Matt Wales
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A week after Baldur’s Gate got its first major patch – bringing around 1,000 bug fixes among other things – developer Larian Studios has shared initial details on its next big batch of changes, fixes, and additions, which it says is “just around the corner”.
Patch 2’s headline features include Baldur’s Gate 3’s first “substantial performance improvements” and better closure to its story. Starting with performance, Larian is promising improvements across the entire game, but says “Act 3 [is] where you’ll feel it the most”.
Specifically, Patch 2 will target the city of Baldur’s Gate itself, which Digital Foundry’s recently highlighted as a serious rough spot in an otherwise impressive game. Larian, for its part, calls the area “ambitious technically, narratively, and in scope”, saying, “One of the biggest issues with creating games is that technology is always trying to keep up with your ambition, and here we’ve been hit pretty hard by some setbacks.”
The developer anticipates “major performance improvements” in Act 3 once Patch 2 arrives, but notes there’ll be more to come, with the studio working throughout September to implement “new technology that’s been taking a bit longer to release than we expected.”
Patch 2 will also see the developer tackling Act 3’s proliferation of bugs. “We’ve seen your reports about Act 3, and we are as frustrated as you are by bugs spoiling the experience,” Larian writes. “So we’re dedicated to solving these quickly. And as you’ve noticed by our Hotfix and Patch rollout, we’re getting pretty fast.”
The talk of bugs leads Larian onto its final major focus for Patch 2, namely addressing the issue of “cut content”. It has a lot to say here, which you can find in its full post, but the gist is that a lot of the datamined content missing from the final release – which has apparently disappointed some segments of the community – was either ditched because the studio “didn’t think it worked” or wasn’t, in fact, cut but is simply not triggering due to bugs.
Larian highlights Minthara’s reactivity as an example of the latter, noting players can “expect a fix for this soon”, but it has more to say about missing content from the game’s epilogue, which falls squarely in the “didn’t think it worked” category. “One of the reasons why we trimmed the epilogue is because we were afraid the ending cinematics were becoming too long and would detract from the epicness of the experience,” it explains. “But clearly, not everyone agrees with us! So we’re going to do something about it.”
That “something” begins in Patch 2 with an expanded prologue featuring a new optional ending with Karlach, which Larian describes as “fiery, poignant” and the ending she deserves. It sounds like there could be more to come too. “We’re going to be looking at Act 3,” Larian says, “figuring out how to make the final act and epilogue land in a stronger way.”
That, though, will be for a later patch, and Larian already has more in the works for release before then. For instance, its new Withers’ Wardrobe of Wayward Friends feature – which allows players to get rid of co-op party members who join their campaign – will arrive “very soon”, and the previously confirmed ability to change a character’s looks mid-campaign is still on the way too, although the studio does not yet know when that might release.
“Clearly, Baldur’s Gate 3 means so much to a great deal of you, and in turn that means the world to us,” Larian concludes. “We love this game. We’re not done with it yet. We welcome your feedback, your threads, and also your words of encouragement. We do ask that you phrase your feedback in a way that makes it easier for us to parse, rather than untangle, but that’s a small nuance. We hope that as a group you all feel listened to, and if at any moment you do not, please never hesitate to let us know. We’re looking forward to the future of Baldur’s Gate 3.”