The PC version of the highly anticipated game Baldur’s Gate III will exit Steam Early Access on Aug. 3, almost a full month ahead of schedule.
BG3, an adaptation of Dungeons & Dragons to a computer-game format and a sequel to the popular 2000 PC game Baldur’s Gate II, has been available in Early Access since October 2020.
It marks the first collaboration between Renton, Wash.-based Wizards of the Coast, D&D’s longtime publisher, and Larian Studios, a game developer headquartered in Belgium with satellite studios in Canada, England, Ireland, Spain, Russia, and Malaysia. Before this, Larian was arguably best known for its Divinity series of computer RPGs.
Previously, BG3 was scheduled for release on PC, Mac, and PlayStation 5 on Aug. 31. The decision to move up the PC version date was announced via BG3’s Steam community pages.
“This means the PC version of Baldur’s Gate 3 will be released at a time where you’ll have more time to play it,” Larian Studios said.
This can be interpreted as Larian Studios avoiding as much conflict as possible with Bethesda Softworks’ space-opera RPG Starfield, which releases on PC and Xbox Series X|S on Sept. 6.
The PS5 port of BG3 is now scheduled for Sept. 6, with the Mac edition following at an unspecified later date. Larian has explained the delay as the studio needing slightly more time to achieve its target framerate of 60 FPS on the PS5 platform, as opposed to needing to downscale its performance to hit its original release date.
Customers who bought one of the BG3 collector’s editions, which feature multiple physical goods like artbooks and a pack of stickers, can still expect to receive their CEs around the original planned release date.
BG3 is set over 120 years after the events of the previous game in the series, and takes place in and around the city of the same name in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting for D&D. As an adventurer who escapes from a group of mind flayers, you’re out to both cure yourself of a parasite the flayers placed in you and deal with their invasion of the Realms.
You can pick from a wide assortment of classes and races for your player character in BG3, which encompasses many of the classic D&D and Forgotten Realms choices. As of the Thursday announcement, this also includes the ability to play as dragonborn, half-orcs, or duergar, and pick a new class — the monk.
Larian wrote in its announcement that nearly 2 million people picked up BG3 while it was in Early Access on Steam, and that its development team has expanded to 400 people. The final version of the game has a script that’s roughly 2 million words long, which is slightly more than the entire A Song of Ice and Fire series to date.
BG3 is considered a major part of Wizards of the Coast’s release schedule for the year, and is the largest video game yet released under Wizards’ current video game initiatives. Wizards CEO Cynthia Williams previously told GeekWire that video games are “a critical way to give fans a different way to enjoy a brand and game that they love.”
