With the release of the highly-anticipated sequel around the corner, Baldur’s Gate 3 received both good and bad news as the PC release date moved even closer, while the PS5 version has been delayed.
As part of Community Update #20 on Baldur’s Gate 3’s Steam page, Larian Studios announced that the PC version of the upcoming RPG would be moved up from its original release date of August 31st, 2023, and will now launch nearly a month sooner, with a new release date of August 3rd, 2023, reportedly to give its release more space between the highly-anticipated Bethesda space epic—Starfield. While getting Baldur’s Gate 3 a month sooner is amazing, it also comes with some bad news, as the PlayStation 5 launch has moved back a week to September 6th, 2023.
The reason for this change to the PlayStation 5 version, according to Larian Studios, is for “platform readiness” as they attempt to get the PS5 version up to 60 frames-per-second, and following the number of complaints received with the announcement that the Xbox Series X version of Starfield would be locked at 30 frames-per-second, it’s not a surprise to see a big release from a competitor taking the opposite approach to get a leg up in the sales race.
“We understand that folks may be disappointed with this, but we’re close enough to reaching new heights for RPGs on the system that the benefits of a short delay outweigh the downsides of rushing the PS5 release and having to downscale. The full Mac version will also be released at a later date, and we’ll update you as soon as we have a target,” Larian continued in their post. “We don’t want to compromise on quality, and feel it would be a shame to downscale to 30fps or make other compromises to hit an arbitrary date.”
Alongside the date change and some updates on features and mechanics to the game, Larian Studios also had an incredibly bold claim about Baldur’s Gate 3 in terms of its dialogue and story, stating: “Baldur’s Gate 3 has more cinematic dialogue than three times all three Lord of the Rings novels combined. It has 174 hours of cinematics, making it more than twice the length of every season of Game of Thrones combined.” With that in mind, fans can surely get excited to see all of the Dungeons & Dragons goodness about to come from this apparently, incredibly deep title.
