Baldur’s Gate III Launches for PC in Early Access in 2020 - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 27 February 2020 / 2,699 Views
Developer Larian Studios announced Baldur's Gate III will launch for Windows PC in early access in 2020. The developer also released new information on the game, as well as the opening cinematic and gameplay reveal videos.
View the opening cinematic below:
View the gameplay reveal video below:
Read the latest information on the game below:
Baldur’s Gate III is an entirely next-generation RPG taking place in the Forgotten Realms setting from Dungeons & Dragons and 20 years in the making. Return to the legendary city of Baldur’s Gate in a tale of fellowship and betrayal, sacrifice and survival and the lure of absolute power.
Dark powers are awakening inside you, drawn from a Mind Flayer parasite planted in your mind. Resist, and turn evil against itself. Or embrace corruption, and lay claim to the Forgotten Realms.
Key Features:
- A Truly Next-Generation Experience
- Built using the new Divinity 4.0 engine with AAA production values.
- Cinematic dialogs, all performance captured across 1.5 million words.
- Unparalleled depth and replayability, whether in single player or multiplayer.
- Expanded Attitude System to leave your mark on the world.
- Dynamic Music that shifts in tone to the context of a battle, situation, and story.
- Layered Crime system that holds you accountable for your actions and affects your reputation.
- Four-player online multiplayer and split-screen couch co-op for two players.
- The Most Authentic Dungeons & Dragons RPG Ever Created
- Hundreds of locations true to the lore, spanning over 100 hours of gameplay.
- Choose from 15 Dungeons & Dragons
- Build relationships with your companions in your ever-evolving campsite.
- Roll the dice to determine your fate in a story with countless permutations.
- Speak with the dead to learn new facts and uncover secrets.
- Evolved Turn-Based Combat True to Dungeons & Dragons
- Switch to turn-based mode to solve puzzles or sneak up on characters.
- Manipulate light and darkness for non-binary style stealth action.
- The next generation of turn-based combat featuring hundreds of Dungeons & Dragons spells and actions.
- Unlimited freedom to explore and experiment.
You are burdened with a great power devouring you from within. How far down the path of darkness will you let it take you? The fate of the Forgotten Realms is on your party’s shoulders. Will you carry it to salvation, or descend with it to hell?
We are in the Forgotten Realms, a land of many races and multiple divine beings. We know that the world is in turmoil: armies of evil (gnolls, orcs, duergar, goblins, drow, etc.) rampage along the Sword Coast, and refugees swarm to Baldur’s Gate.
Amid all this chaos, a new cult is on the rise: the cult of the Absolute. Seeking to overthrow the old order, its shadowy network is chipping away at the Forgotten Realms foundations. Baldur’s Gate itself will be the first to fall.
That is where we come in: the players. And we’re off to a very inauspicious start indeed…
Out of nowhere, we were kidnapped by mind flayers. A tadpole was put in our heads. We barely survived the crash landing of a nautiloid, and we find ourselves stranded in the middle of an inhospitable wilderness. We discover we have only a few days to get rid of the parasite inside, or we’ll become mind flayers ourselves.
As we desperately seek a cure, we discover the tadpole gives us godlike powers and we find ourselves on the centre stage of a complot hatched by none other than the Dead Three: the gods of Murder, Tyranny, and Death.
Our journey will not only take us back to the legendary city of Baldur’s Gate, but through and beyond the Forgotten Realms.
It is a journey of survival: ours, and all of the Forgotten Realms.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Gameplay looks hand on!
I'm looking forward to this. Hopefully it comes to consoles.
It'll come for consoles via next gen, according to a dev interview on Eurogamer
I will certainly get this on day one for PS5
Looks absolutely great,a worthy BG3.
It just looks like DoS tbh. Nothing like actual BG.
Thank you, the game should of been made by someone else.
The only other people would be Obsidian, but then people would complain it looks like Pillars of Eternity.
BG 3 in name only I'm afraid, merely a divinity reskin. Wrong studio to begin with.
What did you expect? Obviously they would use the same (but updated) engine. The one they gambled the very existence of the studio on. But the world, quests, systems, stories are clearly D&D. It takes a lot of effort to hand craft good quests and stories, and since that content will clearly be based in the Forgotten Realms, calling this a reskin is a cheap shot.
Nope, I was playing this stuff when I was a teenager, the ones who would buy this. It is a reskin pure and simple and the sales will be saved by the casual consolites.
Well, I strongly disagree. I'll be buying this. And I'll probably just enjoy it as much as I did Baldur's Gate and BG 2, given the quality of Larian's output.
It's a bit sad you can't accept it as a D&D game because it doesn't look like an Infinity Engine Game. It even follows Descent Into Avernus, so it most definitely is a Baldur's Gate game.
It's a shame you don't see what other BG fans are seeing, and I agree with Matt on this, and I know we're not alone on this notion.
It will be a great game and if larian studios sees the feedback they might change a few things for the traditional BG fans in the next game.
That sounds like a bad idea tbh, because that's like telling the OG fans "you're not getting a complete game, but come back next game and enjoy a now incomplete series".
This is like when EA tried to warp C&C with C&C 4 and C&C mobile, only listening to core fans years later.
I think some changes are simply inevitable. BG 1 & 2 were based on AD&D 2nd edition. Now we're at D&D 5th edition. Obviously a modern D&D title would work off the principles of the current edition. Keeping it exactly the same might please just BG fans, but people who also play D&D wouldn't be as pleased if it didn't work off 5th edition.
SO what you're saying is please D&D fans first, fob off BG fans second?. Basically you could apply this to literally any game that's had even an ounce of D&D applied to it, and screw over OG fans of those games. We've plenty of D&D based games with based rules that they could go play.
But Chazore,what about the original game BG fans that like this path they have taken with development?
What about them?.
What about those that aren't happy with the changeover?.
Those fans think it is a good evolution,i mean you mention OG fans like everyone of them is not happy with this.
Those that aren't happy with it have ways to show it but that does not make this a bad Baldurs Gate game,if you see how other genres have evolved it is a bit ridiculous to expect the same gameplay from Baldurs Gate after all those years.
Hell why in the seven seas would larian studios not build this with the same engine as DOS.
Except we still have genres where aspects of them are roughly the same, and people being content with, but at the same time being more focused on the actual games/gameplay, rather than the deep-core mechanics going on underneath the hood.
I also think it's a bit foolhardy to suggest my Favorite genre needs to "evolve", as I very much love my base/army building in my C&C-like games, and I wouldn't want it any other way (which fans have greatly expressed over the years). I don't think the fans displeased need to be shoved in some corner or told to bugger off though, so where do you meet them in all of this?.
Suggest? No no it is accepting how it is in it's current shape and it does not look like a bad game,it could have been evolved like kingmaker or pillars of eternity but that is a bit unrealistic to hope for when a studio as Larian Studios invested so much in that engine they only used for two games,a studio like them do not have endless funding and surely not for a game like that.But really wait a bit more,they used assets for this demo from divinity that will be replaced in the full game and outside of the combat the lore and queststructure is pure BG.
Right, so you're basically telling the former group to just move on, and make space for the non former BG fans, or those who just accept any changes in any facet of any game, without question.
You don't ened endless funding to craft a non turned based game...
I'm not really waiting for anything, as it's not even my jam, because I quite frankly hate turned based games, and hate how spammed they are across this industry these days, compared to Action RPG/ISO ARPG's.
I just don't see what's so positive about swapping fans for new ones and changing a lot about a core game, because I've seen it happen to IP's I loved for decades, and it never bode well for me or fans who were fond of the previous status quo. New fans or overly optimistic people don't care, and I guess that's what any dev wants, people that don't give a shit and don't ask questions.
Like you're already calling it great, and you know we've only seen a brief snippet. The game isn't even out yet, so why call on the negative, when you're being overly positive before that game is even out yet?, that comes off as obnoxiously fanboyish if you ask me.
These are not "just changes" for the sake of it. BG IS a D&D game. AD&D 2nd Edition is literally a piece of history at this point. The game IS a sequel to Descent into Avernus, which is a 5th Edition campaign. You can't really use the old rules in the setting anymore. Not for BG, Not for Icewind Dale or Planescape Torment or any of the old IP's.
@Chazore Yes i said once that it's going to be a great game and that was a mistake,in all my other comments about it i always add that it looks like it is going to be great/ good so no fanboy here chazore. I do care about the old fans but they can not just add the gameplay of the old BG at this point with how they shaped the terrain for the current gameplay.They made a gamble and sadly a lot are dissattisfied with it but BG is not just about the gameplay,it is also about the world/lore/dnd so all the people saying this is not a BG game are wrongly imo.
But i hope you get to enjoy games with the gameplay you love,devs from pathfinder have a new kickstarter!
It still doesn't mean the sequel has to change for an ideal of a board game.
@Immersiveunreality
Yes it was a mistake, because it hasn't been released yet, so we are not even sure that it will be loved by all (and I mean all, not just the overly optimistic). DND is the mechanic at the end of the day, not the actual lore itself, which is a separate entity of itself. The people who are disappointed are not wrong for being disappointed, please stop trying to pin this on them and their previous expectations, because that's exactly what shitty companies like Blizz say. All I know is that now there are a sect of people that will now feel like how I felt when EA screwed over C&C, and forced to find scraps of whatever they liked in something else (which currently for me is very,very, very small offerings).
Pathfinder is not an IP I'm interested in due to other mechanic differences. I'd love if the IP completely followed Diablo/Wolcen's rule-set, instead of a halfway point when using RTWP (which I find to be rigid and flawed).
@Chazore It was a mistake as in a typing error that does not fall in line with the rest of my comments and i did not mean to express that negativity about those that are not happy with this direction so i'm sorry for not being transparant enough about that,i do understand why people are let down by this.Yeah outside of Pathfinder i have a difficult time recommending you other games to play,i believe there is a sale atm on GOG for a lot of the oldies but i assume you might have played most of those?
Saw a gameplay video, demostration (on YT).... game looks good (better than I thought it would).
It has been 20 years since the original games,that is enough time for larian Studios to decide how a modern Baldurs Gate would look like and many people love DOS gameplay that is more true to DND.
It likely will, but one of the devs said they don't really see it coming to current gen, due to the hw.
