Baldur's Gate 3 won't leave Early Access this year 'for sure'

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The next update will be based on feedback from players.

It's been a while since we heard from Larian Studios regarding Baldur's Gate 3. There have been several hotfixes to the in-development RPG in the last few months, but the last substantial update was in February, when the druid class was added. Now, in a video interview with GameSpot, studio founder Swen Vincke has confirmed that Baldur's Gate 3 won't be leaving Early Access in 2021. "We are really trying to get the game done by next year," he said. "It's not gonna release this year for sure."

The studio is currently busy improving what's in Early Access and completing the rest of the game at the same time. Vincke explained that the next update, whenever it comes, will be one that changes existing elements rather than adding a lot of new ones, so don't expect another new class, for instance. "It's an update that focuses on a lot of the feedback that we've been getting," he said. "It's more focused on features than it is on new content."

Vincke mentioned that some of the feedback has been from players of melee characters who are finding they don't have as many options as they'd like. That's part of the nature of playing a fighter in Dungeons & Dragons, he explained. "[In] D&D, the fighter class is the tutorial class. At the tabletop it is used to teach you how to play, but as a result it gives you limited things at the get-go to work with."

Finally, on the subject of whether a Game Master mode like Divinity: Original Sin 2 had is in the works, Vincke said that while Baldur's Gate 3 would obviously benefit from one, it's not in development at the moment. "We are so focused on making the game itself, and it's such a beast to develop," he said.

Jody Macgregor
Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.