Baldur's Gate III

Platform(s): PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X
Genre: RPG/Strategy
Developer: Larian Studios
Release Date: Aug. 3, 2023

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'Baldur's Gate III' Aiming For 2023 Launch, Early Access Patch 7 Adds Barbarian Class, UI Overhaul, Improvised Weapons And More - Trailer

by Rainier on Feb. 15, 2022 @ 4:11 p.m. PST

Baldur's Gate III is the official next adventure in the venerable Baldur's Gate series.

You are burdened with a great power devouring you from within.
How far down the path of darkness will you let it take you?
The fate of Faerûn is on your party’s shoulders.
Will you carry it to salvation, or descend with it to hell?

Created in close collaboration with the Dungeons & Dragons team at Wizards of the Coast, Baldur’s Gate III is based off current D&D mechanics and spells and is the official new chapter in the legendary series.

Baldur’s Gate III will push the boundaries of the RPG genre and offer a rich narrative with unparalleled player freedom, high-stakes decisions, unique companion characters and memorable combat. It is Larian Studios’ biggest production ever and will be playable together with friends or as a single-player adventure.

Alone you may resist, but together you can overcome. Gather your party.

Forged with the new Divinity 4.0 engine and coming to early access later this year, Baldur’s Gate 3 gives you unprecedented freedom to explore, experiment, and interact with a world that truly reacts to your choices. A grand, cinematic narrative brings you closer to your characters than ever before as you venture through the Forgotten Realms of Dungeons & Dragons in Larian’s biggest adventure yet.

Baldur’s Gate 3’s seventh major patchAbsolute Frenzy – was revealed, heralding the arrival of the playable Barbarian class and the introduction of the soon-to-be world-famous sport of goblin-tossing (AKA Improvised Weapons), alongside many other additions, changes and fixes that march Baldur’s Gate 3 further down the path toward 1.0. Patch 7 opens up new ways to approach adventuring in Faerun, like a fog of war mechanic that obfuscates unexplored rooms, and tweaks to Darkvision and light/dark detection that make for much more effective stealth gameplay. The full patch notes will be available on Steam with a more in-depth look at what’s changed, but below are some highlights.

Patch 7: Absolute Frenzy will be available to Baldur’s Gate 3 players later today, highlights are:

  • New Class: Barbarian
    • Merciless in the heat of battle, fueled by nature’s fury, and boasting chaos energy louder than a thousand reality TV stars combined, Barbarians are the latest class to join Baldur's Gate 3.
    • Two subclasses:
      • Wildheart Barbarians choose a Bestial Heart to inspire, protect and guide them, receiving different combat abilities and facial piercings depending on their choice.
      • Berserker Barbarians pull from a reservoir of pure fury, turning their Rage into a Frenzy that grants two new bonus actions – Enraged Throw wreaks additional damage to enemies and inflicts the prone status, and Frenzied Strike allows Berserkers to attack twice using a bonus action like Improvised Weapon.
  • Improvised Weapons: Almost anything has the potential to become a deadly projectile to be hurled at your foes! Improvised Weapons do damage based on their weight, and characters can wield an Improvised Weapon that weighs up to three times their Strength ability score. In short, this means with a high enough Strength stat, you can use something as big as a Mindflayer as a tool for thwacking your foes - although we don’t think he’d like it.
  • Thrown Weapons: Patch 7 also adds throwable Daggers, Javelins, Handaxes, and Spears that allow you to attack from a distance, making melee combat feel more dynamic.
  • Total UI Overhaul: Patch 7 includes a total overhaul of Baldur’s Gate 3’s HUD UI, making it slicker, streamlined, and easier to use.
  • Stealth & Exploration: Improving exploration in Baldur’s Gate 3 is one of the cornerstones of this patch. We want to ensure that as you explore, the surprises that are waiting around the corner stay just that: a surprise!
    • Light & Dark: We’ve improved how light and dark areas are detected, meaning you’re less likely to miss when in daylight and hiding from NPCs is more precisely affected by the darkness around you.
    • Darkvision: Improved visualization means that characters using Darkvision won’t see a brightly lit room, but will instead see in the dark via a cone of vision effect.
    • Room Portals: Blackened barriers that cover the doors of unexplored rooms and conceal the characters and objects within them.
  • New Magic Loot: We’ve placed a fresh batch of Magic Loot throughout the world, ranging from helmets and gloves to lightning-charged tridents, each granting its owner an impressive stat boost, buff, or additional perk.
  • Upgraded Cinematics: We’ve improved nearly 700 cutscenes – upgrading visuals, tweaking characters, adding and enhancing animations, and improving pacing.

Community Feedback, Early Access & 1.0

The full patch notes will be available once the patch goes live – a whopping twelve pages of them, with asterisks noting changes and fixes that were the direct result of feedback from the Baldur’s Gate 3 community.

Early Access continues to be a key part of Larian’s development process, allowing us to iterate and improve with feedback from our players to make the best game possible.

Our internal goal post for release is a quality bar rather than a date. A ton of progress has been made towards that quality bar over the past year in Early Access, but we know many players are waiting for an actual date. That date will come when we’re even closer to meeting our goal, but right now our expectation is that Baldur’s Gate 3 will be released out of Early Access in 2023.

Gather your party for a tale of fellowship and betrayal, sacrifice and survival, and the lure of absolute power. Abducted, infected, lost... You are turning into a monster, drawn from a Mind Flayer parasite planted in your brain, but as the corruption inside you grows, so too does your power. That power may help you to survive, but there will be a price to pay. More than any ability, the bonds of trust that you build within your party could be your greatest strength. Caught in a conflict between devils, deities, and sinister otherworldly forces, you will determine the fate of the Forgotten Realms together. Resist and turn darkness against itself — or embrace corruption and become the ultimate evil.

Choose from a wide selection of D&D races and classes, or play as an origin character with a hand-crafted background. Play alone, selecting your companions carefully, or as a party of up to four in online multiplayer.

No two adventures will ever be the same. The Forgotten Realms are a vast, detailed and diverse world, and there are secrets to be discovered all around you -- even verticality is a vital part of exploration. Adventure, loot, battle, romance… how you survive, and the mark you leave on the world, is up to you.

Key Features

  • Online multiplayer for up to four players allows you to combine your forces in combat and split your party to follow your own quests and agendas. Devise the perfect plan together… or introduce an element of chaos when your friends least expect it.
  • Origin characters offer a hand-crafted experience, each with their own unique traits, agenda, and outlook on the world. Their stories intersect with the wider narrative, and your choices will determine whether those stories end in redemption, salvation, domination or other outcomes.
  • Evolved turn-based combat based on the D&D 5E ruleset. Team-based initiative, advantage and disadvantage, and roll modifiers join combat cameras, expanded environmental interactions, and a new fluidity in combat that rewards strategy and foresight.
  • Define the future of the Forgotten Realms through your choices and the roll of the dice. No matter who you play or what you roll, the world and its inhabitants will react to your story.
  • Player-initiated turn-based mode allows you to pause the world around you at any time even outside of combat. See an opportunity for a tactical advantage before combat begins? Want to pull off a heist with pin-point precision? Need to escape a fiendish trap? Split your party, prepare ambushes, sneak in the darkness — and create your own luck!

Larian Studios is developing and publishing Baldur’s Gate III on PC and Google Stadia, scheduled for 2023.


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