Baldur’s Gate 3 recently received its eighth major patch and, pinky promise, this time Larian Studios says it’s done. All those other times it said it was done were just plain fooling: it’s really, properly done with the game now.
Wipe that manly tear from your eye, friend, for at the very least Patch 8 is a cornucopia of goodness, with Larian’s bounty as boundless as the sea: studio boss Swen Vincke noted that there were “48 pages” of patch notes and “if there were a Michelin guide to patches, I’d give this one 3 stars.”
We’ll be doing the reviewing round here Vincke. Though, erm, Baldur’s Gate 3 does happen to be PC Gamer’s highest-rated game of all time (and sits proudly at the summit of our Top 100), with Patch 8’s slew of final additions just the cherry on an enormously tasty cake and, appropriately enough, the capstone to eight years of work on the game (Wizards of the Coast approached Larian about making the game in 2017).
While Larian will obviously continue to issue bug fixes and maintenance where necessary, this really is the end of active development. And the team is understandably now looking back on what it achieved with pride, and a determination to focus on the next thing.
“Feeling good today about where we are with BG3,” writes Vincke. “Patch 8 got a lot of people playing again. It took a lot of development effort but I’m happy we did it.”
Vincke here shares a Steam concurrent players chart showing that, in the immediate aftermath of Patch 8’s release, many thousands of players returned to the game.
“With mod support thriving,” concludes Vincke, “I think the game will now continue to do well for quite some time. It gives us room to focus on making our next big thing as good as we can and that focus is more than welcome. We’ve got big shoes to fill.”
That last line has inevitably been interpreted by some as a tease: whose shoes, exactly? Is Larian going to revitalise another classic IP like, for example, Planescape Torment? That’s probably (definitely) reading too much into it, because Vincke could simply be talking about the studio following up on its own colossal success, but stick your answers on a postcard (unless you work at Larian, in which case call me, babe).
Vincke’s personal message was accompanied by a message from the official Larian Studios account.
“You helped us make Baldur’s Gate 3 a bigger success than we could’ve ever hoped for, and that passion could keep us tweaking things and making changes until the end of time,” reads the studio statement. “But then we’d never be able to create something new. Thank you, from all of us at Larian Studios.”
The message ends with a little heart emoji, which is rather sweet from the studio that brought us rampant bear sex and possibly the horniest RPG of all time.
But the message is clear: this really is it for Baldur’s Gate 3 in terms of (official) new content. Which is bittersweet, not so much for Larian moving on, because whatever it makes next is bound to be great, but because it leaves Baldur’s Gate and D&D generally in the fumbling hands of Wizards of the Coast, which has proven itself incredibly adept at squandering all the good will games such as this create.
Let’s not end on a bum note, however. Baldur’s Gate 3 is one of the greatest journeys gaming will ever offer in our lifetimes, one that it’s been a privilege to share as players, and one that we’ll always be able to return to, again and again. This game is a beauty and, as Swen and his merry band sally forth to pastures new, all one can do is throw a salute, wish them luck, and say thanks for the memories.
