Baldur’s Gate 3 has barbarians now, but Larian expects it won’t leave Early Access till 2023
I would like to rage.
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The latestBaldur’s Gate 3patch brings 30GB worth of additions to Larian’s RPG, including a new playable class—the barbarian—as well as expanded systems for improvised weapons, meaning that even NPCs can be turned into missiles and thrown at other NPCs. There are also overhauls for stealth and exploration, upgraded cinematics, UI tweaks, extra magic items, and more. Less excitingly, Larian has also announced the full game probably won’t be ready this year after all.
“Our internal goal post for release is a quality bar rather than a date”, Larian says. “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.”
In the meantime, we can content ourselves with restarting act one as barbarians and wrecking the joint. The new class has two subclass options, with berserker barbarians getting frenzy powers, and seeming like the choice to go for if you’d like to throw people you don’t care for at other people youreallydon’t care for. The other choice, wildheart barbarians, gets abilities from their animal guide, which can be an eagle, elk, tiger, bear, or wolf. Sounds like they’ve renamed tabletop D&D’s “totem warrior” subclass, and fair enough. Wildhearts also get facial piercings based on the animal they choose.
Changes to light and darkness detection should make it more obvious when you’re hidden, and darkvision is now visualized as a cone extending from your selected elf, dwarf, or whatever, rather than lighting up the whole world. Rooms you can’t get to are now fully hidden by fog of war as well, so you can’t just swing the camera around to get an idea of what’s up ahead.
On the magic loot side, 24 more magic items have been scattered throughout act one. One’s a maul called the Hamarhraft that deals thunder damage around the wielder after they jump, while the Linebreaker Boots give bonus melee damage the turn after dashing.
The UI overhaul sounds like good stuff, with new character sheets and a party panel combining the previously separate inventory, equipment, and stats panels. They can be moved wherever you want them, and you can keep playing while they’re open. There’s also a new hotbar and the minimap’s a circle, which the patch notes call “the most noble shape”.
Larian’sfull patch notes, which include plenty of bugfixes and other tweaks, are usually an entertaining read. Here are a few highlights from patch seven:
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Jody’s first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia’s first radio show about videogames,Zed Games. He’s written forRock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue,GamesRadar,Zam,Glixel,Five Out of Ten Magazine, andPlayboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody’s first article for PC Gamer was about theaudio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he’s written aboutwhy Silent Hill belongs on PC,why Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, andhow weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.
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