Larian Studios isn’t done with big updates for Baldur’s Gate 3 just yet. The studio is planning yet another quality-of-life update for the game with Patch 8.

“Arriving next year, this update will introduce some of the most eagerly awaited features to BG3: cross-play, and photo mode, along with 12 new subclasses,” Larian wrote on its Steam Community page.

Cross play will introduce multiplayer capabilities between any of the game’s platforms including Steam, PC, Mac, Xbox, and PlayStation. Cross platform multiplayer progression will also be added.

Another big community ask that Patch 8 will satisfy is the addition of photo mode. The feature will come with a robust suite of options including poses for party members, picture frames, photo filters, and stickers.

Finally, the game will get 12 additional subclasses, one for every base class in the game. Here’s the list:

• Bard – College of Glamour
• Barbarian – Path of Giants
• Cleric – Death Domain
• Druid – Circle of Stars
• Paladin – Oath of the Crown
• Fighter – Arcane Archer
• Monk – Drunken Master
• Ranger – Swarmkeeper
• Rogue – Swashbuckler
• Sorcerer – Shadow Magic
• Warlock – Hexblade
• Wizard – Bladesinging

The post goes into detail about each subclass with many of them incorporating homebrewed elements straight from the developers’ creativity.

Larian has said it won’t add any major story content updates or DLC for Baldur’s Gate 3. But with these patches including the recent addition of official mod support, the developers have left the game in the best place for the community to continue the adventure without them. Patch 8 is scheduled to release next year.

The long-awaited Patch 7 for Baldur’s Gate 3 is now live. The update adds new, gruesome cinematics for some of the game’s evil endings, new legendary actions for Honor Mode encounters, and official in-game mod support.

However, with Patch 7 comes a big ole asterisk from the game’s maker, Larian Studios. The patch is currently only available for PC, meaning that players will be unable to load cross-platform save files from PC on their console versions. PC / Mac multiplayer is also disabled. Larian says that it intends to launch Patch 7 on consoles and Mac sometime in October, so if you like to hop between desktop and console to play BG3, you’ll have to wait about a month. The compatibility issues can be avoided by simply declining to update the game on PC, but with all the other Patch 7 improvements, that might prove a difficult choice.

The official mod support will allow players to browse, download, and manage user-made mods directly in the game. Enterprising players will also be able to use the new toolkit to create their own mods that will work across PC and console (once Patch 7 is available on consoles).

Patch 7 also includes the requisite host of tweaks, improvements, and bug fixes. You can check out all the specifics here.

In a new community update, Larian Studios has shared a brief overview of all the things it’s working on for the next Baldur’s Gate 3 patch.

Larian has previously announced that patch 7, due out in September, will include the release of official mod support and the introduction of a toolkit that will allow players the ability to create their own mods. According to Larian, the toolkit supports the creation of new items, classes and subclasses, races, and more.

I’ve been modding my games since the days of World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade and Dragon Age: Origins. However, I’ve always been intimidated by the idea of creating my own mods, even for games I adore. I’m definitely interested to try out the mod toolkit for myself, especially since a lot of the comments Larian shared from modders attest to its ease of use. If the toolkit allows me to create new narrative content, essentially allowing me to re-create my fanfictions in the game, you will never hear from me again.

In addition to mod support and the toolkit, patch 7 will also add a nifty dynamic split-screen co-op feature. Instead of co-op games being permanently bifurcated in split-screen mode, players will have an option that will merge the two screens into one if players are close to each other. It looks pretty dang cool in action.

On the narrative side, patch 7 will add tweaks and updates to companion stories, dialogue, and romance content. Larian’s also adding new cinematics that reflect some of the game’s more evil endings for origin and dark urge characters.

Though this forthcoming update feels like Larian’s final goodbye to Baldur’s Gate 3 as it moves on to other projects, the studio reaffirmed that patch 7 isn’t the last update for the game. Cross-play and photo mode are also on the way. In the meantime, it’s offering players the chance to try out patch 7 before it releases in September in a closed beta you can register for on the Baldur’s Gate 3 Steam page.

It’s gonna get pretty funky in Faerûn with official mod support coming to Baldur’s Gate 3. Larian Studios announced that official mod support will roll out in phases, starting today with a closed alpha, before a closed beta test in July, culminating with the official release of Patch 7 in September. According to Larian, the staggered testing phases will give the community ample time to test the new mod tools before making them available across PC and consoles.

If you have experience with official mod support in games like Skyrim or Fallout, Larian’s approach will sound similar. On PC, mods will be tested to ensure terms of service compatibility and overall stability before approval. Those mods will then undergo additional approvals before coming to console. While PC players will have access to the full suite of mod creation tools, and mods can still be made, downloaded, and played without using the official mod browser, console players will only be able to browse and install mods officially approved by Larian.

You can check out the full Baldur’s Gate 3 mod FAQ page here, and players interested in testing mod support during the closed beta in July will have the opportunity to sign up at a later date. As Larian has stated, it has no plans of creating DLC or a Baldur’s Gate 3 sequel, so offering official mod support is the studio’s way of letting the community take over the reins of Baldur’s Gate 3 development to ensure the game stays fresh for years to come.

Patch 7 isn’t just introducing mod support tools. It’ll also contain substantial content updates for the game, including improved evil endings, tons of small narrative additions (Wyll romancers, your time is coming), and bug fixes. Beyond Patch 7’s release in September, Larian also said it plans on adding crossplay and photo mode.

With the sheer popularity surrounding Baldur’s Gate 3, the game is ripe for an expansion — but if it ever happens, it won’t be made by its developer Larian Studios. During a panel at the Game Developers Conference on Thursday, Larian founder Swen Vincke revealed that the studio plans on moving away from Dungeons & Dragons games, as first reported by IGN.

“We’re not going to make new expansions, which everybody is expecting us to do. We’re not going to make Baldur’s Gate 4, which everybody is expecting us to do. We’re going to move on,” Vincke said. He added that Larian is also going to “move away from D&D” and start a new project.

As reported by IGN, Vincke said the studio originally considered making DLC for Baldur’s Gate 3, but it ended up walking back on the idea after realizing “it wasn’t really coming from the heart.”

Larian’s announcement is a bit of a surprise given the massive success it has seen with Baldur’s Gate 3, which swept the DICE Awards and sold over 10 million copies. But instead of moving forward with the franchise, Vincke said the studio is going to let Dungeons & Dragons owner Wizards of the Coast handle it from here.

“It’s going to be up to Wizards of the Coast, because it’s their IP, to find somebody to take over the torch,” Vincke said. “We think we did our job and so, for us, it’s time to get a new puppy.” Last year, Wizards of the Coast parent company Hasbro laid off nearly all the employees on the Dungeons & Dragons team who helped Larian make Baldur’s Gate 3 happen.

The studio will continue patching Baldur’s Gate 3 for the time being and is still working on adding official mod support for the game on both PCs and consoles.

Christmas miracles are rare, they are beautiful, and with Patch 5 of Baldur’s Gate 3 out now, they have come early. Patch 5 is a massive update that adds new difficulty modes, patches a notorious slowdown bug, lets you wear armor that gives the Wavemother’s Robe a run for its money, and gives the adventurers of Faerûn what they’ve been clamoring for: a big-ass party with all their friends.

I could jump right into the biggest changes coming with Patch 5, but with one specific quality-of-life update, the addition of new game modes or new epilogue scenes feels inconsequential in comparison.

“Patch 5 introduces a huge quality of life update in the form of improved inventory access,” read the community update for Baldur’s Gate 3. “Now while in camp, you will be able to manage the inventory of companions who are not in your active party without having to recruit them first – all from one single UI.”

The developers at Larian Studios have been pretty good at listening to player feedback and implementing asked-for changes. (Why else do you think Astarion keeps getting his kissing animations tweaked?) But it still feels amazing when something you yourself have asked for, begged for, scre …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Baldur’s Gate 3 Patch 3 is live, beefy, and oh boy, does it implement some fixes I am happy about — and some that terrify the daylights outta me.

First and foremost, welcome Mac users! You’re now able to play on Mac. Make sure you check out the minimum specification requirements, and don’t forget to uninstall and reinstall the game (if you played Early Access) to ensure a smooth transition to the full release.

Also, the Magic Mirror is live, so players can give their characters a much-needed haircut (or complete facial rearrangement).

With those two big updates out of the way, we can dive into the details of this patch. Like I mentioned, it’s big.

Light spoilers for Baldur’s Gate 3 Act 3 follow.

One thing I mentioned in my PS5 review is how hard to see everything is. I mentioned that because the icon that denotes what items in your inventory are equipped to your character was so small, I mistakenly sold the clothes off my body. Well, it seems Larian Studios heard me by increasing the size of the equipped icon on console. It seems like the powers that be also heard my gripes about discovery and exploration with the controller, improving “how the game handles object selection on controller.”

Though I switch between BG3 console and PC pretty regularly, these fixes might make PS5 my main mode of play.

Patch 3 also adds one serious quality-of-life update that will make long rests less frustrating. As I get later in the game, it’s getting harder to acquire enough food for long rests. It is a pain in the behind to go to camp, realize you don’t have enough food for a long rest, leave camp, buy food, and come back. Back in Act 1 and 2, you could trade with Volo, buying food from him without having to leave camp. But for some reason, this ability was disabled in Act 3. No more! Larian restored his business license, allowing you to trade with him when he’s in your camp. Hooray!

Some of these fixes come a bit late for me but are nevertheless welcome additions. When you level up a character, the game will now queue up all party members who need leveling up, so you don’t have to select each one individually.

There have also been significant improvements to the Cazador fight:

• Cazador now cannot turn into or remain in his Mist Form if in magical sunlight, such as that created by the Daylight spell.

And the Ansur fight:

• Fixed Ansur’s Stormheart Nova blasting right through the ice shields you can hide behind.

I really wish that one had been fixed sooner. The Ansur fight was way harder than it needed to be, especially because I thought hiding behind the ice pillars would protect me.

Though Patch 3’s notes are extremely long, they’re worth reading for yourself for all the hilarious out-of-context updates. Here are a few of my favorites:

• Improved the death poses of rats.
• Party member corpses will now be removed from the backpacks of characters being dismissed.
• You can no longer arrange for a coffin to be made for the bereaved couple’s child, murder the coffin maker, then go back and tell the couple everything was A-OK. This was a bug, you monsters.

But while I’m loving pretty much everything I’m seeing in these patch notes, some of these fixes are just plain unnecessary:

• Added some lovely blood spurts when Volo carries out his expert operation.
• Reading shop signs will no longer be considered a crime.

And:

• Halsin will no longer give you one last kiss before the final battle unless you’re actually in a relationship with him.

Okay, that last one was not something that should have been fixed! Who wouldn’t want a smooch from the big bear guy right before you might die? It’s comforting!

Here are some more unnecessary updates:

• In Tactician Mode, Raphael can now Multiattack twice per turn.
• Raphael’s Wisdom Ability Score has been increased.
• Increased Raphael’s level to level 16.
• Raphael’s Diabolic Chains are now more powerful and can hit up to three targets with slightly reduced damage.

The fight against Raphael in the House of Hope is brutal enough, but did you really need to buff the…ahem… hell out of him?? At least Larian also fixed a bug where party members will no longer be permanently afflicted by Harleep’s Draining Kiss debuff.

Even Larian admits that some of these updates didn’t really need to be included but did so anyway for funsies.

• Nobody asked for this, but we made the ceremorphosis scene on the nautiloid more horrifying. You’re welcome.

With all these updates, I’m looking forward to spending another 300 hours in this game.

Later this week, you can watch many cast members from Baldur’s Gate 3, a game that is based heavily on the mechanics and universe of Dungeons & Dragons, play the tabletop version of Dungeons & Dragons as their characters from the video game. It sounds meta but awesome.

The cast members will be appearing on High Rollers, a live-play D&D show that streams on Twitch, on Friday at 7PM BST / 2PM ET / 11AM PT. “We have very kindly been approached by [Baldur’s Gate 3 developer] Larian Studios and some rather fine guests to run a little D&D one-shot,” dungeon master Mark Hulmes said in a video about the event.

Samantha Béart (Karlach), Tim Downie (Gale Dekarios), Jennifer English (Shadowheart), Theo Solomon (Wyll Ravengard), Neil Newbon (Astarion), and Devora Wilde (Lae’zel) are all part of the show.

All six of the actors bring fantastic performances to Baldur’s Gate 3, so I imagine it will be a blast to see them channel their video game personas into a round of tabletop D&D. If you miss the show on Twitch, you’ll be able to catch it on the High Rollers podcast feed soon after.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is finally about to leave early access on Mac. Developer Larian Studios said Wednesday on X (formerly Twitter) that the game’s third major patch would be arriving on September 21st “with full support for BG3 on Mac.”

Baldur’s Gate 3 is technically already available on Mac, but currently, it’s only the early access version that doesn’t include all of the content in the full version of the game that first released on PC in August and recently came out on PS5. In a post on Steam from June, Larian said that the full Mac version would be released “at a later date, and we’ll update you as soon as we have a target” — I’ll take Wednesday’s post on X as that update.

Baldur’s Gate 3 also supports cross-saves, so I’m guessing that any work you’ve put into your characters on PC or PS5 will translate over to the full version of the game on your Mac. I’m personally looking forward to seeing if I can get the game to run on my M1 MacBook Air.

This isn’t the only recent good news for Mac gamers: Capcom just announced that Resident Evil 4 will be coming to Mac later this year. It’s coming to iPhone 15 Pro devices, too.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is one of my favorite games in a very long time, exemplary in nearly every way except for one — it had to be played on PC. Of course, I have nothing against PC gaming (hello, Overwatch!), but I am a creature of comfort and count the ability to play from comfortable places as important to a game’s enjoyability as the actual game itself. So when I heard about BG3’s cross-save ability with the PS5, I fell to my very knees in appreciation, excited beyond measure that I would have the ability to enjoy this masterwork of a game from the comfort of the papasan chair in my sunroom.

The reality, though, of my experience with Baldur’s Gate 3 PS5 play has turned out to be far less worthy than the hype I had for it.

Being a Dungeons & Dragons-based game, Baldur’s Gate 3 has a wealth of intricate systems — exploration, combat, and roleplay — that feed into one another and fuel the kinds of emergent gameplay that’s made this game so phenomenally successful. And though Baldur’s Gate on PC and PS5 are fundamentally the same game, it feels like, for the PS5 version, you have to put in a lot more mental and mechanical work to get the same amount of enjoyment.

I fully admit that m …

Read the full story at The Verge.