Writing video games is a massive undertaking. It requires the same planning and creativity as other media, but with the added challenge of allowing for player choice and branching dialogue trees. Video game scripts vary wildly in length. For example, visual novels can be notoriously wordy, especially those that choose not to spend money on voice acting. Whereas more action-based games with limited NPC interaction may have barely any scripted words at all.
6 Best Fantasy Visual Novels For Beginners, Ranked
Get lost in worlds of high fantasy or magical realism with these visual novels for beginners.
Lengthy dialogue-heavy RPGs are also strong contenders for the longest scripts. It is very difficult to ascertain an exact ranking of the longest video game scripts due to conflicting reports, language differences, and games with continually expanding content. But we’ve collected a list of some of the most notable long video game scripts and explained what makes them so remarkable.
Note: I have decided not to include eroge or erotica scripts, which can be extremely lengthy, especially the Rance series.
Dragon Age: Origins or Veilguard?
Let’s Discuss An Internet Urban Legend
There is no denying that Dragon Age: Origins is a very long game. Not only can it absorb hours and hours of players’ lives, but its extensive voice-acting dialogue has been translated into multiple languages. It featured 144 voice actors and is beloved for its dense and varied narrative. For many years, it has been rumored that the Dragon Age: Origins script has “742,000 words of dialogue”.
Sources for this information include games media websites and Reddit users. However, upon researching, it was difficult to independently verify this information. There are certainly fan transcriptions of the game, but I was unable to locate an official script or statement from the developers to verify this word count. However, in comparison, statements by the developers indicate that Dragon Age: The Veilguard may be a better fit for this list, with performance director Ashley Barlow noting in an interview that they needed to record 140,000 voice lines for the game.
Starfield
According To Todd
In 2022, Todd Howard cited that Bethesda’s upcoming title, Starfield, had already exceeded 250,000 lines of dialogue. He said this in a reveal of the game’s dialogue mechanics at the 2022 Summer Games Fest. This would make it potentially longer than many scripts on this list.
It’s no surprise that the script is so long, considering the vast scope of the game and the openness of play that Bethesda hoped to achieve with Starfield. The sheer volume of interactable characters and divergent side missions alone would require an enormous amount of voice acting.
Disco Elysium
Invest In An Encyclopedia
Harry, from the complex, narrative-heavy RPG Disco Elysium, doesn’t just have a single intrusive internal monologue. He has a whole ensemble in his head, with different voices offering input at any time. The game’s branching narrative paths are rooted in deep philosophical and sociopolitical themes. Inside Harry’s mind is a one-man philosophical debate. On top of this, he often gets pulled into investigations and questioning by NPCs who may waste time, withhold information, or require specific attributes to unlock the next lengthy stage of conversation.
The final cut edition of Disco Elysium is reportedly over 1.2 million words long, leading to about 40 hours of gameplay. Especially if you are like me, on your first playthrough, you could spend much longer, repeating the same conversations to avoid internalizing racism as a mechanic when trying to get past the striking workers.
Girls Frontline
But What About Gacha Games?
Mobile games and gacha games are often overlooked when discussing script length, but games like Girls’ Frontline get frequent updates, which increase the script dramatically. According to users Ciesta and Rita on X and subsequent discussion on the Girls’ Frontline reddit, Girls’ Frontline has over 1.11 million Japanese characters long. But reports vary. I found it hard to find direct verification of this assertion.
Most Anticipated Upcoming Gacha Games
With the genre becoming increasingly popular in the mainstream, eager fans now have more upcoming gacha games than ever to look forward to.
Rather than being a concrete record, this shows the under-documented writing involved in sprawling mobile and gacha games. Girls’ Frontline is a tactical strategy game, not unlike a lot of hero army-building strategy games on mobile. But instead of controlling a diverse range of wizards, creatures, or what have you, the player is in control of an army of sentient female androids known as tactical dolls.
Fate/Grand Order
Another Incredibly Long Mobile Game
Speaking of mobile games, Fate/Grand Order has been touted as being one of the longest video game scripts in existence. With regular updates, the game script had reached 13.5 million Japanese characters. Updates often include full story lines, adding substantially to the length each time.
As Tumblr user tainbocuailnge points out, the misunderstanding of Japanese characters, which are not always full words, versus English words may lead to a misconception of exactly how long the script is. However, the game is still 6.7 million words in English, which is still a formidable length.
Until Dawn
Path Updated
Despite verification by the Guinness World Records, there has been a bit of drama (or online ‘discourse’) about the length of Supermassive’s Until Dawn. There have been conflicting reports about the length of the Until Dawn script since the game’s creators said that the script was 10,000 pages long.
Until Dawn: 8 Biggest Differences Between The Game And The Movie
The Until Dawn movie reimagines the game’s story with new characters, a darker tone, and a narrative shaped by time loops instead of choices.
However, in an interview with Kotaku, creators Graham Reznick and Larry Fessenden note that Sony didn’t believe them and only cited the game as having a 1000-page script in the behind-the-scenes content. This has since been verified by the Guinness World Records as being the ‘Longest script for a graphic adventure videogame’.
Kingdom Come Deliverance 2
Henry Is Quite The Stalker
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is considered to have the longest verified fully voiced video game script, with over 2.2 million words. This narrative-heavy RPG has a huge number of choices and optional activities, which considerably expand the script length. Henry is quite a talkative gentleman who seems to always be up for a chat with the many NPCs that populate the game.
Warhorse Studios posted a picture of ESO Danny with the approximately 11,000 pages of script, which are primarily lines for the protagonist, Henry. The voice actor, Tom McKay, discussed the intense process of recording a script of this length in an interview with the BBC. This massive undertaking is not unique for the developers, with the original Kingdom Come: Deliverance also being exceptionally long.
Baldur’s Gate 3
Previous Record Holder
Before Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 was released, Baldur’s Gate 3 held the record for the longest video game script as recognized by the Guinness World Records. With the wealth of decades of Dungeons and Dragons publications and lore to draw from, it is not surprising that the Baldur’s Gate series has some of the most lengthy scripts in video game history.
Baldur’s Gate 3: All Waypoints
Waypoints can be used to Fast Travel between different locations in Baldur’s Gate 3, so unlocking them comes in handy.
Baldur’s Gate 3 has a script that consists of over 2 million lines of dialogue, consisting of well over 2.1 million words. This means that the average player will have barely scratched the surface of the script in a 75-hour playthrough. Baldur’s Gate 2 was also a contender for the record before the release of its sequel.
Clannad
Prepare To Cry
As noted in the introduction, visual novels are dense with dialogue and narrative. Much of which is not voice-acted, which means that these games are able to include a lot more text without the expense. But Clannad is an interesting case as a fully voiced version was released, which includes voice acting for all characters except the player character. Clannad’s visual novel script consists of 1.3 million words and equates to over 100 hours of gameplay to experience all possible routes.
Clannad is beloved amongst visual novel fans for its detailed narrative and emotive storytelling. It is the story of the relationship between Tomoya Okazaki and Nagisa Furukawa as they deal with the emotional rollercoaster of growing up and the heartbreak of trauma and illness.
Longest Open-World Games
Even the most sophisticated gamer will be bewildered by the sheer scale of these games. These are the open-world games that take the longest to beat.
