Although Baldur’s Gate 3 has been available in early access for 16 months, don’t expect Larian Studios’ highly anticipated role-playing game to make a full launch in 2022.
“Right now our expectation is that Baldur’s Gate 3 will be released out of Early Access in 2023,” the studio said in a news release on Tuesday. The studio added that “a ton of progress has been made” toward a build that makes developers comfortable with setting and hitting a launch date.
In an interview with Eurogamer published Wednesday, studio founder Swen Vincke also said developers “still think we have a year of development ahead of us,” and called a 2022 launch “unlikely.”
Vincke said the studio is still working on the final part of the game, and from there, it needs the customary polishing and bug fixing, which will take some time. Tuesday’s news release credited a year’s worth of early access play with helping refine and speed that process.
The statement accompanied the announcement of Baldur’s Gate 3’s seventh major patch since its early access launch on Oct. 6, 2020. “Absolute Frenzy,” as Patch 7 is called, introduces a fog-of-war mechanism to the map, and makes other changes to improve stealth gameplay.
A new class, Barbarian, joins the game, with two sub-classes specialize it further: Wildheart and Berserker. Patch 7 also added Improvised Weapons and Thrown Weapons (and, therefore, the ability to throw an improvised weapon), as well as new magic loot and upgrades to almost 700 cinematic scenes.
Eurogamer has more from its interview with Vincke, but the key points are: Larian isn’t for sale, and no one’s trying to buy the studio, and it has zero interest in NFTs. “We’re not doing it, so that’s basically it,” Vincke said.
Source: Polygon
