will pick up the Origin characters after completing the game with their custom ones, which was the case with Divinity: Original Sin 2.
As more players get their hands on the game with next month’s release on PlayStation and existing ones start new playthroughs, it will certainly be interesting to see how things change – or stay the same.