Baldur’s Gate 3 is only a day away from its 1.0 debut on PC. While fans all across the globe are quite literally squirming with anticipation for this long-awaited sequel (Baldur’s Gate 2 launched in 2001), developer Larian Studios took the time to share some final information with the community.
Arguably, the most important tidbit of technical information is that AMD FSR 2 won’t be available at launch. Larian is instead striving to add support for AMD’s upscaler to Baldur’s Gate 3 ‘closer to September 6th’, which is when the game launches on PlayStation 5.
This is unlikely to be a coincidence. Larian explicitly said they are targeting 60 frames per second on the PS5 version, and it’s conceivable the console version will take advantage of AMD FSR 2 to reach that FPS goal. As such, the developers could be in the process of optimizing FSR 2 for both PC and PS5.
Implementing AMD FSR 2 support should be very beneficial for Steam Deck users, too. Baldur’s Gate 3 already runs well on Valve’s portable PC, as testified by Larian’s Director of Publishing Michael Douse in the tweets embedded below. However, the studio is aiming to get the official Steam Deck Verified badge by tomorrow.
>Going to PAX West simply for the opportunity to play this on a plane for 14 hours without anyone bothering me pic.twitter.com/dRmiW0UmXp
— Very AFK (@Cromwelp) July 29, 2023
The Steam Deck OS allows users to enable AMD FSR 1.0 in all games. However, FSR 2 offers far superior quality and will undoubtedly be a boon to Baldur’s Gate 3 players, whether they use the Steam Deck or any non-GeForce RTX GPU. If you do have a GeForce RTX 20, 30, or 40 graphics card, the game supports both NVIDIA DLSS if you need extra performance (with an average 93% FPS increase estimated by NVIDIA when playing at 4K) and DLAA if you have performance headroom but want to increase the visual fidelity instead. Baldur’s Gate 3 is also available on GeForce NOW, where both features are supported. The Ultimate tier can provide a 4K@120FPS experience via the cloud.
Unfortunately, it won’t be possible to preload the game, and its size is huge to say the least, clocking in at 122GB. The download gates will open for everyone tomorrow at 8 AM Pacific Time, 11 AM Eastern Time, 4 PM London Time, 5 PM CET, and midnight Tokyo Time. Hopefully, Valve will have taken into account the incoming server stress, or there may be slowdowns in download speeds from Steam.
On another note, Larian partnered with Twitch to deliver some Baldur’s Gate 3 drops. Starting tomorrow at 9 AM Pacific Time (one hour after the launch) and ending August 17th at the same time, watching two hours of the game on Twitch will unlock the Camp Clothing Set, which includes the Chatterbox’s Tabard, the Streamhopper Loafers, the Channeler’s Trunks, and the Periwrinkle Garments.
