In spite of the legacy of the Baldur’s Gate IP and the track record of Larian Studios as a developer, few could have accurately predicted the level of success that Baldur’s Gate 3 went on to enjoy upon its launch last year. Widely regarded by one and all as one of the greatest games of its kind, the fantasy RPG has been showered with endless praise from all corners since the day it exited early access last year- and Larian has still just kept going.
As a single-player RPG, no one really would have expected Baldur’s Gate 3 to be as well supported following launch as it has been, but Larian Studios has maintained an impressive cadence of updates for the game. Over the course of the last year, since its full release on PC, Baldur’s Gate 3 has seen a bevy of hotfixes and six major patches, with a seventh yet to come, all of it arriving for free and adding a host of new features and improvements to what was already an unabashed masterpiece.
Here, then, we’re going to take a look at some of the biggest ways Baldur’s Gate 3 has grown, improved, and evolved in its post-launch period, and we’re going to do that by going over each of its major patches one by one. Without further ado, let’s get started.
PATCH 1
Coming within less than a month of Baldur’s Gate 3’s 1.0 release, its first patch was one that wasn’t focused on adding anything as much as it was on polishing. No major new features or bits and bobs were added to the game with Patch 1, but Larian Studios did introduce a whole host of fixes to the experience nonetheless. In total, the first full patch that was released for the megaton RPG has more than a thousand fixes, with several bugs, glitches, inconsistencies, and what have you being addressed. In areas ranging from the UI, character-specific scenes, and balancing, to the visuals, loot, and more, Baldur’s Gate 3’s first patch smoothed over wrinkles of varying sizes all throughout the experience.
PATCH 2
Less than a week after Patch 1, Larian Studios put out Patch 2 for Baldur’s Gate 3, and though the developer still hadn’t quite got into the swing of adding major new features to the game by this point, Patch 2 did lean more in that direction than the first one did. For starters, significant performance improvements were made across the board, which was much needed. Even with all the universal praise that it enjoyed right out the gate, Baldur’s Gate 3 was still a game with more than a few technical issues in those early days (especially once you got to Act 3), and Patch 2’s performance optimizations brought tangible improvements on that front.
Patch 2 also brought with it what Larian dubbed Withers’ Wardrobe of Wayward Friends, which added the ability to remove co-op party members from your campaign, something that couldn’t be done until that point. Beyond that, the patch added several scenes tied specifically to Karlach (including a new epilogue scene), in addition to continuing to make bug fixes, polishing optimizations, and the like.
PATCH 3
Roughly a month later, in the latter half of September, Patch 3 arrived, which went hand in hand with Baldur’s Gate 3 releasing for Mac. Granted, that’s not exactly a platform with a huge gaming audience, but it did open up the game to yet more people, which is always a good thing, especially when the game in question is as good as this is.
Far more noteworthy, of course, was the fact that Patch 3 brought with it the addition of what Baldur’s Gate 3 dubbed the Magic Mirror, an item that players could interact with in their camp in order to change their cosmetic appearance and other aspects of your character to their heart’s content. That entailed changing your hair, facial features, pronouns, voice, and the like, which players had been requesting to see in the game ever since its launch. That in and of itself made Patch 3 quite a well received step forward for the game- and yes, it, too, brought plenty of additional polish and bug fixes.
PATCH 4
After adding new and heavily requested features to Baldur’s Gate 3 with its second and third post-launch updates, with Patch 4, Larian Studios decided to focus once again on optimizing and polish rather than adding anything. Coming more than a month after the third patch, Patch 4 arrived with over a thousand fixes, similar to the very first post-launch update that the game received. From combat to story scenes, from character and class specific balancing to visual bugs, from crashes to UI issues, there was plenty that Patch 4 addressed. On top of all of those fixes, it also added new accessibility options, such as a colour blind mode with multiple settings, as well as support for AMD FSR 2.2.
PATCH 5
Arriving at the end of November, Patch 5 was by far the most packed patch to be released for Baldur’s Gate 3 up to that point. In addition to continued layers of polish, with its fifth major post-launch patch, the RPG added a host of new features, some of which were quite significant. Chief among the additions was an entirely new playable epilogue. Set several months after the main story, the epilogue brought with it well over 3,000 new lines of dialogue, new cinematics, and more, all of it meant to serve as a final goodbye to all of the characters.
Then there was the new Honor Mode, a higher difficulty setting that brought with it more difficult boss fights, the introduction of Legendary Actions, save scumming and several known exploits being removed (only from the new mode), permadeath, new rewards, and more. On the flipside, there was also the new Custom Mode, which as its name implied, allowed players to customize a variety of different aspects of the gameplay experience to suit your particular tastes.
Add to that some noticeable UI improvements, support for dynamic resolution scaling on PS5, more performance improvements in Act 3, and much more, and Patch 5 was easily the biggest update to be released for Baldur’s Gate 3 at the time that it came out- and still is, in fact. Speaking of which…
PATCH 6
Arriving in February earlier this year, more than two months after Patch 5, Patch 6 was clearly coming at a point where Larian Studios was gearing up to move on from Baldur’s Gate 3. Though the studio was, of course, continuing to further polish the experience with hotfixes as and when they were needed, with the majority of major features that Larian wanted to add in the game already being in the game, the pace with which patches were being released slowed down significantly. Not that anyone was complaining- Baldur’s Gate 3 is a ridiculously massive full featured game as is.
Even so, Patch 6 wasn’t completely without highlights of its own. It added new cinematics and scenes to the game to further strengthen the bonds and relationships between the core characters, as well as new idle animations for party members when they were in camp. By this point, with Baldur’s Gate 3 available on all the platforms that could possibly run it, the game’s post-launch support was clearly close to wrapping up by this point.
PATCH 7
Patch 7 is Baldur’s Gate 3’s next big patch, and is currently in beta, which means it won’t be too long before Larian Studios releases it in full- and once again, it’s going to be a big one, with plenty of major features set to be added. One in particular that many have been waiting for is official mod support, following which following which players will be able to create, share, and download community mods, all through an internally integrated Mod Manager.
Also on the way are new, evil endings, which are described as appropriately darker conclusions to the story for players who have made choices to reflect the same throughout their playthrough. That will, of course, involve new cinematics, new story content, new music, and more. Then there’s dynamic split-screen support (which will merge screens when players are close to each other), improved multiplayer banter, new Honor Mode mechanics, the addition of existing Honor Mode mechanics in Custom Mode as options, and much more.
Patch 7 is set to launch for all players at some point in September.
THE ROAD AHEAD
Larian Studios has done a phenomenal job with Baldur’s Gate 3. From its lengthy early access period to its full release to the excellent way it has been support post-launch, right from the off, it has been a labour of love for Larian, and the studio has left no stone unturned in ensuring that the acclaimed fantasy RPG can be the best possible version of itself. And incredibly enough, in spite of the fact that Larian has already gone above and beyond in consistently adding to and supporting a game that was already humongous with more than a year’s worth of free post-launch support- in spite of that, there’s still more to come.
Hotfixes will, of course, continue to arrive, which means more optimization tweaks, performance improvements, bug fixes, quality of life upgrades and what have you are certainly on the way. Beyond that, however, Larian says a couple more significant features are still set to be added to the game as well, including a photo mode and cross-platform multiplayer.
Presumably, Larian Studios is approaching the end of the road with Baldur’s Gate 3, and once it is done, the studio will be deserving of all the plaudits in the world not only for the game itself, but also how well it has been supported following its release. Hell, even many mainly multiplayer, so-called live service games can learn a thing or two from Larian.
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