Since it emerged from early access, Baldur’s Gate 3 has surpassed a lot of expectations, having attracted a huge amount of players keen to embark on the journey to its highest levels.
Despite the manner in which it's set to arrive on Xbox consoles having caused some debate, the game’s modding scene is already in full swing, and some players are already trying out bizarre speedruns and interesting challenges.
Meanwhile, some players have been looking through the apparent "cut content" that dataminers have found in the game and calling on Larian to add some of it into the game, with the developer now having responded via a community update.
Are you looking forward to playing through Karlach’s new ending when Baldur’s Gate 3’s second patch arrives?
In the blog post in question, the studio discusses its plans for the game in the near future, which include a second patch that, alongside the standard bug fixes will provide some “substantial performance improvements” and a “more fleshed-out” ending for Karlach.
Larian acknowledges that the latter is “something many [players] have been asking for,” adding later on in the post that this new optional resolution to Karlach’s story is designed to be: “fiery, poignant, and give [the character] the ending she deserves.”
The majority of the post sees the studio address the speculation that’s been going on within the game’s community regarding the apparent “cut content” dataminers have unearthed by combing through its files. Larian asserts that a lot of this data doesn’t refer to “cut content,” but rather to things that weren’t included for specific reasons, such as bugs, not reaching the studio’s high standards, or simply not being included in the final vision for the game.
Regarding the endings in particular, Larian explained: “One of the reasons why we trimmed the epilogue is because we were afraid the ending cinematics were becoming too long and would detract from the epicness of the experience. But clearly, not everyone agrees with us! So we’re going to do something about it.”
In the post’s conclusion, the studio stated:
We feel confident that there’s enough content in Baldur’s Gate 3, and the city itself, clocking in weeks-long playthroughs at a time. But that’s not to say Baldur’s Gate 3 didn’t see cuts just as every game. It’s just important to know that what ultimately shipped was planned long ago, in function primarily of making Baldur’s Gate 3 fun to play, not for us to close development quickly.
The update also saw Larian disclose that the game’s third act will be the main target for Patch 2’s performance tweaks, which it has tweeted “is around the corner.”
It also revealed that it’s working on adding in features that’ll allow players to get rid of unwanted co-op party members and change their character’s appearance mid-playthrough, though the post doesn’t say when either of these will arrive.
Regardless of how you feel about Baldur’s Gate 3’s future, make sure to check out our guides to its builds, mechanics, and locations.