Baldur's Gate 3 Pulls What Many Said Was Impossible In Its Final Update
12 new reasons to play Larian's classic RPG.
A year and a half after releasing one of the best role-playing games ever made, Larian Studios is finally winding down its post-launch support for Baldur’s Gate 3. Still, the developer is making sure it’s going out with a bang. Not only will the latest update add brand new subclasses that will make yet another playthrough worthwhile, but it also makes good on promises that many developers would’ve thought impossible.
Baldur’s Gate 3’s big “Final Update” (as it's being called by its developer) will mark the last time the developer is expanding upon and adding new features to the hit role-playing game. The biggest of these features is crossplay, finally removing barriers between members of the game’s community.
Not only will players be able to join each other’s games regardless of what platform they prefer to play on, but the game will recognize what mods a host has enabled for a campaign and let joining players download those mods quickly and painlessly. This, of course, only works for mods available through Baldur’s Gate 3’s in-game mod client and not those downloaded through third-party websites like Nexus Mods.
The final update will also add 12 new subclasses — one for each of the game’s main classes — adding new abilities, animations, visual effects, unique summons, powerful cantrips, and voiced dialogue to the game. For fans of Baldur’s Gate 3’s turn-based combat, the new subclasses provide even more ways to mix it up with enemies in new playthroughs.
Despite being one of the most viral games of the last two years, Baldur’s Gate 3 was missing a popular feature that most video games include nowadays: a photo mode. That changes with the final update. Baldur’s Gate 3 is getting a robust photo mode, one that allows players to pose individual members of their party, change their facial expressions, reposition the camera however they’d like, add a range of post-processing effects, over 300 stickers, frames, and more.
One of the most impressive new additions in this last patch is one exclusive to die-hard Xbox fans. It was well-documented that the reason Baldur’s Gate 3 was three months late to an Xbox release was because Larian couldn’t get local split screen running on the less powerful Xbox Series S. Microsoft made a rare exception to its parity mandate to get Baldur’s Gate 3 released on Xbox, with the Series S version of the game cutting couch co-op entirely.
There’s lots of fun to be had with Baldur’s Gate 3’s new photo mode.
While many developers have said the Series S has slowed technical leaps this console generation, Larian’s creative lead Sven Vincke has been steadfast in his support of the smaller device, going as far as to say its “pefectly fine,” just needs a bit of elbow grease from teams willing to work within its parameters. Well, he and the team made good on that promise, as the Series S is finally getting split-screen co-op support.
In a final message to fans, Larian thanked everyone for their support over the last 18 months.
“You’ve helped us make [Baldur’s Gate 3] a bigger success than any of us could’ve ever hoped for, and that passion could keep us tweaking things and making changes until the end of time,” wrote in its impassioned letter to fans. “But then we’d never be able to create something new.”
While Larian says it won’t be adding more to the game, the game will continue to evolve thanks to the modding community’s continued dedication to expanding the game. However, Larian does promise that it will work on patches and fixes for minor bugs as they arise in the future.
