RPG Delays Launch To Avoid Competing With Baldur’s Gate 3

The protagonist of Stray Gods stares at the camera with glowing eyes as someone behind her expresses a look of shock.

Image: Summefall Studios

Summerfall Studios, developers of the upcoming, self-described “roleplaying musical” Stray Gods, has recently taken to Twitter to deliver some unfortunate news for those eager to sing their way out of a fantasy predicament. Stray Gods, which puts you in the role of a woman who must prove her innocence before Greek gods through the magic of song, is getting pushed back a week to an August 10 release date.

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But though the news was delivered in the standard image-of-a-letter format that we all know and love, the contents weren’t your typical boilerplate about needing a bit more time to ensure the game is at its best. Nope, this one was very direct: the studio wants to avoid competition with Baldur’s Gate 3 which is slated to launch on August 3, the original release date of Stray Gods. And yes, there are also some technical goals the team is hoping to hit by pushing the release date back a bit.

“We need to make a slight adjustment to the calendar,” the opening of the statement reads before announcing the new release date of August 10. It continues:

We want everyone to have ample space to check out Stray Gods when it launches. Baldur’s Gate 3 is hotly anticipated (by us, too!) and we want to give our fans room to celebrate Stray Gods.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is expected to be a massive RPG experience, so something tells me that folks will still be very deep into it even just seven days after its August 3 launch, but it makes sense for a smaller title to maybe take a heartbeat before hitting storefronts. Or, as one person put it on Twitter, maybe Summerfall Games doesn’t want to hog all the attention for itself.

Summerfall Studios

The delay is also giving the studio some time to work on “performance parity” between consoles and PC so that it runs “as close as possible, across every platform.”

Stray Gods launches on PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch on August 10.

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Baldur’s Gate 3 Devs Hired Intimacy Coordinators For Sex Scenes

A Baldur's Gate 3 screenshot shows Shadowheart clutching a flaming artifact.

Screenshot: Larian Studios / Kotaku

In a recent interview with the BBC, an actor in the upcoming fantasy role-playing game Baldur’s Gate 3 revealed that developer Larian Studios used intimacy coordinators to help actors feel safe and comfortable when depicting the game’s more intimate moments.

Baldur’s Gate 3’s Karlach Actor On Playing The Beloved Barbarian

Read More: Baldur’s Gate 3 Is A Massive RPG And That’s A Big Deal Right Now

An intimacy coordinator, according to SAG-AFTRA, is “an advocate, a liaison between actors and production, and a movement coach and/or choreographer in regards to nudity and simulated sex and other intimate and hyper-exposed scenes.” Essentially, intimacy coordinators coach actors and production companies about consent and boundaries when intimate scenes “involving nudity or simulated sex” are being shot. Their presence and input has become more common on film and TV productions in recent years, but this may be among the earliest examples of them being employed in the gaming space. (As the BBC story notes, intimacy coordinators were also on hand for the filming of certain scenes in last year’s game Immortality.)

During the interview, actors Jennifer English (Shadowheart) and Devora Wilde (Lae’zel) revealed that developer Larian Studios utilized professional intimacy coordinators to aid Baldur’s Gate 3’s cast in feeling safe while motion capturing the game’s many steamy and sometimes awkward romance scenes between male, female, and shape-shifting companions.

Despite conceding that acting out the fantasy RPG’s narrative had its odd moments, English told the BBC that she “never felt ‘yuck’ in a recording session at all.”

Developer Larian told the BBC that it believes it’s among the first studios to use intimacy coordinators while working on a fully rendered video game, and it hopes other studios will do the same in the future.

11 Minutes With Baldur’s Gate 3’s Character Creator

11 Minutes With Baldur’s Gate 3’s Character Creator

Read More: Baldur’s Gate 3 Has Everything: Polyamory, Bear Fucking, Blood Sacrifice

While Baldur’s Gate 3 promises plenty of opportunities for romance of all kinds, the one example that’s gotten the most attention so far is a clip of a love scene between vampire Astarion and shape-shifting druid Halsin, in bear form. Larian founder Swen Vincke has said that the steamy clip got the studio briefly banned from TikTok. Since the clip’s release on July 7, BG3’s Google search results exploded, with the “bear-mance” scene apparently piquing folks’ curiosity about what else the Dungeons & Dragons game might have in store.

   

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Baldur’s Gate 3 Dev Says Divinity: Original Sin Sequel Coming

There seems to be another Divinity: Original Sin sequel in the future, but eager fans will need to wait until well after developer Larian Studios releases Baldur’s Gate 3 to get their hands on it.

Baldur’s Gate 3’s Karlach Actor On Playing The Beloved Barbarian

In an IGN interview published July 27, the Belgian studio’s founder Swen Vincke confirmed that players haven’t seen the last of the tactically-minded, isometric role-playing game series Divinity: Original Sin, saying that it’s Larian’s “own universe,” and that “we’re definitely gonna get back there at some point.”

But his team will very much need to “refresh [themselves] creatively” after Baldur’s Gate 3, its first game in six years, before committing to an actual game announcement.

In an article from earlier this July, Kotaku staff writer Kenneth Shepard explains why this latest entry in the Dungeons & Dragons-set, party-based RPG series first introduced by BioWare in 1998 is “a big deal.”

“Baldur’s Gate 3 fills a current void in big-budget RPGs as BioWare sorts itself out,” Shepard writes. “It’s been a minute since we got a meaty RPG that is truly character and choice-driven, full of big decisions and consequences and relationship-building, and involving player expression on this level.”

Vincke guesses that people will only experience about 30 percent of the game or less during their first playthroughs, he told senior Kotaku writer Ethan Gach in a recent interview.

Read More: Hyped RPG Baldur’s Gate III Took Six Years To Make Because It’s Scary-Big

“You’re seeing 400 developers putting their heart and souls into [Baldur’s Gate 3],” Vincke said to IGN. “You’re getting the best of them and their craft into this game. And so I can tell you, it’s quite a thing.”

Sorry, Divinity fans. Take solace in the fact that your time will eventually come.

It might help to know that Baldur’s Gate 3 is almost out the door—Larian, hoping to avoid competition with Starfield and the Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty expansion, bumped its PC release date up a month to August 3. It will release for PlayStation 5 on September 6, and an Xbox Series X/S date is not yet confirmed.

 

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When Is Baldur’s Gate 3 Coming To Xbox? It’s Complicated

Baldur’s Gate III arrives on PC on August 3 and is right around the corner on PlayStation 5. But what about Xbox Series X/S? The sprawling role-playing game still doesn’t have a release date on Microsoft’s console, though fortunately Larian Studios was recently able to confirm that it will arrive before the end of 2023 after a complex and bizarre saga that all revolves around split-screen co-op.

Baldur’s Gate 3’s Karlach Actor On Playing The Beloved Barbarian

The Dungeons & Dragons-based game has been in Early Access for several years, with fans patiently waiting to dip their toes into the deep end of its massive world full of hidden secrets and branching storylines. A console version of the game will arrive on PS5 on September 6, just in time to take advantage of Starfield’s absence from Sony’s “next-gen” platform. Larian says it needs more time to finish the Xbox version of the game, but hasn’t yet been able to commit to a firm launch date.

Is Baldur’s Gate III a PS5 exclusive?

The short answer is: no. While the RPG is coming to PS5 first, Larian has been clear that there’s no timed-exclusivity deal in place or favoritism going on. It’s simply that the PS5 version is ready now and the Xbox one isn’t yet.

“There’s no platform exclusivity preventing us from releasing BG3 on Xbox day and date, should that be a technical possibility,” the studio wrote in February. “If and when we do announce further platforms, we want to make sure each version lives up to our standards and expectations.”

Originally set to come out on August 31, Larian actually pushed the PS5 release date back a week so it would have more time to fine-tune its performance on that platform (the game is targeting 60fps).

Why isn’t there an Xbox Series X/S version yet?

The real culprit is the Xbox Series S. Larian mentioned back in February that it was still having issues with Baldur’s Gate III’s splitscreen coop on the less powerful hardware. Since Microsoft requires feature parity between the Xbox Series S and X, Larian seemingly didn’t have an option to change or cut things from the one version to get it out the door quicker.

“We’ve had an Xbox version of Baldur’s Gate III in development for some time now,” Larian told fans earlier in the year. “We’ve run into some technical issues in developing the Xbox port that have stopped us feeling 100% confident in announcing it until we’re certain we’ve found the right solutions.”

Studio head Swen Vincke elaborated on the nature of some of the issues again in July, pointing to the challenge of optimizing a game for consoles that kept growing throughout development like Baldur’s Gate III. Players are free to explore its central hub city, and the game tracks tons of decisions made in order to create a more immersive playthrough as if you were part of a real-life D&D session.

“On Xbox, it’s a different platform, it has, as you know, there’s two platforms really,” Vincke told Kotaku. “And so we have to see where we ended up. And the team is committed to working on it, it has for a long time already. So they’re going bit by bit, you know, like, you tear down one performance barrier and go to the next one.” He added that Microsoft’s engineers have been helping Larian, but also pointed to the reality that it’s an independent studio with finite resources.

“Everybody wants this out on Xbox. It’s not that we don’t want it out on Xbox,” Vincke told IGN. “It’s just that, our problem — and this is us, Larian — is that we just made a very big game. And it’s a very complicated game.”

Baldur’s Gate III will ditch co-op on Series S

So where does that leave the Xbox Series X/S version? The studio had said in the past that it was hoping to get Baldur’s Gate III on Xbox by the end of 2023, but couldn’t commit to a hard date yet, especially as it prepared to juggle post-launch updates as the full game goes out into the wild. But following an in-person meeting with Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer at Gamescom 2023, things changed.

“We’ve found a solution that allows us to bring Baldur’s Gate 3 to Xbox players this year still, something we’ve been working towards for quite some time,” Vincke tweeted on August 24. “All improvements will be there, with split-screen coop on Series X. Series S will not feature split-screen coop, but will also include cross-save progression between Steam and Xbox Series.”

There remains some confusion over what exactly caused the initial holdup over split-screen. Was Larian Studios misled over Microosft’s feature parity requirement, or did Spencer make a narrow exception for Baldur’s Gate 3 that he’ll try to hold other studios to in the future? The company has continued to commit to supporting the Series S, even as it hits the mid-way point of the current console cycle.

Update 8/24/2023 12:30 p.m. ET: Added new information from Larian Studios about the timeline for the Xbox versions.

 

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Matt Mercer Solves Baldur’s Gate 3 Problems In A Very D&D Way

Gif: Larian Studios / Kotaku

Finding nonsensical solutions to a problem is a core part of the Dungeons & Dragons experience, and not many people know that better than actor and Critical Role DM Matt Mercer. With Baldur’s Gate 3 out this week, it seems only natural that a D&D superstar would make his way to Larian Studios’ RPG set in that universe and also come up with a ridiculous play like stacking a few dozen boxes on top of each other to get over a defensive wall and into a castle.

Unboxing The Baldur’s Gate 3 Collector’s Edition

Mercer, who appeared on a stream playing the game alongside Larian founder Swen Vincke, accomplished this feat by stacking 45 boxes to make a staircase. Using the jump command, Mercer scaled the makeshift stairs until he was high enough to fire an Arrow of Transposition, which teleports the user to wherever the projectile lands. Honestly, the whole thing kind of broke my brain.

I’m around 25 hours into Baldur’s Gate 3, and I’m still wrapping my head around how much chaos it allows for. More often than not, when we think of RPGs and systemic chaos we think of open-world games where there are all these clockwork systems that we disrupt as the player and watch disorder unfold. But I think Baldur’s Gate 3 is more impressive in that it gives you so many tools to navigate the world and find creative solutions that can support something like making a giant staircase of boxes and then teleporting via arrow. It rules.

As more players get their hands on Baldur’s Gate 3, we’ll no doubt see more people pulling off impressive nonsense, but shoutout to Mercer for ringing in release day with this terrific display.

While we might not have outlined anything this wild, we can give you some early-game tips to help you get started in Baldur’s Gate 3.

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Baldur’s Gate 3 Nerfs Unintended Nudity In First Big Patch

A D&D character ponders all of the clipped dicks.

Image: Larian Studios

Baldur’s Gate 3 got it’s first major post-launch patch today on PC, and the patch notes mention fixes to rogue genitalia and missing undies, among other, more pedestrian things like “Fixed an issue causing you to get stuck in dialogue.”

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Larian Studios is calling the August 8 update Hotfix 2, otherwise known as version 4.1.1.3630146 of a game that spent over two years in Early Acccess. What players experienced previoulsy was only a small slice of the world being built, however, and now that the whole thing is out in the wild, Larian has had a chance to discover, analyze, and improve on a ton of issues with the Dungeons & Dragons RPG.

Baldur’s Gate 3 hasn’t been shy about how horny it is. The game opens with a warning about nudity, even if some Twitch streamers feigned shock anyway when things started to get hot and heavy. Naturally, matters of sexuality topped the list of the new patch notes:

  • Penises C and D no longer clip through some githyanki clothing.
  • Male gnome sorcerers are no longer missing their undies.

Gif: Larian Studios / TheCanabalisticBambi / Kotaku

Githyanki clothing is the cool, sophisticated version of bikini armor, with metal chestplates and belts connected by leather. Players can now enjoy it without worrying about their massive dongs poking through. The underwear mishap, meanwhile, is related to a specific incident that blew up on Reddit in which a brave gnome sorcerer’s robe turned into a make-shift parachute as he fell, leaving nothing to the imagination.

Read More: 45 Hours With Baldur’s Gate 3: The Best Non-Spoiler Moments (So Far)

“We’re busy working away on squashing some of the remaining bugs and issues that have come up since launch,” the studio wrote today. “We’ve got a new hotfix for you this week, addressing almost 300 crashes, blockers, and bugs.” My personal favorite one of these fixes is, “Fixed pauses and long silences in over 200 dialogues.” I hope Larian is getting some sleep as the game cracks the top 10 most played games ever on Steam.

Here’s the full patch notes for hotfix 2:

CRASHES AND BLOCKERS

  • Fixed an issue causing you to get stuck in dialogue.
  • Fixed a potential crash when reloading a savegame made mid-dialogue.
  • Fixed being unable to enter the Shadowfell if you saved while the prompt was on screen.
  • Fixed a crash caused by the UI.
  • Fixed a potential crash when saving while standing on a surface during combat or in Turn-Based Mode.
  • Fixed a rare blocker when loading a savegame made in camp that would cause a party member to spawn outside of camp.
  • Fixed a potential crash when choosing to stop listening in on a dialogue.
  • Fixed a potential crash when applying dye to an item outside of the inventory or through non-conventional means, such as the Reward panel.
  • Fixed a potential multiplayer crash when the client touches the transponder on the nautiloid and leaves the party, and then the host tries to open Party View.
  • Fixed a potential crash caused by the game trying to load the Character Creation UI when you are no longer in Character Creation.
  • Fixed a potential crash related to the tooltips of items that grant skill advantages but don’t have an owner.
  • Fixed a rare PhysX crash.
  • Fixed a rare crash related to moving items.

MULTIPLAYER

  • Fixed long fade-outs when listening in on dialogues in multiplayer.

GAMEPLAY

  • Penises C and D no longer clip through some githyanki clothing.
  • Male gnome sorcerers are no longer missing their undies.
  • Fixed an infinite loop that could occur with spells like Minor Illusion, where the enemy and the illusion would repeatedly enter and leave combat.
  • Fixed necromites not joining the combat with Ketheric.
  • Fixed enemies on the upper floor of Moonrise entering combat with those on the lower floor.
  • Fixed Voss’ dragon reappearing after the githyanki scene near the Mountain Pass.
  • Fixed a book in Moonrise Towers showing an internal variable name instead of the correct content.
  • Fixed an issue preventing the boss fight with Ketheric from progressing.

UI

  • Removed the version number that was below the minimap.
  • Improved UI stability by preventing possible crashes and possible savegame corruption.

ENGINE

  • Fixed issues with rendering on Vulkan when minimising the game.
  • Added additional multiplayer servers and server scaling support.
  • Fixed an issue causing the wrong refresh rates to be applied if the game was not running in fullscreen.

CINEMATICS

  • Fixed pauses and long silences in over 200 dialogues.
  • Companions no longer block the camera in some dialogs.
  • Fixed a camera issue where you see the back of Gale’s head when he asks you to place your hand over his chest.
  • Fixed a pop on Shadowheart when she hears the voice of Shar.
  • Fixed Gale’s paddle hands in one of his dialogues.
  • Fixed Guex looking at the floor in his dialogue in the Emerald Grove.
  • Fixed a blocked camera in the dialogue with Benryn at Waukeen’s Rest.
  • Fixed clipping and other issues in the scene where you hear the voice of the Absolute when approaching the Goblin Camp.
  • Fixed a camera issue and a pop in the dialogue with the owlbear in its cave.
  • Fixed players’ feet sliding around in the dialogue with Jaheira after combat at Last Light.
  • Fixed one of Astarion’s lines getting cut off in a camp dialogue.
  • Fixed several animation issues in the dialogue after some acquaintances of Astarion visit camp.
  • Fixed a pop for players using Body Type 4 in the scene with poor Liam at the Goblin Camp.
  • Fixed a camera issue in the dialogue with Edowin, Andrick and Brynna in the forest.
  • Fixed Kagha’s eyes rolling backwards à la Exorcist after the goblin leaders are defeated.
  • Fixed a positioning issue with Lorin in the hag’s lair.
  • Cleaned up some mocap in conversations with Astarion.
  • Fixed a head pop in the scene with the ogres in the Blighted Village.
  • Fixed Wyll’s head animation in the dialogue with Florrick at Last Light.
  • Fixed Sceleritas Fel standing a little too close for comfort when he tells the Dark Urge to commit a certain misdeed.
  • Fixed a camera issue in the scene with Radija at Moonrise.
  • Fixed a minor pop when rescuing Zariel’s asset for Mizora.
  • Fixed a clipping issue with a certain hag’s arms and leaves in the Blushing Mermaid.
  • Fixed some character placement issues in an endgame scene.
  • Fixed a camera issue for female gnomes in a dialogue at Moonrise involving something coming through a wall.
  • Fixed a pop for the flesh golem when speaking to Balthazar.
  • Fixed a camera issue when talking to one of Therezzyn’s dire wolves in Crèche Y’llek.
  • Fixed character placement issues in the lanceboard scene with Mol and Raphael at Last Light.
  • Fixed a character placement issue that caused Lae’zel to float off the edge of the nautiloid.
  • Fixed several issues in the dialogue with Bernard at the Arcane Tower.
  • Fixed a camera issue in the boat scene where you’re heading to a particular pool.
  • Fixed a minor mocap issue with Fist Rowan at Wyrm’s Crossing.
  • Fixed Minthara looking to the side with suspicion the night after the celebration at camp.
  • Fixed characters’ heads popping downward when throwing a coin into the well in the Blighted Village.
  • Fixed a minor pop when Shadowheart tries to convince you that you need her at the Goblin Camp.
  • Adjusted Astarion’s expression in dialogue with Gandrel in the Sunlit Wetlands.
  • Fixed Blurg being invisible and Astarion being stuck in the wrong animation in the Myconid Circle.
  • Fixed several issues in the dialogue with the monk’s amulet.
  • Fixed several issues in the dialogue with Dammon and Karlach about her heart.
  • Fixed several issues in the dialogue with Fortuno Dibbs at Wyrm’s Crossing.
  • Fixed several animation issues in the dialogue with Kansif and Warrior Vez in the Shadow-Cursed Lands.
  • Fixed a minor timing issue with a Dream Visitor line when talking to Therezzyn in the crèche.
  • Fixed issues with several voice-over lines.
  • Fixed characters’ eyes looking in the wrong direction in the ambush scene in the Shadow-Cursed Lands if you side with the Harpers.
  • Cleaned up some mocap in conversations with Gale.
  • Cleaned up some mocap in the dialogue with Astarion about illithid powers.
  • Added some pained grunts for the player in a scene about Wyll in the Colony.
  • Added grunts in a scene for Dark Urge players after they resisted the allure of their Urges.
  • Drenn is no longer invisible in the scene at Moonrise when Minthara has to defend herself.
  • Fixed a very long pause in a dialogue with Halsin after the endgame fight.
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Baldur’s Gate 3 May Not Get DLC Due To D&D’s OP Leveling

The recently released Baldur’s Gate 3 is a massive RPG with high replay value due to all the choices you can make, so it might seem weird to be talking about the game getting an expansion. But the question has been asked, and the response from the people behind the hit RPG is basically, probably not, because high-level Dungeons and Dragons characters are too powerful.

Baldur’s Gate 3’s Karlach Actor On Playing The Beloved Barbarian

If you’ve been on the internet lately, it probably seems like the world is obsessed with Baldur’s Gate 3, which fully launched last week to rave reviews after an extended period in Steam Early Access. The turn-based Dungeons and Dragons RPG is truly blowing up on Steam, with hundreds of thousands of players logging in all at the same time to play (and also to have sex…a lot of sex). And while the game is huge—taking dozens and dozens of hours to fully complete, with multiple endings—some are already wondering about future expansions. But, that’s probably not going to happen. And if it does happen, it’s going to take a long time.

In an interview with PC Gamer on August 7, Larian Studios founder Swen Vincke said that the team hadn’t even started on an expansion. And sure, the game caps out at level 12, but DnD supports level 20 characters. Naturally, that seems to leave room for a big follow-up expansion. However, Vincke explained that he thinks it would be “very hard” to continue the adventure with the high-level characters players have at the end of the game. That’s because, in DnD, when players start reaching level 13 and beyond they become nearly godlike. Spells that high-level players gain access to include the ability to see the future, or just instantly kill anything with less than 100HP.

Larian Studios

“[High-level DnD] adventures require a different way of doing things, in terms of antagonists you’re going to have to deal with, which require a lot of development to do them properly,” Vincke said, “Which would make this much more than an expansion in terms of development effort.”

Vincke explained that this is why a lot of DnD campaigns are designed for level 12 or lower characters. So while it might seem like a perfect opportunity for an expansion, to just let players hit level 20, it’s “not as easy as one would imagine.”

Promising an expansion too early could cause problems

Another issue that Larian Studios faces when trying to make a big follow-up expansion to Baldur’s Gate 3? All the choices you can make and the endings you can get. Vincke tells PC Gamer that if the studio was to build DLC for the RPG it would be hard, and players would have to wait for “a long time.”

He further added that if the studio announced expansion plans too early and then, partway through development, realized the expansion was boring or not very fun, it’d have to keep working on it and try to get people to buy something it doesn’t fully believe in.

“That would not be cool. So we have to have the freedom to experiment and do our stuff. And then when we’re ready to announce it, we will.”

So for now, there is no plan to make a Baldur’s Gate 3 expansion, but there’s a small chance it could still happen. One day. Maybe.

 

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Baldur’s Gate 3 Now Has 2023’s Highest Metacritic Review Score

Tav is shown casting a spell with glowing green eyes.

Screenshot: Larian Studios / Kotaku

Baldur’s Gate 3 has surpassed The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom as the highest-ratest game of 2023 on Metacritic. As of this writing, Larian Studios’ Dungeons & Dragons fantasy RPG is sitting at a 97 on the review aggregate site, edging it out by one point over Tears of the Kingdom’s 96. While this will likely ebb and flow in the coming days as more outlets get reviews out, it’s another clear example of positive buzz around the game.

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For context, Baldur’s Gate 3 will likely get more reviews that adjust its overall score in the coming days, as reviewers (Kotaku included) were only given review access a few days before the game launched on PC on August 3. The game is very dense and fairly lengthy. My first playthrough clocked in about 55 hours, and that’s not even counting how much time I spent retrying encounters that wouldn’t be represented on the in-game timer., so a lot of reviewers haven’t finished it yet, and have yet to actually give the RPG an official score or final verdict. So right now, with its first 14 reviews, a handful of which gave Baldur’s Gate 3 a glowing 5 out of 5 or 10 out of 10 score, its weighted average currently sits higher than any other game to launch this year.

Kotaku’s review is coming soon. Like, real soon. But I’ll at least say I’m feeling pretty hot on what Larian Studios has accomplished with Baldur’s Gate 3, as well. Kotaku doesn’t do scored reviews, so our review ultimately won’t affect the game’s Metacritic standing, but there’s no denying the notability of BG3 holding the top-rated spot—-even if it doesn’t last. It’s especially notable when a lot of this year’s highest-scoring games have been remakes or remasters. I, and a lot of reviewers, still think review scores are detrimental to the review process, but seeing a number that high likely means a lot to the folks who worked on Baldur’s Gate 3 over the years.

If the high scores have piqued your interest, check out some tips to get you started, as well as some tricks to help you excel in combat.

 

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Baldur’s Gate 3’s Most Popular Class Is The Paladin

Tav is shown looking especially spicy in a vest with nothing else under it.

Screenshot: Larian Studios / Kotaku

Baldur’s Gate 3 has a myriad of choices for building your character from the moment you boot up the RPG, including its 12 different classes, which range from magic users to standard sword-and-board warriors. Developer Larian Studios has released early statistics since the game launched on August 3 for the characters and decisions players are making, and one class is pulling ahead of the others by a pretty significant margin: Paladins.

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Larian laid out the spread of Baldur’s Gate 3’s class distribution for custom characters in a big infographic posted to the game’s Steam Page. Paladin takes the top spot with over 200,000 players choosing to take the Paladin’s oath. Sorcerer came in second, followed by Warlock. The full ranking is as follows:

  1. Paladin
  2. Sorcerer
  3. Warlock
  4. Rogue
  5. Bard
  6. Barbarian
  7. Fighter
  8. Ranger
  9. Wizard
  10. Monk
  11. Druid
  12. Cleric
An infographic shows the ranking of classes in Baldur's Gate 3.

Image: Larian Studios / Kotaku

R.I.P. to Clerics like Shadowheart, but the class ranks at the bottom at just over 50,000 players choosing the way of the god-fearing healer/warrior. Some of these rankings make sense because the higher classes fill in the gaps of the main party. There is a Paladin inin Minthara, but she’s also only recruitable if you do some terrible shit. (No, you can’t fix her.) Be the Paladin you want to see in your party. Cleric, meanwhile, is covered by Shadowheart, who is one of the earliest characters you recruit. So no need to make things redundant by being one yourself.

Meanwhile, there is no Sorcerer or Bard in your party, so it makes sense that players might want to learn those abilities to fill out the group. Plus, when you’re a Bard you can just start playing your instrument to change the music during battle, which rules.

Party composition is only one part of Baldur’s Gate 3’s dense RPG systems, and they can all be pretty overwhelming. Be sure to check out some of our early game tips to help you cut through the noise.

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