Excited to finally jump into the early access version of Baldur’s Gate 3 and start slaying goblins next week? Well, about that…today Larian Studios announced they wouldn’t be able to make their previously-stated released date of September 30. Thankfully, the delay isn’t a terribly long one, as the game will now come out in early October once final testing has been completed. You can check out Larian’s message, below.
It’s the year 2020! We’re launching an active development build, which means that things can go right, or they can wrong each time we compile a new one. Live development is different to “going gold” in that you never really have a “gold version”. Our guiding principle for early access is that it’s fine for there to be smaller bugs or a few things that are lacking polish, but it needs to offer a fun gameplay experience with as few crashes as possible.
We’re nearly there, but we had a few unexpected delays, and we still have some stability issues we’re sifting through. Because of the delays, our translations are also later than expected and we want to ensure localization for the announced early access languages is strong enough for our international fans to have a good time. Thankfully, a week’s delay is all we expect to need to triple-check stability and localization.
We say “expect,” because the game still has to pass the “World Tester.” The World Tester is a sort of AI super gamer that plays through the game at incredible speed, stress testing everything and pushing it to its limits. This super gamer is currently playing through and the results are looking good, but not perfect yet. We know that if the super gamer doesn’t break the game, there’s less chance you will. Not that we have any illusions you won’t try!
Baldur’s Gate 3 Early Access will let you play up to level 4, engage in 80 combat encounters, encounter 596 NPCs, unleash 146 spells and other actions, and get in on 4-player online action. Overall, expect the game’s main quest to take around 25 hours to complete.
Baldur’s Gate 3 Early Access releases on PC (via Steam, GOG, and Stadia) on October 6. A full release date has yet to be set.
