Larian announced during a live stream on Tuesday 18 August 2020 that Baldur’s Gate 3 will get an Early Access release sooner than we expected. Here’s what you need to know.
Baldur’s Gate 3: Updates
Twitch and Stadia interactivity
Update 17 September 2020: It was confirmed in the latest Community Update video from Larian Studio that Baldur’s Gate 3 will include Stadia and Twitch interactivity, starting 30 September.
Larian will be combining “a cinematic, player-driven narrative through early access, with multiplayer interactions both within and outside of the game session”.
“You’re telling your story, and we’re shooting it for you. We’re taking that camera down from being above the players and down into the drama, right into the action. I can’t think of another early access game that’s done cinematics on this level. There’s a lot of games where the moment you add cinematics, they have to get smaller. We didn’t want to do that”.
Jason Latino, Larian Studio’s Cinematic Director
Early Access release
It’s all happening on 30 September, according to Larian Studios CEO Swen Vincke. That said, the release date depends on how well the dev team does at optimising the game ahead of its release.
The team initially wanted Baldur’s Gate 3 to go into early access during August, but that didn’t come to pass, unfortunately. Reasons given included complications due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
What’s more, Early Access will include approximately 20 hours of content. Larian also revealed Baldur’s Gate 3 gameplay, as well as the third cinematic intro during its Path From Hell live stream.
‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ Gameplay
Players will be able to create their own characters; characters can be upgraded up to level four. Alternatively, you’d also be able to access five playable Origin characters:
- Astarion (Elf/Vampire Rogue)
- Gale (Human Wizard)
- Lae’zel (Githyanki Warrior)
- Shadowheart (Half-Elf Cleric)
- Wyll (Human Warlock)
Watch: ‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ gameplay
The upcoming game will include 80 combat encounters, nearly 46 000 lines of voiced dialogue, 596 intractable characters, 146 spells and abilities, and 4-player co-op online and over LAN.
‘Baldur’s Gate 3′ plot and storyline
You start in the first layer of the Nine Hells (Avernus) with Faerun and Underdark. According to NeoWin, the “content available in Act 1 of the game will be a much larger and deeper than what was seen in Larian’s Divinity: Original Sin II Act 1 early access launch”.
- Number of Combat Encounters: 22 in Divinity: Original Sin II Early Access versus 80 in Baldur’s Gate III Early Access
- Number of English Dialogue Lines: 17 600 in Divinity: Original Sin II Early Access versus 45 980 in Baldur’s Gate III Early Access
- Number of Characters: 142 in Divinity: Original Sin II Early Access versus 596 in Baldur’s Gate III Early Access
- Number of Spells / Actions: 69 in Divinity: Original Sin II Early Access versus 146 in Baldur’s Gate III Early Access
System requirements and availability
The bare minimum you’ll need to play Baldur’s Gate 3 is an 8GB of RAM and an Intel i5 processor, or an AMD FX 4350. An Nvidia GTX 780 or AMD Radeon R9 280X will do, but just barely.
However, it’s recommended to play with an Intel i7 or Ryzen 5 1500x (or newer). While 8GB RAM is decent enough, 16GB will get the job done nicely. Recommended graphics card: Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB or AMD RX580.
As for the operating system, Windows 10 (64-bit) is recommended, and you’ll need 70 GB of space available. Baldur’s Gate 3 will be available on Steam and Stadia. You’ll note that Steam doesn’t mention a price; no price point has been set as yet.
Read the original article on The South African
