Baldur's Gate 3's Honour Mode continues to throw hands, but one player was within sight of the finish line when they threw their 60-hour run in deplorable fashion.

In a post on Reddit, user theyfieri said they were 60 hours into an Honour Mode run, with "Ansur dead" and "just Raphael and the Elder Brain left." That's a seriously late-stage Act 3 run, pushing past what I still maintain is Baldur's Gate 3's most difficult fight and moving into the very final stages of the game - with just one more fight before the final boss, this is an effort that should have gone the distance.

Unfortunately, this player broke the cardinal rule of Honour Mode, which is to not pick roleplaying choices for the first time if you don't know what they do. While sneaking around the House of Hope, they came across Haarlep, the Incubus that 'looks after' Raphael. After making their way through Haarlep's intimate cutscene, they reached the dialogue in which the player is asked whether they'll give themselves to Haarlep in part, in full, or not at all.

The latter option triggers a fight if you succeed on the associated roll, and the first option means you're met with the occasional awkward wave of pleasure as Haarlep borrows your characters' appearance for their delicious deeds.

The second option, however, will instantly kill you as Haarlep snaffles you up - mind, body, and soul. With the main character devoured and nothing left to bring them back, the party wipes - and in this case, the Honour Mode run was over: "Haarlep ended my honor mode run," wailed theyfieri in their post, exclaiming that after all their successes, they "just learned Haarlep can kill you by fucking your brains out."

It's an enticing way to go, but also a pretty embarrassing one.

In a further comment, they say that they're "gutted" by the mistake because they don't have enough time to put into a second attempt. In fact, they didn't even realize they were 60 hours deep in the first place. There's sympathy for their plight among the community, but also several players espousing Baldur's Gate 3's unwritten rule: "I will not try new things in Honour Mode."

Check out our list of the best RPGs you can play in 2026.

Baldur's Gate 3 and Divinity boss Swen Vincke says he doesn't expect any of the staff at Larian's Barcelona studio to show up for work following Spain's win at the 2026 World Cup final.

While it wasn't exactly a great match by any means, the final of the FIFA World Cup 2026 took place last night and saw Spain win its second title after going 1-0 against defending champions Argentina. It felt like – as far as social media was concerned – everyone was in Spain's corner, and after an at times agonizing 120 minutes, Spanish fans in the stadium and especially back home got to celebrate the country's win for the first time since the 2010 World Cup.

Given that the final was on a Sunday, it does make the afterparty a bit more of a risk, as many in Spain are likely in the office hungover as we speak. But thankfully for those working at Larian's Barcelona studio, the Divinity developers are getting a bit of time to celebrate.

Over on Twitter, Vincke posted reacting to the final game, saying "The best team in the World Cup won the World Cup," and that he's "Not expecting anyone in the Barcelona studio to show up for work tomorrow. Congratulations!"

In fact, that's not the first time Vincke has given props to the Spanish team, as Vincke's home country Belgium was knocked out by Spain on July 11. He posted, "Thank you for all the good emotions you gave us Red Devils! And congrats to the Spanish team. Larian Barcelona studio [is] going to be partying."

Now I'm a bit of a fair-weather fan; I'll watch any tournament Scotland makes it into (so as you can tell, I'm not watching often). But now I'm just curious if I could've taken a day off for a more important sporting moment… like when John Cena won his record-breaking 17th WWE World Title last year…

Larian offers free Baldur's Gate 3 copy to My Chemical Romance singer Gerard Way after he tells a stadium of fans he hasn't played it despite loving classic RPGs

Gerard Way, the frontman of My Chemical Romance and a known multi-hyphenate, made a detrimental confession to his street cred during one of his band's shows at Wembley Stadium. Apparently, he hasn't yet played Baldur's Gate 3, a crime Larian Studios is eager to remedy as soon as is humanly possible.

There are less conspicuous places to announce the gaps in your video game knowledge than to around 90,000 fans in a sold-out concert, but Way has never been one to do things by half. A question emerged from the crowd in between songs asking whether the singer had ever played Baldur's Gate 3.

"No, I only played Baldur's Gate 1," he said in response. "Not that I probably wouldn't have liked two and three. I did play the Icewind Dale expansion; I just ran out of time, y'know?"

I'll give him that - all three Baldur's Gate games are the dictionary definition of timesinks. You can spend hundreds of hours in them, and completing any when you have other responsibilities is an accomplishment.

Way turns his attention to the fan and asks for their opinion on 3. "Is it good?" he says. "I would assume so, the first one was a lot of fun, it was the closest thing at the time to playing Dungeons and Dragons."

This quality is echoed by the sequels, each capturing different aspects of what it feels like to explore the Forgotten Realms in tabletop form. Naturally, once Larian caught wind of this, it immediately offered Way a copy of the threequel on the house.

"Gerard, there's a Baldur's Gate 3 code with your name on it if you fancy trying it, lots of love, Larian," the studio tweeted. It tagged Way's old Twitter account, but it's been disused since 2016. I can tell you Frank Iero, the band's rhythm guitarist, is quite active on Instagram and might be easier to reach on the matter.

Outside of that, you may need to contact their PR and hope the request gets through. I interviewed Way once upon a time, through DC Comics, so getting him on the line isn't impossible. Roll for it, Larian, and see what happens.

Baldur's Gate 4 could've been headed by a Baldur's Gate 2 veteran, but the RPG legend "wouldn't want to compete" against Larian: "That would be insanity"

Although we know that Baldur's Gate 3 developer Larian Studios is not going to be heading Baldur's Gate 4, the question of who will work on the sequel remains unanswered.

It's bounced around in discussions on the web for quite some time now, with folks wondering who would take the helm for Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast's IP – but there's still no solid decision there, it seems. As per a new interview with PC Gamer, however, it apparently could have been a Baldur's Gate 2 veteran: James Ohlen, the 2000 RPG's director of writing and design, who was working on sci-fi RPG Exodus at Archetype Entertainment when Hasbro approached him.

"The day [Chris Cox, Hasbro CEO] knew they [Larian Studios] weren't going to do it, he called me," recalls Ohlen. "'Hey James, what do you think about doing Baldur's Gate 4?' And I was like, 'I don't, I would fail, and here's why I would fail.'"

According to Ohlen, he simply wouldn't be able to overcome the hurdles that Larian had and create something that lives up to the reputation that Baldur's Gate 3 has built.

"I wouldn't want to compete against that," he admits. "Doing Exodus is hard enough, but having to compete against Baldur's Gate 3? That would be insanity." It wouldn't be easy in any way, either – Baldur's Gate 3 was built in Larian's own engine, which means he would've had nothing to work with.

"We're talking about at least half a decade of horror, building all that stuff," as he says. He did ask if Hasbro could get Larian to license its engine out. You know, much like Black Isle Studios did back in the day with BioWare's in-house Infinity Engine. Even if that had worked out, though, Ohlen isn't convinced it'd have been enough.

Larian, including lead Swen Vincke, sits as the RPG genre king now. "Swen's always going to be the master of building those kinds of things. It's really hard to take him off that throne, just because of everything – the tools, institutional knowledge, team."

As for who could do it, and how, Ohlen believes they'd need to be original – no abiding by any preconceived rules.

"That was me back in Baldur's Gate. I was like, 'Everyone else sucks, and we're going to crush it.' It was us against all the other game studios, we're going to outdo them. And because none of us had built games before, we were all like, 'We're going to do everything different.' And sometimes you need that." Indeed, you do.

I'd argue that's exactly what Larian did, too – and that it's why it's so difficult to exceed the expectations that Baldur's Gate 3 set. Hopefully, we know who's taking the torch soon.

"Baldur's Gate 3 seems to have done it pretty well," but don't expect Obsidian's next story-based RPG to launch in early access, Grounded 2 lead suggests.

Hindsight is always 20/20, and it's hard to believe now, but once upon a time, funding Baldur's Gate 3 was a big ask. A team led by one of the developers on the first one tried to secure funding for the threequel but couldn't land a pitch, which led Larian Studios to eventually get the gig.

See, the first two Baldur's Gate games were made by BioWare, of Mass Effect fame. For a long time, the series was a duology with expansion packs. After Trent Oster, a co-founder of BioWare, left and started a new company, Beamdog, he started vying to make another installment, getting only incredulity in response.

"All the companies out there were like, 'It's a single-player RPG, it's not going to do that big in numbers, and Wizards owns the IP. So why are we spending our money to increase the value of their IP? Why don't we do our own IP?'" he recalls, to PCGamer.

His team's vision was quite different to what Larian put out, and considerably cheaper overall. "Our Baldur's Gate 3 wasn't as 'big picture' as what Larian pitched. Obviously, we were doing it at a much smaller scope," Oster says. "It wasn't going to be a $100 million game. I think we were pitching it in the $20 million range."

Even having David Gaider, the creator of Dragon Age, on board didn't help things. Beamdog did win the consolation prize of publishing the Enhanced Editions of the original Baldur's Gate games, versions that have become the definitive way to go back to those RPGs. Oster points out that the process hasn't gotten much easier in the wake of Larian's success with Baldur's Gate 3, because the goalposts have simply moved.

"Now everybody's like, 'Oh, well, sure, RPGs will sell a lot, but they have to be huge, and you've got to put a ton of money into them, and you've got to have seven romanceable characters and full fidelity conversations, and it's got to be all performance captured and super high-res.'" he points out. "You're like, 'Yeah, I'm not sure about that.'"

Baldur's Gate 2 is reportedly getting a remake, and Wizards of the Coast likely isn't stopping there either

There aren't many solutions in the replies to a Baldur's Gate 3 player's Reddit thread asking how to fix a bug that causes Shadowheart to repeatedly moan. Instead, thirsty fans of God's favorite princess have shown up to ask for step-by-step instructions on how to recreate something they argue isn't a bug at all.

Reddit user Akereth posted a minute-long clip of their party exploring the game while being interrupted by Shadowheart moaning into what sounds like a loudspeaker. She does it enough that you'd think it's some kind of NSFW mod, but Akereth said it only started happening after receiving an Illithid power in a scene earlier.

About an hour after posting the clip, however, Akereth discovered that simply fast traveling to a new location stops Shadowheart from embarrassing everyone in the party – which happens to be the same fix another Reddit poster figured out a few months ago.

The top reply is from a player demanding a tutorial: "Please detail the exact steps to achieve this 'bug'."

Others are just amused that Akereth considers it a problem. "Steak too juicy, lobster too buttery," RogueShroom writes.

How do I get Shadowheart to stop moaning? from r/BaldursGate3

Among the people laughing at the absurdity of it, a few stepped in to say they've also heard more of Shadowheart than they signed up for and suspect it's something to do with accepting and canceling Illithid powers.

One person said they've encountered the same thing with Gale several times, proving that the bug is at least considerate of all types of players. This makes me wonder if the other companions are susceptible to this bug as well, but I'm too modest to find out.

Developer Larian is busy working on Divinity and might not get around to patching Shadowheart's moans out. The studio dropped a small update earlier this year, but has implied that it's pretty much done with Baldur's Gate 3. I guess that's good news for the Reddit user who asked if there was a way to recreate the bug with Karlach.

If this were happening three years ago, we might've even seen it become an official Easter egg. Whether you consider it a bug or not, it seems like this won't be the end of players accidentally causing their companions to sound like they're having too much fun exploring every nook and cranny of the RPG.

"They let me!": Baldur's Gate 3 writer couldn't believe the nonsense Larian allowed in flavor text.

If there's one thing I remember about Baldur's Gate 3, it's the amusement I got out of reading item descriptions and notes – and it turns out that Larian Studios likely had just as much fun while writing them as players like me did going over them.

There's plenty to love about the ridiculous (in a positive way, of course) writing in Baldur's Gate 3, from the creative Vicious Mockery insults to the item descriptions developers likely knew many folks would just glance over – not me, though. Not me.

I still recall reading the note on Astarion's underwear: "If you're reading this, you managed to bed or behead me. Either way, you got lucky." I'll never forget it… and there are plenty more like it.

The devs are well aware of the funny text, too, with writer Jack Fields joking in an online clip about it: "The absolute shite that I was able to write into Baldur's Gate 3 flavor text... and they let me!"

He uses Fleshrender, a rare Shortsword you can get during Act Three, as an example. "The previous owner was going to call this sword Barney," reads its description, "but he got such a bollocking from his friends that he named it Fleshrender instead, and sulked for a whole tenday afterward."

Amazing, truly – and that's not the only one Fields goes over. In another video, he brings up the Shield of Shielding and its own description, which he says is one of his personal favorites. "Named in the style of Extremely Unimaginative Jimmy, the geographer and interior decorator who named the 'waterfall' and the 'fireplace.'"

Yep, that one is pretty good. Still not as good as Astarion's underwear, in my opinion, but good nonetheless.

Fields also notes one that had me nearly rolling: the description of the Horns of the Berserker. "This was created by a designer and an enchanter who were going through a messy divorce at the time. As such, the armour is filled with active-aggressive rage. It also makes you feel like you've wasted the last ten years picking up after a complete tit."

This is the sort of text I live for in video games, honestly – especially as a Dungeons & Dragons fan.

I would suggest keeping an eye on Fields' social media for more description text chaos – it appears he's posting various clips on different platforms, and they're all worth watching, if you ask me. Or, give Baldur's Gate 3 another go… why not, eh?

Baldur's Gate 2 is reportedly getting a remake, and Wizards of the Coast likely isn't stopping there either.

A Baldur's Gate 2 remake is reportedly in the works, with one former lead returning to the dev team.

That's according to PC Gamer, who reports that – according to an anonymous source – original Baldur's Gate 2 lead designer Kevin Martens is working on the remake now. PCG notes that Martens had already been working with Wizards of the Coast recently thanks to contributions on Archetype Entertainment's upcoming sci-fi RPG Exodus, which WoTC is publishing.

While Baldur's Gate 2 is the RPG at the heart of this rumor, it's claimed that Baldur's Gate 1 is also likely to be getting its own remake, which makes an awful lot of sense when you consider that, well, 2 is a direct sequel, with its plot continuing straight on from the first. Hell, in the original RPGs, you can even import your character to pick things up right where you left off. With that in mind, it'd be a slightly strange decision to launch a remake of the second game first.

Of course, both Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate 2 have been given remasters before now in the form of their respective Enhanced Editions, so it wouldn't be the first time that they were brought back into the limelight. No indication has been given of when these rumored remake(s) could be released, though, so we could be in the dark for a while yet.

If it's to be believed, fans can expect plenty of Baldur's Gate goodness in the future, at least. Wizards of the Coast president John Hight previously confirmed that "of course, we're going to do a successor" to Baldur's Gate 3, so Baldur's Gate 4 will happen eventually, too, even if Larian won't be the studio making it. For now, the BG3 masterminds are busy working on Divinity, the studio's next big RPG.

Baldur's Gate 3 fans behind OG Baldur's Gate remake mod revamp Candlekeep to give it "the massive visual overhaul it truly deserves."

The Baldur's Gate 3 community remains as creative as ever, three years on from the release of Larian Studios' big RPG – so creative, in fact, there's a team of fans currently bringing the original Baldur's Gate game from 1998 back to life via its threequel.

If you've not heard of the project yet, the idea for the Baldur's Gate remake sprouted when an unlocked version of Baldur's Gate 3's official modding tools showed up over on NexusMods in September of 2024 – so, nearly two years ago now.

Initially, the talented team behind it didn't intend to recreate all of the OG Baldur's Gate, but rather play around with Candlekeep alone. However, it "snowballed" into a full-blown remake: Deathbringer's Reign.

I'm grateful it did, for one, because it looks to be coming along amazingly, if a new post on Reddit from the modders behind it offers anything to go by. It highlights the changes they've made to Candlekeep since their first demo dropped earlier this year, and the screenshots show a beautiful, lush build.

The foliage has expanded tenfold, and I'm obsessed – it reminds me of how I mod my other RPGs, like Skyrim, to look: like a fae druid's dream come true.

Deathbringer's Reign (BG1 Remake) - Candlekeep Overhaul from r/BaldursGate3

"As our team has grown and our mastery of the Baldur's Gate 3 engine has evolved, we decided we needed to go back to the beginning and give your childhood home the massive visual overhaul it truly deserves," reads the creators' thread itself.

"Our level designers have completely reimagined the citadel with a much heavier focus on a lush, overgrown garden vibe." I'd say they aced that goal and then some, honestly.

"We wanted Candlekeep to feel like a truly ancient, peaceful sanctuary that has been softly reclaimed by nature over the centuries," continues the post – and that's precisely the vibe I get from the attached images.

The modders do note, though, "that what you are seeing is still in active development!" They are still "in the process of adding the final layers of polish to this overgrown environment." In fact, their message ends with a call to fellow modders.

So, if you're a seasoned veteran in the modding scene – or even a newbie, as the skilled Deathbringer's Reign team says it shouldn't stop you – and you'd like to help out, you can apply via their Discord. Or, simply join to follow build and release updates like me.

Famed indie dev refuses to uninstall Baldur's Gate 3 even after finding Act 3 "too big" to finish: "I've got all this progress"

If you thought QWOP, the viral browser game that had us all frustrated in the school library over lunch, was overwhelming, you'll love hearing that its creator actually thinks the same of Baldur's Gate 3 – in fact, he has yet to finish the RPG.

Bennett Foddy, the legendary indie developer behind gems like QWOP, Getting Over It, and most recently, Baby Steps, admits as much in a recent interview with PC Gamer.

He explains that he's in a position I'm sure many of us have found ourselves in with Baldur's Gate 3 – the point at which you reach Act 3, but find it to be so massive it's unbearable… so you let the game sit installed in your library, even though you aren't playing it.

I've encountered many a run like this myself, creating countless Tavs only to halt their adventures in the third act – and Foddy apparently has done this same.

"I'm not sentimental about this stuff, but if I look at my actual Steam, I can see a game that should have been uninstalled, but is not uninstalled," admits the dev. "It's Baldur's Gate 3. I liked that game a lot, but here's what happened to me." Basically, Act 3 happened.

"Got a lot of enjoyment out of Acts 1 and 2. Then [in] Act 3, I got daunted. It was too big, and so I stopped." It's been a while since then, according to Foddy, which never helps – but all of the progress (and trust me, you can rack up a good 100 hours just reaching the final act) has him in a bit of a chokehold.

"That was a really long time ago now, but I also don't feel like I can be done with it," as he puts it… And, yeah, I get it.

"I've got all these characters, I've got all this progress, and it doesn't feel good that I'm leaving it there, so it's probably going to stay installed on the computer," Foddy concludes.

Honestly, I understand. It's hard to let go of your Tav and all of the decisions you made in however many hours you've spent on the game… even if you don't plan on touching it again. It doesn't seem as though the dev's mind is fully made up on whether he'll play in the future, however.

I do also wonder, with all these new games coming, what will Foddy do when Divinity releases? Will he similarly hit a bump in his journey to the RPG's finale? I know I likely will – heck, I'm over a thousand hours into Baldur's Gate 3 and it's still installed on my PC.

One Baldur's Gate 3 fan is on a mission to complete the weirdest collection in the RPG, leaving fellow players with one big question

Baldur's Gate 3 allows you to fill your inventory with bones and, if you'd like, you can sell the organic scrap for gold. Or, as one of the RPG's players thought was best, you can just keep collecting bones.

"I always collect every bone," Reddit user Vuthakral shares in a thread with nearly 2,000 upvotes as of writing. According to an accompanying screenshot, just their "most recent playthrough's haul" contains 189 common leg or arm bones, 47 complete human skulls, 19 skulls missing their lower jaw, seven ribcages, and one puddle of miscellaneous little bones. One comment says, "Hey, so my question is : what the fuck is your problem ?"

"I've done probably five different playthroughs doing this and each time I manage to find more bones I miss each time," Vuthakral explains. "Btw it weights 55," they add in another comment.

One person is disappointed to see Vuthakral's collection doesn't include a pelvis. Others worry the Dark Urge that gives your Baldur's Gate 3 protagonist anger management issues had bled into the real world and motivated Vuthakral's fixation on bones both big and small… which I'm eager to push back on as someone who owns a smattering of taxidermy in real life.

I like bones not because I'm Bhaalspawn or anything – I actually grew up in Queens – but because I think pieces of once-living animals are pretty, physical reminders of the delicate nature of life, and that all creatures should be held tenderly, and with respect. By this same logic, I think Vuthakral's bones are a great way to commemorate video game skeletons.

So other players nodded politely in reaction and shared how much they enjoy using ribcages – which are much lighter than a backpack, and still a decent container – to stash their valuables.

"I always use the rib cages as my poison purses," says one such person. "So Astarion has a ribcage filled with poison bottles basically."

"I do the same thing," admits another player. "Now we just need a mod that lets Necromancers craft their own minions. Mine will be a bone centipede."

Mine would be a bone dragon. But whether you feel repulsed or inspired by Vuthakral's bone collection, it must be acknowledged that it also emphasizes the amount of player creativity Baldur's Gate 3 allows. Years out from its release, Baldur's Gate 3 still feels fresh for those willing to take advantage of that flexibility – and what's more flexible than a beautiful, meatless ribcage?

"Our players are going to be pretty psyched": Hasbro CEO talks D&D, video games, and playing to win.

There's no shying away from the fact Baldur's Gate 3 was a big game. The RPG from Larian Studios dominated the games zeitgeist for months, yielding massive sales and more than a few awards. It's a hard game to follow, for other devs and for anyone who's looking for their next fantastical quest, but two of the actors involved believe the benchmark can be reached, if companies have the right attitude.

"Baldur's Gate 3 set a very, very, very high bar," Devora Wilde, who voices Lae'zel in Larian's massive RPG, tells Honest Game Trailers (below). Neil Newbon, the voice of Astarion, expands further.

"It is one of those lightning in a bottle moments," he states. "However, it doesn't mean that other people can't do similar ventures with similar aspirations, as also, the passion has to be the same. That's not impossible at all."

It's probably worth separating the reaction to Baldur's Gate 3 from the game itself. Making a strong, engaging role-playing game with striking characters and lots of memorable motifs and ideas is always feasible. Landing the way the long-awaited sequel did is another challenge altogether. You can't manufacture that kind of reaction; you just have to make art you believe in, know your audience and your goals, and hope for the best.

Or, as Newbon puts it: "I just think Baldur's Gate proved a lot of things in the games industry that maybe some bigger companies who are just really chasing the money need to learn from."

Larian wasn't following trends or worrying about what any other studios were doing. The team made the game they wanted to make, and the sincerity helped it stand-out. One can easily imagine a darker timeline where there was an attempt at making it an MMO, or live-service somehow, and the whole thing falling flat on its face.

Thankfully, that's not where we live. And hopefully companies are learning the right lessons from Larian's approach. I won't hold my breath.

Larian keeps a framed reminder of Baldur's Gate 3 breaking Steam in its office, hopes Divinity will "absolutely demolish" Valve's storefront.

Baldur's Gate 3's publishing director has revealed that Larian keeps a framed article about the RPG crashing Steam when the game launched into Early Access.

Over on Twitter, Michael "Cromwelp" Douse posts a shot of a framed news article about the game, titled "Steam briefly broke when Baldur's Gate 3 hit Early Access" (which was written by current GamesRadar+ news editor Iain Harris).

"Walked past this in the office. Forgot this happened," Douse writes, explaining: "At the time we even fact checked it with Valve. I hope we absolutely demolish it next time. You remember so little when doing so much."

For context, when Baldur's Gate 3 launched into early access in October 2020, the game hit a peak of 73,980 players. Just under three years later when the full release of the game launched in August 2023, it pulled in 875,343 players. Per SteamDB's chart, no month since then has had a peak lower than the early access launch peak. That's not to mention that the game held the number three spot on the Steam charts in February.

So with Baldur's Gate 3 being way bigger than it was back in 2020, Douse's hope to "demolish it next time" with Divinity seems like it has a strong likelihood of happening, especially when the studio is touting that the upcoming RPG is "even larger than Baldur's Gate 3." However, I imagine Valve would very much like to avoid that, especially after Silksong also temporarily killed Steam last year.

Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 set for a new update "nearly 15 years after the Enhanced Editions" launched, earning an approving nod from BG3 developer Larian itself.

Larian is one of the premier RPG developers active today, with 2023's undisputed GOTY Baldur's Gate 3 cementing its legacy as one of the big genre titans. That's a fact not lost on former Obsidian senior designer Chris Avellone, who attributes much of Larian's reputation for quality to studio founder, CEO, and Baldur's Gate 3 director Swen Vincke.

Avellone worked with Vincke on Larian's Divinity: Original Sin 2 as a freelancer, and it seems he learned a thing or two about Vincke's management style during that time. Talking to Fallout content creator TKs-Mantis, Avellone says Vincke accepts nothing less than the very best for the games he makes.

"Swen at Larian, Swen is an unstoppable machine. If a game comes out, it is incredibly important to him that it's at high quality, no matter what sacrifice it takes," says Avellone. "He will have engines re-written to make sure that the quality is there ... That quality reputation builds with every game that you're doing."

Himself a veteran RPG developer, Avellone was a designer on the seminal RPG Planescape: Torment, a lead designer on Fallout 2, and senior designer on Fallout: New Vegas. He left Obsidian in 2015 under contentious terms and continued contributing to various projects, including Prey and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.

Vincke, meanwhile, is presumably hard at work on Larian's new Divinity game, which was announced at last year's Game Awards. We don't know a whole lot about the upcoming RPG beyond its delightfully gruesome reveal trailer, but it sounds like an absolute beast of a game, with The Game Awards host Geoff Keighley having said it'll be even bigger than Baldur's Gate 3.

Baldur's Gate 3 was canceled at OG Fallout studio "because of an accounting error" – "Very suspicious on Interplay's part," says former dev

Although Baldur's Gate 3 is undeniably visually impressive, it isn't quite as graphics-forward as other big RPGs – but that was an intentional decision on Larian Studios' part, according to technical director Bert van Semmertier.

The lead reveals as much in a new issue of Edge, explaining that the developers "deliberately stay a bit behind the curve" with their in-house Divinity Engine – a toolset they've upgraded for Divinity now.

That's because, although Larian could try and outdo other visually stunning games with mind-boggling ray-tracing and the like, the studio opts not to so as to keep its own titles within the scope of its team's size.

After all, we're talking about a team that started with far fewer devs than most. "If the vision was to allow the simulation and rendering of hundreds of characters in a single location," though, "we would sit together with a part of the team and discuss requirements and potential solutions," van Semmertier admits.

"Having ownership over your engine allows you to do anything you want, basically." But, again, limitations just make sense sometimes.

In fact, Baldur's Gate 3 itself suffered quite a big technical restriction: "A longstanding limitation we had in multiplayer is that players could not cross acts individually. You always needed to transition together as a party, and this had an impact on how we built our world and how the story needed to be structured."

I never thought of it this way personally, as my pals and I tend to progress alongside one another regardless, but I get what he means.

Folks can't just dive into Act 2 if others don't agree to do so, too, which impacts the creation of mods as well. That's one of the reasons that custom campaigns – which were largely popular in Larian's past titles like Divinity: Original Sin 2 – are taking so long to come to fruition.

Sure, we've got projects like Return to Candlekeep underway, but it's been a long road, and limitations like the multiplayer restriction van Semmertier mentions haven't helped. Thankfully, however, the technical director says Divinity – Larian's exciting upcoming RPG – won't suffer the same problems.

"In the next iteration of our engine, this is a limitation we have completely removed," as he concludes. "There is no limitation anymore on how big an act can be." That's thrilling, but admittedly also a bit daunting. I've got well over 1,000 hours in Baldur's Gate 3, and I easily spend 60 hours exploring every nook and cranny of Act 1.

It does beg the question, just how massive will Divinity be? There's no telling, I suppose, but seeing as it boasts an "even better character creator" and more, I'm guessing huge.

Baldur's Gate 3 was canceled at OG Fallout studio "because of an accounting error" – "Very suspicious on Interplay's part," says former dev

Update, April 20: A previous version of this article incorrectly referred to the canceled Baldur's Gate 3 and Fallout 3 projects as having been in development at Obsidian rather than Interplay. While Chris Avellone misspoke on the date of his departure from these projects, that timeline does not line up with previously known facts of either game's development. We regret the error.

Original story, April 18: OG Fallout dev Black Isle Studios was once the developer heading Baldur's Gate 3, but the only reason that timeline didn't come to pass was apparently an accounting error.

That's according to veteran RPG developer Chris Avellone, who recently talked about what could've been with YouTube channel TKs-Mantis.

The Fallout, Planescape: Torment, and Icewind Dale developer had been drafted to create the next entry in the Dungeons and Dragons RPG series in the 2000s when it "got canceled because of an accounting error." Avellone says it was "very suspicious on Interplay's part," Black Isle's parent company and the publisher of the first two Baldur's Gate games.

"I'm pretty sure a payment wasn't made to the right party," Avellone explains. As soon as the project met its end, the entire team was swiftly moved on to Van Buren, Obsidian's also ill-fated version of Fallout 3 that never saw the light of day.

"But the moment that Baldur's Gate 3 got cancelled, I knew that Van Buren wouldn't happen because regardless of the team's intentions, regardless of how much we'd love to get it done, how many hours we put in, it wouldn't matter because executive row would likely do something, which they eventually did," he adds, nodding his head to Van Buren's eventual cancelation.

Black Isle wouldn't be the only legendary RPG studio to take a crack at Baldur's Gate 3. Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart previously lifted the lid on the studio's Baldur's Gate project more than a decade ago. Urquhart apparently told the game's rights holders that if they really wanted Obsidian to tackle such a storied series, they'd "need to give a budget that BioWare would have to do a Mass Effect or whatever.'"

You might not need me to tell you that, yep, we eventually did get a Baldur's Gate 3 - one from Larian Studios that lit the gaming world on fire. While Black Isle is no more, Obsidian soon went on to tackle acclaimed projects in the Fallout and South Park series, and is now working on many of its own franchises: The Outer Worlds, the Pillars of Eternity universe, and Grounded.

"Oh, we're going there" – Baldur's Gate 3 Halsin actor "burst out laughing" when he got the script for the RPG's most infamous scene

The actors behind two of the most beloved Baldur's Gate 3 companions are taking part in an actual-play TV series from Dungeons & Dragons publisher Wizards of the Coast.

Astarion actor Neil Newbon and the voice of Lae'zel, Devora Wilde, are set to take part in the actual-play – a form of live tabletop game playing streamed for viewers to watch – series, aptly dubbed Dungeon Masters, alongside Dispatch star Mayanna Berrin and Christian Navarro from 13 Reasons Why.

It's exciting news, seeing as they'll all be playing D&D for real – but no, the Baldur's Gate 3 icons won't be playing their old characters.

This isn't a game run by Larian Studios, after all, but rather Hasbro's own Wizards of the Coast, and it's an entirely separate thing altogether. Think Critical Role or Dimension 20 – two great examples of "actual-play" series, if you ask me.

We don't have to wait very long to see the Newbon and Wilde's new characters come to life, either, as the first two episodes of Dungeon Masters will be released for free on YouTube on April 22.

According to Variety, Wizards of the Coast says Dungeon Masters is meant "to appeal to a wide audience of D&D veterans, newcomers, and everyone in between." So, whether you're a hardened tabletop game and Baldur's Gate 3 stan or a D&D newbie altogether, you're likely to find something you enjoy in Dungeon Masters.

As a fan of it all myself, I personally can't wait to see what direction the series takes. Episodes will launch weekly and include unreleased – but canon – D&D content, which will then be made available to play in D&D Beyond afterward.

As for the pilot, it'll tie into the upcoming Ravenloft: The Horrors Within campaign, which itself is dropping on June 16: "The first campaign arc unfolds within the world of Ravenloft, plunging viewers into a dark and atmospheric setting filled with mystery, suspense, and gothic horror."

In other words, we adventurers are eating good this spring. Especially those of us who yearn for more Ravenloft-based content, as per Wizards of the Coast's description above of Dungeon Masters.

If you're just as thrilled to watch the new series – and see Newbon and Wilde play new characters – then I'd suggest giving the trailer a watch. I'm personally preparing for plenty of chaos, humor, and dice rolling.

Searching for something to do in the meantime? Browse through our roundup of the best tabletop RPGs out there while you wait for more D&D shenanigans.

Verso actor Ben Starr says he's never romanced Shadowheart in Baldur's Gate 3 as it would be a bit weird for him after acting alongside Jennifer English in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

At a panel at Emerald City Comic Con 2026, a fan asked the panel of Starr, English, and Aliona Baranova (who performed motion capture on Baldur's Gate 3) asked the trio if they each tend to play the games starring their co-stars, and capped it off with a question to Starr "have you ever romanced Shadowheart in Baldur's Gate." Starr quickly shot it down with an "I haven't" to which English responded with a somewhat offended "why not!"

Starr explained "If I'm going to be honest, I always see myself as a bit of a Gale girly," which led to English accusing him "Is that because you're a bit of a Gale and you just really love yourself?" However, Starr says it's all down to Gale actor Tim Downie, which in turn leads to him and English swooning over the actor.

After a prerequisite amount of love for Downie, Starr gets back to the question, explaining "no, I haven't romanced you, but I think that that would be weird. It would be so weird." To which English agrees "that would be so weird now, that would be incestuous." Of course, this comes down to the roles Starr and English play opposite each other in Expedition 33, which I won't spoil for you, but they definitely take on a sibling-like role for a majority of the runtime.

Getting back to the original point, Starr adds, "We do, I think there is not just a great love between all of us as people. I think there's a huge respect for the work that we do and I think as actors we wouldn't be doing our due diligence if we weren't playing the games that are out there that you guys are playing."

Personally, I was also a bit of a Gale girly, but he gave me the ick after a moment in act 2 where we had to kill a boy's ghost parents and ghost dog, and in the sombre moments that followed the guy immediately tried to initiate something. And while I let him eat my magic shoes every so often (or whatever he does with them) the relationship was ruined.

Baldur's Gate 3 Shadowheart actor says Hades is a comfort game, though she's "too bad" to get into Silksong

The Baldur's Gate 3 camp holds a secret: in fact, it holds four secrets, each of them completely invisible but nonetheless shaped exactly like a completely nude Gale. There are four nude clones of the wizard hiding in your camp every time you play, and one fan has gone to extensive lengths to explain why.

These naked Gales were accidentally discovered by YouTuber Proxy Gate Tactician back in January, but it was much more recently that fellow content creator SlimX broke down why they're there in a new video (spotted by PC Gamer). In short? They're waiting there just in case you someday decide to have sex with Gale.

In Baldur's Gate 3, characters default to a state called "on-stage," as SlimX explains. This means they're visible and interactable. When you see something disappear from the game world, it's been set to off-stage, which means that it's technically still there, but completely imperceptible. In some cases, as with these Gale clones, they're just instantly set to off-stage the second you load in.

After the end of Act 2, the devs assumed that you'd never be able to go back to previous areas – so the game deletes the portions of your save file related to the state of the first two major areas. That means that all the off-stage characters and objects revert to their default state of on-stage. As SlimX reveals, you can prevent the cutscene that starts the Githyanki attack that transitions you to Act 3 from starting, take a couple of extra long rests, and find yourself able to fast travel back to old areas with the off-stage characters all suddenly back in the world.

So what's with the four naked Gales – and, also, the other nude guy that seems to be hanging out with them? Well, one of them is just there to stand in for Gale's mirror image, appearing with the character's normal gear when it's relevant. The other three are there for that romance scene where Gale takes you to a world of illusions.

"Those two astral projections that float up into the sky" during the scene, SlimX explains, "are one of the other Gales and that random bald guy transformed to look like your avatar. Those last two Gale copies appear and get in on the action later in the scene. And they're all hiding right here in your camp every time you play."

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Neil Newbon, the actor behind the devilishly enchanting vampire Astarion in Baldur's Gate 3, doesn't want to be typecast in future projects.

Newbon was a well-known actor before playing Astarion, having previously played major roles in Resident Evil 3 Remake, Resident Evil Village, and Xenoblade Chronicles 3, but you could argue his major breakout role was in Baldur's Gate 3. That seems to be Newbon's perception, anyway, as he says he's been avoiding roles that are too similar to Astarion.

"I've definitely avoided a few roles recently not because they were bad projects or anything, just because they, for me, the character—they kinda want the Astarion thing," he tells FRVR. "And it was just like, 'Well, I don’t really want to do that again. It’s too close to the character I’ve already done, I don’t think I could offer anything necessarily that’s interesting to this particular character.'"

One reason for Newbon's stance is a fondness for the late David Bowie. An early childhood influence, Newbon says "there's definitely a Bowie rhythm in me" that remains to this day. "Bowie is an artist that completely reinvented himself," Newbon shares. "I think he understood that extreme repetition breeds stagnation as an artist."

Of course, like it or not, Newbon will always have the same vocal cords as Astarion; it's when studios are looking for an actor to play a character with a similar personality and mannerisms to Astarion that he declines.

"Not to say that the voice isn’t similar, that’s a different thing, I’m talking about when people say: ‘This character’s just like Astarion!'", he explains, adding that he's since done "a lot of work, and all of the jobs I’ve been doing have been wildly different from that in terms of character work."

Looking at the actor's filmography, he isn't lying. Outside of playing Dracula in Vampire Survivors' Ode to Castlevania DLC, he's since taken on a variety of roles, including Lieutenant Viktor Vodyanoi in Warframe, Lumacchio in Lies of P's Overture DLC, and protagonist Chase Lowry in the psychological horror game Dead Take. They may not all be strictly human roles, but I'm pretty sure none of them drink blood.

Baldur's Gate 3 Astarion actor says, "there's no f*cking way AI could make" anything like Larian's hit RPG: "It's too interesting, subtle, crazy, off the wall, pathos-filled. It's too human."

A new Baldur's Gate 3 hotfix is here, ironing out a few issues – including "several crashes" – that Larian may have accidentally introduced in its previous update, essentially turning the whole situation into a game of bug fix whack-a-mole.

In the latest patch notes on its site for hotfix 36, Larian admits: "Our last small update, which aimed to resolve corrupted savegames affecting a number of players, seemed to have also introduced some performance issues that triggered crashes."

Seemingly, that'd be from the update that rolled out last month, so it's not been too long of a wait. Even so, Larian says "thank you for your patience" while it took the time to investigate the issues, and announces its latest fix – which is going out across all platforms – and should sort them out for good, alongside "some other crashes and blockers that were still affecting players."

As well as the rather vague descriptor of "several crashes" being fixed, "a framerate drop and eventual crash when loading a savegame" has been ironed out, along with an Xbox-specific bug that saw "tooltips in the Inventory and Trade windows" not display correctly. Meanwhile, a Mac problem that could prevent you from moving past character creation "after starting a character introduction cinematic on Honour Mode" has been banished, too.

Of course, we could never expect any massive new additions to Baldur's Gate 3 at this point considering that Patch 8, which was released almost a full year ago, was set to be the final major update. After all, Larian is hard at work on Divinity, its next RPG.

Baldur's Gate 3 Shadowheart actor was "fully expecting" Larian to cut her "finger-guns" gag about deadly poison, but "it ended up being in the game."

There's quite a lot of humor in Baldur's Gate 3, despite all the doom of gloom of the main quest, and it turns out one of the funnier moments was totally improvised. Jennifer English, the actor behind Shadowheart, took it upon herself to provide a punchline to an otherwise inconspicuous moment, and even she was surprised to see it made the final cut.

The scene in question involves the Night Orchids, and some sagely advice from our favorite Half-Elf. "One of my favorite moments in Baldur's Gate 3 was when Shadowheart says the line, talking about the Night Orchids, 'Huh, you didn't pick those by hand, did you? They're deadly poisonous,'" English recalls to Radio Times.

"Then I, as a joke when recording, went, 'Joking!' with finger-guns," she says, laughing. "Fully expecting that not to go in, and it ended up being in the game." As with a lot of great improv, you wouldn't think that line was totally off the cuff, very much seeming in character for who Shadowheart is.

There isn't often much room for such moments in voice acting and motion capture within game development. Time and budget restrictions necessitate sticking to the script, and getting it all done as quickly and as smoothly as possible. In many cases, the actors won't even get much time with the material beforehand.

Clearly, Larian Studios tries to be different, leaving room for these small inflections that elevate jokes and make the characters more nuanced, and give the performers some room to play around. Since being in Baldur's Gate 3, English played Maelle in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and she portrayed Joy in Marathon. If you keep a good ear out, I'm sure you might hear something that might be off-script in those releases, as well.

"GURL IT'S HAPPENING": A Shadowheart Nendoroid figure is on the way, and Baldur's Gate 3 fans are losing it

It looks as though we're getting a Shadowheart Nendoroid figure from Baldur's Gate 3, so fans of the prickly Sharran Cleric should form an orderly queue.

Although it was revealed in silhouette on social media, it took approximately 0.25 seconds for the community to figure out what was coming their way – there's no mistaking that distinctive high ponytail. Although manufacturer Good Smile Company hasn't confirmed which accessories this Shadowheart Nendoroid will drop with, the Mysterious Artefact can be seen in her hands (though as with all figures in the line, the Baldur's Gate 3 character has been given a cute anime makeover). Seeing as Nendoroids are arguably some of the best toys for collectors, and the existing Astarion model was so good, this should be one to watch.

Naturally, the community is reacting with the restraint and decorum you'd expect to this news. I've seen everything from fancam-style posts of everyone's favorite Cleric to fans excitedly tagging each other on the Twitter/X reveal, like Ren Masao Ankoku's "GURL ITS HAPPENING" (honestly, me too). Others are hoping we get a white-haired attachment to represent her later-game transformation.

Meanwhile, a lot of folks in the comments are begging for their favorite BG3 companion to get the Nendoroid treatment – and hoping the gap between this figure and the next one isn't as long as the wait between Astarion and Shadowheart. I'm personally hoping Karlach is next in line, but Gale and Lae'zel are also popular picks. Who would you want to see?

If you're new to the world of Nendos, welcome to your new obsession. These things are an absolute delight. Here, I'll let resident GamesRadar+ Nendoroid fan Rosalie explain:

"These little figures represent some of the best depictions of your favorite characters out there - so long as you're a fan of that cute, chibi aesthetic. As a Good Smile Company product, there's rarely (if ever) a lick of paint out of place, and you won't get those cheap seamlines as you would with cheaper figures.

"The best part? These collectibles come with different expressions and accessories, so you can recreate your favorite in-game poses or come up with your own. A lot of these parts (like the face plates) are interchangeable with each other, too, so you'll likely find that you can swap Shadowheart and Astarion's parts around and let them cosplay one another.

"They're fun to pose, high in quality, and make for wonderful display pieces that often hold their value - what's not to love?"

We don't have any word on when this figure will arrive, but you can currently save it to your wishlist on the Good Smile store.

• See all Nendoroid deals at Amazon

For more cool gear, why not check out the best Lego sets or the best Pokemon merch?

If there's one aspect of Baldur's Gate 3 that players undeniably love, it's the RPG's companion system – one that's arguably quite unique, even when comparing Larian Studios' Dungeons & Dragons game to fellow genre gems.

Part of what makes it so unique is the reputation aspect of it all – not every single one of the Baldur's Gate 3 companions feels the same about any given situation or player response, and that's made clear by the whole "so and so approves" or "disapproves" pop-up that follows certain dialogue choices.

Speaking in a recent edition of Edge, writer Kevin VanOrd explains why Larian chose to implement this reputation system.

"Sometimes the answer is to just let the player break the game," VanOrd says, "but when it comes to party members, usually not." That's precisely why player reputation exists. "If a character trusts you enough, they'll go along with whatever you say," he continues – and, yeah… that's definitely how it feels.

If you do enough questing and proper decision-making to the liking of any particular companion, you'll gain their unwavering trust.

"But if you need to convince them, that's when it becomes a dice roll… Every time you see the 'Lae'zel approves' or 'Lae'zel disapproves' pop up, you learn a little something about that character," he concludes – such a reputation system keeps things simple for developers, too.

"We can't have every character reacting to every situation, otherwise we would be working on the game forever. So this is a way of showing how they feel without writing new dialogue."

That makes sense. Plus, it meshes nicely with the Dungeons & Dragons inspiration behind Baldur's Gate 3 as well, keeping players on their toes with dice rolls where necessary but also allowing fans to build meaningful relationships with companions.

Baldur's Gate 3 writer admits "I wish I could have done more" with the RPG's least-appreciated party member, like a dedicated friendship system and inter-party dates

It's no secret that Baldur's Gate 3 companions Lae'zel and Shadowheart have a bit of a, um, strained relationship straight off the bat, but they do admittedly share a lot of similarities – and Larian Studios writers used these while creating their scripts.

Speaking in a recent edition of Edge magazine, writer Kevin VanOrd and John Corcoran recall as much. "Sometimes I yearn for linear storytelling," VanOrd admits first – the Baldur's Gate 3 world is so big, after all, so it's not surprising to hear that it pulled writers off their path as much as it does players.

While attempting to solidify some limits early on in development, VanOrd sat down with Corcoran to discuss similarities between the characters they were writing.

Which characters were they? The ever-beloved (or hated – take your pick, shippers) Baldur's Gate 3 companions, Lae'zel and Shadowheart.

While initially introduced as opponents of sorts, or perhaps more accurately, party members with an especially unfriendly affinity toward one another, the two adventurers share similar beginnings.

They're both in a constant struggle against their upbringing and the values it taught them.

With Shadowheart, it's the Sharrans. With Lae'zel, it's her githyanki background. These sorts of ties are what helped the two writers create convincing dialogue – and a convincing romance, which I'd argue could not have been easy to do.

"We realized we were writing the same story from different directions, and so that allowed us to reframe their initial clash and inform their later conversations."

Yeah, those later convos offer a very different flavor.

I'm an Astarion truther myself, so I've never explored romance between the two, but I can see how VanOrd and Corcoran might've ironed things out between their two seemingly different – albeit far more similar beneath the surface – companions.

A "simple test" of Baldur's Gate 3's modding tools has "snowballed" into a full-blown remake of the first Baldur's Gate, and you can play the demo now.

When it comes to Baldur's Gate 3, every companion has its audience – but the party member that has arguably managed to accrue the most criticism from fans is Wyll, as many feel he's lacking in content compared to the others.

It's not easy being a Wyll truther, as it often seems like he was forgotten during development – or, at least, when he's compared to the other Baldur's Gate 3 companions, it certainly does.

He does have a compelling storyline, Mizora and all things considered, but there's just not as much going on romance-wise… and Larian Studios knows it, too. Speaking in a recent edition of Edge, writer Kevin VanOrd shares his own thoughts.

"I wish I could have done more with Wyll," he admits. "I would love to have a friendship system in addition to a romance system, where you get special events like dates. And I think it would have been really cool for characters to have romances with each other, outside of the player."

But, alas, there simply wasn't enough time for Larian to pull such feats off. "We had a lot of great ideas that never made it into the game because of time constraints."

VanOrd's echoing what he's said previously here. Earlier this year, he stated, "I wish Wyll had gotten more content and a more fulfilling arc, too" – which sounds a whole lot like his current sentiment on the too-oft forgotten party member. The writer had explained, "Wyll's content is sparser than I'd have liked."

I'd say the community agrees, judging by threads on Reddit and the like. Folks have frequently flagged their disappointment with the character's arc.

It's sad to read, especially as Baldur's Gate 3 received its "final" big update, Patch 8, in 2025. Companions like Wyll (and Karlach, sorry) will have to persevere with what they've already got… but perhaps there's hope in the Baldur's Gate 3 TV show?

A "simple test" of Baldur's Gate 3's modding tools has "snowballed" into a full-blown remake of the first Baldur's Gate, and you can play the demo now

A team of modders is remaking the original Baldur's Gate using the Baldur's Gate 3 engine following the success of a "simple test" of the 2023 RPG's modding tools.

Project lead 786r786 tells Rock Paper Shotgun the idea for a Baldur's Gate remake sprouted when an unlocked version of Baldur's Gate 3's official modding tools showed up on NexusMods in September 2024. 786r786 never intended on remaking the whole game, but they wanted to test the limits of the unlocked toolkit and went forward with creating the Baldur's Gate starting location, Candlekeep, in Baldur's Gate 3.

According to 786r786, interest in that mod, which launched last August, has now "snowballed" to the extent that they've assembled a full team of modders under the banner Deathbringer's Reign to recreate the full game.

"I received a lot of requests from fans of the original games to turn it into a full campaign, along with offers from some incredibly talented modders who volunteered to help," says 786r786. "Making an isolated custom campaign is actually a bit easier than making an extension to the base game; you don't have to account for the incredibly vast amount of scenarios present in vanilla BG3, and you have full control over the player's environment."

The team at Deathbringer's Reign has now repurposed that same Candlekeep mod into a demo for the full remake project, and you can download it via Nexus Mods right here. In an email to GamesRadar+, the mod team says the next step in the plan is a second demo expanding the remake's world to include High Hedge, Beregost, the Friendly Arm Inn, and Shipwreck's Coast, including all of the companions from those regions in the original game.

The team is on the hunt for volunteers with experience using unlocked Baldur's Gate 3 modding tools to help reach that milestone. Specifically, they're looking for level designers, writers, modelers, animators, concept artists, and programmers to help with the mod.

"Without a doubt, the most significant challenge will be translating the city of Baldur's Gate itself into a fully 3D environment," 786r786 tells RPS. "The sheer scale is daunting; the original game has over 100 interiors within the city, whereas BG3 features about 40 buildings in the Lower City. We have to figure out how to capture that content density while adjusting the layout to suit BG3's modern gameplay and presentation."

Sounds like no easy task, but the idea is to give players a new version of Baldur's Gate that benefits from Baldur's Gate 3's mechanics like "enemies throwing objects, destroying the environment, and creating surfaces, to make those encounters feel entirely new and challenging."

As Baldur's Gate 3 devs decide what to do next with Divinity, Larian publishing lead celebrates the D&D RPG's late rise in players on Steam: "We on the upnup."

As work on new RPG Divinity cracks on over at Larian Studios, 2023 Dungeons & Dragons gem Baldur's Gate 3 continues to soar on platforms like Steam – and its continuing popularity is an understandable point of pride for the developers.

In a recent online post, publishing director Michael "Cromwelp" Douse explains how, after checking the Steam "Top Sellers" charts, he noticed that Baldur's Gate 3 was in the third spot, right after the likes of the brand-new, hotly anticipated horror title Resident Evil Requiem and the ever-popular Counter-Strike 2 from Valve.

Seeing as it's been nearly three years now since the Baldur's Gate threequel launched, that's pretty big news.

"A real thrill to see BG3 in the number 3 sales spot this sunny morning as I write up plans for what we do next and how we do it," Douse says. "A little motivation goes a long way."

It sounds like the brilliant reputation that Baldur's Gate 3 continues to carry understandably serves as a bit of inspiration – perhaps while Larian works on Divinity, its upcoming RPG behemoth. Douse takes a moment to go over the numbers, too.

"According to Steam Charts, January 2025 avg PC was 66,434 vs 2026's of 67,683. That's growth, baby!" That's right – not only has Baldur's Gate 3 retained a dedicated fanbase years on, but there are more players exploring the Forgotten Realms than there were last January.

As Douse exclaims, "We on the upnup into the next big blue ocean!" Now if only custom maps could finally properly come to fruition…

Until they do, though, there's still plenty to do in Baldur's Gate 3. As one commenter says, "I have 100+ hours in this game, and I haven't finished it yet" – and, yeah, same, except I've got another 0 at the end of that number and then some.

The effort (and "all the goofs & spoofs, hijinks and doodillying," according to Douse) Larian put into its RPG is more than evident, and I'm just glad to see it receiving its very due recognition.

Here's hoping Divinity proves just as fun and successful, although I'm almost certain that it will. If Baldur's Gate 3 and the community's ongoing love for it highlight anything, it's how talented the devs over at Larian truly are.

Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 set for a new update "nearly 15 years after the Enhanced Editions" launched, earning an approving nod from BG3 developer Larian itself

While Baldur's Gate 3 has been in the limelight now since its 2023 release, its predecessors have held the hearts of many hardened RPG stans for literal decades now – and a new update is coming to reignite the community's love for the OG games.

The first two Baldur's Gate games have been enjoyed by many a fan globally – especially so thanks to their Beamdog-published Enhanced Editions from 2012 and 2013.

A whopping 14 years have passed since those revamped versions launched on consoles, PC, and mobile platforms, but they appear due for a little freshening up. Beamdog announces a new update for both (as well as its other Dungeons & Dragons gems) in a recent post.

"We're announcing the new Infinity Engine 2.7 beta," the studio exclaims. "Yes, you heard that right, nearly 15 years after the Enhanced Editions – and over 25 years since the originals – we're still dedicated to supporting these legendary RPGs." You love to hear it.

What's more, the exciting 2.7 patch is already live on Steam as Beamdog beta tests it, and is set to roll out fully for mobile users later on.

It's not a massive update by any means, focusing "on long‑term stability, modern platform support, and a few quality‑of‑life improvements" like improved cloud saving, but it's a big deal to RPG lovers as it shows Beamdog's ongoing commitment to the D&D classics.

The news has even reached Larian Studios, the team behind successor Baldur's Gate 3, with publishing director Michael 'Cromwelp' Douse commenting on the patch.

"Based! It is awesome to see people who care about Baldur's Gate doing cool things for its huge and diverse community," Douse writes in his response to Beamdog.

Replies from fans are, unsurprisingly, just as positive, with one person saying they've "been enjoying these games since [their] original release." Other hopeful players ask the publisher if the update might make its way to consoles, too.

Beamdog hasn't confirmed whether or not it will, but it does reassure folks who are worried about 2.7 breaking their mods (a tale as old as time, apparently, and one that's always relevant when Baldur's Gate 3 gets updates as well). Now – time to boot up my PC.

Searching for something else to play? Browse through our roundup of all the best RPGs to date for your next adventure.

Reacting to Sony's floundering push into making live-service games, Larian Studios and Baldur's Gate 3's director of publishing Michael 'Cromwelp' Douse argues that the gap between single-player and multiplayer games has never been smaller, so maybe these companies don't need to make an always-online game to have an online hit.

For context, this week Sony shut down Bluepoint Games, the PlayStation first-party studio behind the gorgeous Demon's Souls PS5 remake and Shadow of the Colossus' PS4 revival. The subsidiary had previously been working on a God of War live service game that eventually went nowhere, which is a trend often repeated elsewhere in the PlayStation Studios roster during its PS5 generation.

"Theory: because of how connected everyone is, pretty much every game and every experience is a shared experience," Douse tweets in response to Sony's multiple live service blunders during the PS5 generation, Concord included. "In other words, the distance between single and multiplayer games is actually shrinking rather than growing. Social resonance doesn't require a game to be MP."

After one commenter points out that big publishers can't monetize single-player games with endless cosmetics, Douse replies that it's "demonstrably true that you can monetize a game by, you know, making sure it's good." Look no further than Baldur's Gate 3, I guess. Though, he also says "nearly 100% of the time," he sees executives wrongly believing that no game can be "objectively good."

Bluepoint Games made a name for itself with a string of quality remasters, remakes, and repackages for classic games. The Texas-based studio was then acquired by Sony in 2021 before helping develop God of War Ragnarok alongside Sony Santa Monica, at which point it was then apparently handed a multiplayer God of War game, a project well outside of its wheelhouse. Bloomberg's Jason Schreier reports the team spent the last year pitching other projects.

"Devastating": Game devs send outpouring of love to Sony's latest closed PlayStation studio Bluepoint, saying "the sheer amount of institutional knowledge lost is quite literally staggering"

Now that the "final" Patch 8 for Baldur's Gate 3 has been out for nearly a year, you'd think Larian Studios would be ready to close the book on the beloved Dungeons & Dragons RPG for good – but, much to my delight, the devs are not quite finished cleaning it up.

Larian has plenty to grapple with right now, between Divinity and its other upcoming project (the ever-mysterious title codenamed Excalibur), but the developers aren't done ironing out issues folks have flagged in Baldur's Gate 3.

Just a couple of days ago, the studio announced in an admittedly amusing post that a new update, albeit seemingly quite minor, had gone live, addressing a few more of the "technical problems" in-game.

"Bet you thought you'd seen the last of these," it reads. "As it turns out, a few crashes and technical issues were still knocking about, so if you were getting stuck while loading saves, or trying to progress from Act 2 into Act 3, your corrupted saves should now be fixed!"

The devs also list the most current version of Baldur's Gate 3 on all platforms, with Xbox Series X|S and PS5 being 4.1.1.7143914 while PC is at 4.1.1.7151330.

That's… a lot of numbers. It speaks to all of the effort Larian has poured into its RPG thus far, though, with everything from massive Patch 8-style releases to smaller yet necessary hotfixes dropping along the way.

I'd wager the devs' work isn't over yet, either, judging by comments on their announcement – the community still has plenty of requests, from fixes for Wyll's banter text to tweaks that address the anisotropic bug on PC.

There's plenty of, uh, hopium to be found among the replies, too. One fan asks, "So you are telling me that Gortash romance is still possible?" I'm not sure we'll ever see something like that come to fruition, but a girl can keep on dreaming, eh?

"It was very bad": Baldur's Gate 3 was once heavily teased in Larian's Divinity Original Sin 2, but it was so obvious the devs had to water it down

It takes a large team to make games like Baldur's Gate 3 and Divinity: Original Sin 2. So large, the specific influences are extremely varied and hard to pin down, to the point that when asked if certain genres help shape the output of Larian Studios, director of publishing Michael Douse can only speculate.

On Twitter, he was asked by a fan if JRPGs are part of the tapestry Larian draws on, in response to a post celebrating Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined. "Many people involved," Douse replies. "One of our combat guys is a big JRPG fan for example, but I don't know about Nick."

He's presumably talking about Nick Pechenin here, Larian's head of design, who oversees all a project's systems and makes sure they function as desired. As a lead dev whose fingers are all over combat and exploration, his own tastes and preferences would definitely be something you're likely to detect, if even only to a subtle degree.

Douse notes, though, that whatever this fan is picking up isn't coming from Swen Vincke, founder of Larian and director on all the studio's games thus far. He's more of "an Ultima guy."

When it comes to vintage RPG series, they don't come much more old school than Ultima, a classic line of fantasy dungeon-crawlers dating back to the early '80s, created by Richard Garriott. You can definitely see the imprint of those games on Larian's releases, as they were real forebears when it came to choice-based storytelling and open-world design.

That said, I can see flickers of the Japanese approach in the Original Sin games and the third Baldur’s Gate, particularly when it comes to the pace and structure of their turn-based battle systems. I'm curious to see if the relationship becomes more pronounced in the new Divinity. Maybe we'll see Larian go full Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, melding European aesthetics and JRPG gameplay. Either way, I'm here for it.

Baldur's Gate 3 boss Swen Vincke forced to reveal Larian's next RPG Divinity "ends with a lot of fire" after a 19 roll for Persuasion

Well, it's official… a Baldur's Gate 3 adaptation for television is underway, and all of us are losing our minds trying to figure out where the story might go and how it might play out on screen – there are plenty of routes it could take, after all – including Larian boss Swen Vincke.

Larian Studios crafted an RPG gem with various paths and finales to experience, so there's no telling which ones the newly unveiled Baldur's Gate 3 TV show might take – but, as game director Vincke himself now says, that's sort of the point.

"Crazy that a story that started out in a small hotel conference room eventually evolved into a narrative inspiring enough for it to become an HBO series," he begins in a post reacting to the news.

"We worked incredibly hard on making Baldur's Gate 3 worthy of its legacy. Its characters and narratives are the result of many teams working together, and I think I can speak for them all in saying that they'll think this is cool and hope that what comes next will enjoy the same level of passion."

Then, he touches on the game's endings – and how Larian crafted them so that they could pave the way for future "adventures," or, in this case, adaptations.

"The endings of BG3 were created so they could serve as narrative soil for new adventures," Vincke admits. "There's plenty of directions they could go." Surprisingly, the Larian lead himself doesn't actually know what paths the televised series will go down.

He is, however, "eager to find out which ones" Craig Mazin, who previously directed The Last of Us TV show and is now heading the Baldur's Gate 3 adaptation, "will pick."

It sounds like Vincke and the team behind the beloved 2023 RPG will be included in some decision-making, perhaps, too, as he adds that Mazin has "reached out for a chat so we'll have the opportunity to tell him our thoughts."

He then concludes with a little reference to Divinity, one of the two upcoming Larian RPGs underway (the other being a mysterious project codenamed Excalibur).

"Crossing fingers that the story we're cooking up for Divinity will eventually grow to the same heights," writes Vincke. "Certainly putting in the hours." As a Baldur's Gate 3 stan, I'm sure it will. I've got over 1,000 hours in-game, and I'm still going, after all.

Larian's publishing boss threatens to "crash out" over Baldur's Gate TV show but immediately walks it back with a more level-headed outlook: "I don't think anyone can trump our writers"

Three years, hundreds of spell slots, and almost a thousand hours since my first Baldur's Gate 3 playthrough, I can't say I ever wished to see it immortalized on the small screen. One of the greatest things about it is how any stone left unturned can simply be investigated next time around. It's that expansive sense of adventure, storytelling, and worldbuilding that makes it one of the best RPGs of all time, not to mention the most replayable.

It's also why I cannot comprehend how the upcoming Baldur's Gate 3 TV show, led by The Last of Us' Craig Mazin, will deliver a direct sequel to something with so many endings – including one where everybody in the whole world dies – and not enrage legions of already sceptical fans in the process.

I understand why HBO would jump at the chance to serialize it. There's something moreish and captivating about Larian's take on Dungeons & Dragons' Forgotten Realms, not to mention a lot of sustained commercial interest in the property. Hell, my friends and I have been pining for a full run of the animated shorts Larian used at various stages in the game's rollout – to us it screams Netflix adult cartoon show. But putting my initial fears to one side, as a fan and a journalist, there's only one way I can see it taking off without risking total desecration: HBO must look to the Gods.

The devil you know

No matter which ending (or variant thereof) you end up with, the one constant in Baldur's Gate 3 is that the Gods are always watching. From the hungry gaze of the Dead Three – Bane, Bhaal, and Myrkul, who feature so heavily in the game – to Selune, Mystra, Shar, and the plethora of other Gods your cleric might worship, your actions do not go unnoticed.

Look no further than the players' camp for evidence, where Jergal – former god of death and Lord of the End of Everything – keeps tally of your adventures. I'm talking about Withers, "Bone Man" as little tiefling Arabella affectionately calls him, as long as your Baldur's Gate 3 Dark Urge doesn't let her die in Act 1.

Throughout Baldur's Gate 3, Jergal has a watchful eye on everything you're up to, from the lovers you take to every misdeed and acts of goodwill. And no matter how your story ends, the Gods will have something to say about it – which is what makes a story about the Gods such a perfect play for an HBO adaptation that wants to dig into a fresh perspective that lives in the game's background, yet influences every aspect.

A TV show about the Gods is really the only way I can see HBO getting away with the setting and worldstate of Baldur's Gate 3, expanding the after effects of Tav's journey without retconning or rehashing them.

Divine strike

I agree it could be fun to see how HBO would cast our favorite BG3 companions for a live-action take, but at the same time, the actors have become as iconic as the characters they portray.

I cannot envision how HBO would recast something in such recent memory without coming across as dismissive of the huge role Larian's cast played in the game's success. For that reason, I hope the show actively avoids centering any prominent main characters for a "where are they now?" moment.

The same can't quite be said of the Gods. Bane, Bhaal, and Myrkul are never seen in their true forms, only appearing to the player through their Chosen (Bane's is Lord Enver Gortash, for example) or avatars like the one we fight beneath Moonrise Towers after defeating Myrkul's Chosen, Ketheric Thorm.

This leaves the Dead Three open to visual interpretation while leaving the door ajar for the likes of Doug Cockle to reprise their roles in delivering more of the terrifying performances we glimpsed in the RPG.

Since we never kill an actual God in the game, the rest of them could feasibly be in a sequel without risking the integrity of Larian's story.

Jergal/Withers' character design is suitably abstract and ripe for interpretation, choosing to appear in a specific way to our playable characters. Shar has such an identifiable character design with lots of statement pieces that would be easy to emulate on TV, we never actually see an avatar of Selune, and I can't be the only one eager to see how Mephistopheles deals with Raphael's meddlings.

The very thought of Andrew Wincott getting to portray his character's big boss is actually…. kind of perfect. And again, devils, cambions, and infernals as a whole would be a safer bet to recreate on television than the exact character modelling of Shadowheart, Lae'zel, Wyll, and so on.

A TV show centered around the Gods could also make for an interesting continuation of Arabella's story. Withers seems particularly invested in her journey and destiny, after all, and I could envisage a canonized God Gale being an interesting entity to throw into the mix. As long as he's still played by Tim Downie – lest HBO wishes doom upon itself.

While it's still too early for me to imagine what this godly TV show might look like, the HBO adaptation should be precisely that – an adaptation, with strong links to source material that can be believably iterated on TV without rewriting Larian's already brilliant work.

There are so many endings to Baldur's Gate 3 that one of them would have to be at least partially canonized for any sequel to make sense, but it stands true that the only way to gain insight into the rippling effects of Tav's journey is to point the camera elsewhere. Why not zero in on how the Gods themselves would pick up the pieces after such a dramatic powergrab – whether or not it was successful?

Turn-based RPG mayhem awaits in these games like Baldur's Gate 3

Beloved Dungeons and Dragons video game series Baldur's Gate is getting an HBO Max TV adaptation from one of the biggest heavyweights in the world of game adaptations, with Craig Mazin of The Last of Us signed on as writer and showrunner.

"After putting nearly 1000 hours into the incredible world of Baldur's Gate 3, it is a dream come true to be able to continue the story that Larian and Wizards of The Coast created," Mazin says in a statement (via Deadline). "I am a devoted fan of D&D and the brilliant way that Swen Vincke and his gifted team adapted it. I can't wait to help bring Baldur's Gate and all of its incredible characters to life with as much respect and love as we can, and I'm deeply grateful to Gabe Marano and his team at Hasbro for entrusting me with this incredibly important property."

Baldur's Gate is not just a popular game series, with the most recent Baldur's Gate 3 landing as a smash hit among fans. It's also one of the most iconic locations in the world of D&D's Forgotten Realms, which is the setting of numerous novels including, most notably, the tales of legendary Drow ranger Drizz't Do'Urden, perhaps the most beloved character in D&D fiction.

Mazin, meanwhile, is a film and TV industry veteran going back to the early 2000s, but his stardom shot up considerably in 2019 with HBO's highly acclaimed Chernobyl series, which Mazin wrote and created. His name being attached to such a beloved IP should give plans plenty of assurance that HBO's adaptation will be handled with extreme care.

Notably, the TV series will serve as a direct sequel to Baldur's Gate 3, rather than adapt any one game in the series. That means Mazin will largely have free reign over the story, unlike The Last of Us where he's adapting a story that's already been told in video games. It'll be interesting to see where he takes such a beloved story and characters as they journey into realms unknown.

Here are the best shows on HBO Max you can watch right now.

The latest MTG Secret Lair looks great, but there is no way I’m buying it.

Back in 2019, MTG Secret Lair began as a way for one of the best card games to flex its creative muscles with kooky themed reprints. And in the years since, the Magic sub-brand has released drops of everything from Lisa Frank to Fortnite. With Secret Lair, players get their hands on strange (and often quite beautiful) collectible cards, and one-and-done IP crossovers don’t clog up the game’s main release schedule. That now includes Baldur's Gate 3's Shadowheart and Gale. So, what’s not to like?

One of the primary complaints players have levied against Magic: The Gathering’s Secret Lair is that it functions on a model of artificial scarcity. In 2024, Wizards of the Coast changed these drops from a print-on-demand product to a limited-print-run. This means that a finite, undisclosed number of cards are created in advance of each drop, and players scramble to digital queues in the hope of getting their hands on them. Ah, there’s just nothing like good ol’ FOMO marketing.

Returning to the most recent Secret Lair announcement, the Roll for Initiative Superdrop is a Dungeons & Dragons crossover consisting of seven individual drops. The art on cards is almost enough of a selling point on its own, though I think it’s fair to say that the real stars of the Superdrop are God’s Favorite Princess, Shadowheart, and Gale Dekarios of Waterdeep.

In another cruel twist of fate targeting my wallet, the Superdrop also features a Curse of Strahd reskin of one of my personal pet Commanders. I’ll admit Strefan, Maurer Progenitor is far from the most powerful vampire to grace the command zone, but Vampiric Bloodlines was one of the first precons I ever upgraded. So, there’s a sentimental value to that card, I suppose. He’s no Edgar Markov, but he’s mine.

A stylish reprint of this wonderfully ‘meh’ Legendary, combined with the Superdrop’s fandom appeal and bold visual style, means I should be gearing up to type in my card details. However, there’s an even thicker-than-usual layer of cynicism that floats over Secret Lair as of late, due to what is seemingly one of Wizards’ most ill-advised market research experiments: Prints Charming.

If you’re not familiar with the Prints Charming snafu, allow me to bring you up to speed. On February 2, Wizards released a (regrettably gorgeous) drop of four Lorwyn reprints in a Secret Lair Chaos Vault called Prints Charming. Both the standard and foil editions were listed at five different price points (between $9.99 and $49.99), despite these listings consisting of entirely identical products.

On its listing, the Prints Charming’s description reads, “You’ll notice this drop is available at multiple price points, which is very much on purpose and very much part of what we’re exploring here. Call it professional curiosity.” Beyond the very remote possibility of this being a 4D-chess reseller trap, it appears as though the Prints Charming’s tiered pricing very well may have been a test to see just how much players are willing to pay for a Secret Lair drop.

The Secret Lair: Roll for Initiative Superdrop shows no indication of attempting to collect data about my own personal balking point for Secret Lair. Unlike Prints Charming, it’s not trying to figure out how hard the brand can push me before I turn the other way. Yet oddly enough, it unintentionally has.

Like many others, I feel like my support for Secret Lair is a passive endorsement of predatory marketing practices that seem so evidently anti-player. With barefaced tactics like this, I can feel the hands of Wizards squeezing my TCG wallet, and that’s an uncomfortable feeling. After all, I only have so much to give …even when it comes to my beloved shirtless Gale.

For more tabletop musings, why not check out the best board games or the best tabletop RPGs?

Baldur's Gate 3 is returning to Magic: The Gathering on February 9 in a seven-part Dungeons & Dragons Superdrop from Secret Lair that probably includes a lot more Shadowheart than you think.

Like, a lot more Shadowheart. There's an entire drop dedicated to only the goth princess, who looks strong and stormy in elegant new art, Dungeons & Dragons and Magic publisher Wizards of the Coast reveals in a February 3 announcement.

Shadowheart's Devotion, as the drop is named, includes five non-foiled cards for $29.99, or five foiled cards for $39.99. The same prices apply to the Gale's Ambition drop devoted to Baldur Gate 3's playboy wizard, whose pecs look huge on his Archmage's Charm card.

If you find them both too hard to resist, Wizards of the Coast offers some advice: "With Valentine's Day just around the corner, whether your heart belongs to a dangerously charming Wizard or a complicated Cleric, there's room in this party for romance, too." In other words, relax and enjoy your sexy Magic deck, freak.

You might have bigger problems once the Dungeons & Dragons Superdrop is out, anyway. As is the case with most limited Secret Lair drops, you'll need to sprint to snag it. Wizards of the Coast advises you to "enter the pre-queue" an hour before its newest Superdrop goes live at 9am PT, during which you'll be "randomly assigned a spot in line." That might be your best chance to impress Shadowheart and grab the foiled and non-foiled All Dice Cast bundle, which costs $464.99.

Uh, on second thought, maybe just buy her a ring.

Unless your love language is quality time, in which case you should play the 6 best card games of 2026, reviewed and tested by experts.

Some mysteries in Baldur's Gate 3 are best left uninvestigated. I'm not talking about the infamous tryst between a bugbear and an ogre you might've happened upon in Act 1, but the hidden Spectator encountered sometime after. These one-eyed horrors are a less-powerful spin on Dungeons & Dragons' Beholders: tentacled, toothsome, hard-hitting alien menaces, usually awaiting you in the depths of the House of Hope shortly before the most marvelous boss fight in RPG history. But imagine my surprise when I learned that you can actually find one in the game's earlier hours, and that it can be either the biggest boon or an instant game-over?

I tried to keep an eye out for one such nasty secret during my most recent playthrough – something my friends and colleagues cryptically described as a "terrifying surprise" to stumble upon – without any clue what to actually look for. The chain of events speaks to the glorious mayhem of a world governed by D&D, and as Larian moves on to pastures new (or potentially familiar) in its upcoming RPG Divinity, I hope it doesn't forget these lessons in mischief.

Do it for the plot

"Find the missing shipment." I roll my eyes as the quest pops up in my logbook, one of a great many I usually skim over in the majority of my Baldur's Gate 3 playthroughs. I'm a self-confessed Act 1 steamroller, having perfected the neatest, most straightforward course of action across some 700 hours-and-counting of playtime, perpetually eager to get stuck into the delicious gloom of the Shadow-Cursed Lands and the promise of high-tier gear.

But this time, I question my thoughtless predilection for efficiency. I'm trying to find the secret Act 1 Spectator, right? What if instead of ignoring Mayrina, zooming past Waukeen's Rest, and sniping Minthara down a chasm at the goblin camp, I take stock of my surroundings for a change? What if I actually – shudder – investigate those annoying gnolls nearby the fake Paladins of Tyr?

I feel noble – magnanimous, even, – to be sacrificing my time in the name of novelty. I decide to veer off my tried-and-true path and plod into the midst of a firefight between gnolls, hyenas, and gnoll hunters; pledging my aid to the latter.

A lengthy battle and two or three dead NPCs later, I can finally examine the contents of this cliffside hideout for this missing shipment. I was supposed to keep those two gentlemen alive, I think, but my loot goblin brain can't help but celebrate as I look upon their gnoll-ravaged corpses. It's time to gleefully pick through their pockets and find some nice trinkets to flog at Emerald Grove, or feed to Gale if a magical item's stats displease me.

That's how I happen upon a mysterious iron flask with a glowing insignia on the bottle, alerting me to the presence of something inside. I drop a sneaky save before popping the lid open – accidentally freeing the Act 1 monster I'd been warned so extensively about.

A real turn-based Strahd-egy

It's a hilariously "oh shit" moment, trumped only by a real-life instance where something eerily similar happened during a game of D&D.

Faced with a radiant damage-resistant Vampire Lord, my tried-and-true BG3 cleric strat of simply casting Daylight was obsolete. I had no more spell slots, and as a Level 5 Light Cleric, I had yet to unlock my high-level Divine Intervention class action that would ordinarily come in clutch to grant me a full long rest in the midst of battle. My radiant cantrips were useless against this vampiric brute – who knew the vampire lord of Barovia was curiously invulnerable to an undead-melting staple? All I had was a single, curious item my DM had assigned me at the start of our adventure: a "crystal knob from a door". Yes, that's the actual item description (check out trinket number 69).

In a moment of panic, I lobbed it straight at Strahd von Zarovich, hoping to distract the vampire from ripping my fellow adventurer's throat out. Imagine my surprise when, instead of simply snapping my neck, he vanished from sight. It turns out this "crystal knob" had been a dimension door all along – an enchanted link to Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion – and I had managed to avoid certain death by banishing Strahd temporarily into a magical house in some pocket dimension.

It's a FAFO moment that blessedly paid off, allowing me to pull off a Hail Mary feat by the skin of my teeth, and I wish there'd been more like it in Larian's RPG (honorable mentions to the djinn in Ramazith Tower and the sunbeam laser in the Gith crèche).

The iron flask is a monster grenade, essentially, capable of being lobbed into an enemy's path or strategically dropped upon them from outside a combat zone to cause maximum chaos without actually being present for it – but you don't know anything until you risk getting killed by your own curiosity. I know that Divinity marks a pivot for Larian, moving away from the rules and regulations of Dungeons & Dragons as it revisits its own RPG series – I played Divinity Original Sin 2 for the first time recently, and the differences between it and BG3's systems were not lost on me. But here's hoping the developer doesn't abandon the giddy chaos of D&D completely in an effort to re-establish what makes Divinity distinct from BG3.

I need more trial-and-error consequences in my sprawling fantasy RPGs, and between a Spectator in a jar and a vampire in a doorknob, I'd love to see Larian push the envelope to new, even wilder heights.

Want more high-fantasy adventure? Check out these games like Baldur's Gate 3 to play right now in 2026

Devora Wilde has backed up her Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 co-star Charlie Cox, arguing that performance capture workers need more recognition.

A few months ago, Daredevil himself and the voice behind Expedition 33's Gustave told everyone to hold their praise and instead pass it on to the character's performance capture artist, Maxence Cazorla. "So any nomination or any credit I get, I really have to give to him, because I believe that the performance of that character is really down to him, and my voice was just part of that process," Cox said after being nominated at The Game Awards.

When asked about the subject in an interview with Radio Times Gaming, Wilde, who voiced Clea in the French RPG, agreed: "It's quite hard to separate the two and do one without the other. I mean, you couldn't do performance capture without being a trained actor and really going through the whole emotions yourself. So, yeah, I have massive respect for what they do. Just like Charlie says, they do need more recognition. It's a whole world."

She then goes on to shout out stunt performers who provide the motion capture for actions that voice actors might not be physically capable of, "like sword fights and flips." Wilde even calls out the scene where her Baldur's Gate 3 character Lae'zel, flips off a ship. "That wasn't me. Shock," she joked.

More often than not, voice actors and performance capture actors work hand-in-hand to create a character. For last year's chilling horror game Cronos: The New Dawn, Wilde detailed how her character's mocap was already done by the time she stepped into the recording booth, so she had to "create this perfect synergy" with another actor she had never met.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's beloved Esquie was pitched as being like Mulan's own lovable giant, but his actor saw another character in him: "I pictured Baymax from Big Hero 6"

Baldur's Gate 3 is arguably one of the most successful games to start its journey on Steam in Early Access, and developers like Ori and the Blind Forest's Moon Studios have looked to it as an example of why such a release model works so well.

Thomas Mahler, CEO of Moon Studios – the very same team behind the recent chart-topper action RPG, No Rest for the Wicked – discusses as much in a recent online post responding to fans' concerns surrounding the choice to use the Early Access model.

He first cites Larian's own decision to launch Baldur's Gate 3 that same way in 2020. "You know that Baldur's Gate 3 was in Early Access for 3 years, right?"

Mahler continues: "It's true that a lot of developers are abusing the Early Access model, but games like BG3 and No Rest for the Wicked would probably never get made if it wouldn't be for Early Access because games like that are just too inherently complex and there needs to be a dedicated community that gives it a shot early on in order for the developers to work with that data."

It makes sense – and largely echoes what Larian has previously said. In fact, Baldur's Gate 3 director and Larian Studios lead Swen Vincke told us that new RPG Divinity will likely launch into Early Access first, too, as "you get something really cool out of that process."

Mahler notes this in his thread, too – as well as why Larian is probably using Early Access on Steam once again. "There's a reason why Larian already announced that they'll use Early Access again for their next game," he writes.

"It's not because they need the money, it's because games at this level of complexity aren't just something that you work on in solitude and can release if you only have like 100 people playing it during development. Just mathematically, that wouldn't be enough scale in order to find all the issues, given the complexity of the systems. Not to mention that it's impossible to judge how players would react to the delicate balance required."

He concludes, "I'd say just stick with developers that have a proven track record. If they've shipped multiple high-quality titles before and are doing an Early Access, it's probably for this exact reason."

Interestingly enough, perhaps thanks to the mention of Baldur's Gate 3, Mahler's thoughts caught the attention of Vincke himself, who leaves a reply in agreement with the fellow dev's post.

"100%," it reads. "Games that successfully come out of Early Access prove that when players and devs unite around something they genuinely care about, beautiful things happen. It's a positive thing. Even if there are negative examples, don't let those overshadow the good ones."

I'd say Vincke and Mahler are correct here – the model, when it works, tends to work pretty well. Gathering players' opinions early and using them to improve is usually good.

It's a simple way to involve players in the development process and ensure that the final game reflects what the game developers envisioned and what fans expect to get out of it – when it works, as Vincke implies, that is.

As Highguard continues to get trashed online, Baldur's Gate 3 boss Swen Vincke says "I don't like people s***ing on things" as "it's easy to destroy things, it's a lot harder to build them"

It's been a wild few days in the gaming community following the arrival of Highguard and its "Mostly Negative" reviews – but it seems not everyone agrees with the criticisms, or perhaps such negative criticisms against games in general.

Baldur's Gate 3 director and Larian Studios lead Swen Vincke is one such person, taking to the web to share his thoughts on critiques following games' releases – especially those that are more negative in nature. "I don't like people shitting on things others have created," writes the developer. "Putting something out into the world makes you vulnerable, and that alone deserves respect, even if you dislike the creation."

He continues: "It's easy to destroy things, it's a lot harder to build them. The best critics understand this. Even when they’re being critical, they do their best not to be hurtful."

It does make sense – a lot of work goes into game development, after all, but I'd personally argue that reviews should be fair… and that means they're not always written in favor of the title they're covering. I do, however, get what Vincke means.

"The harsh words do real damage," as he puts it. "You shouldn't have to grow calluses on your soul just because you want to publish something." Vincke even says "there's plenty of games" he doesn't enjoy – but "it's incredibly rare for one to be made without there being someone behind it that truly cared about what they were making, putting a part of themselves in it." He does, however, get why people want a good product if they spend money on it.

The reviews they look to as a guide, in his opinion, shouldn't be so strongly worded if they are negative. "I get that if people are charging money, you want to know if it's good or not. But reviewers can just say –I didn't enjoy it, or I don't think it's well made, or I don't think it's worth the money they are charging. That's enough. No need to get personal for the sake of some likes." Vincke then goes on to remind folks to "be nice to one another."

"Think of the time you had to recite something in front of the class and how nervous you were," he says. "And how much any negative comment hurt. Be nice to one another, be nice to the people creating stuff to entertain you. Treat them like you would like to be treated if you made something. Consider it a strategic investment in the quality of your future entertainment. You won't regret it."

The Larian head clarifies he isn't "defending" devs or publishers who are "shitting" on players or milking those who enjoy their game. "I hate it wholeheartedly and vowed that Larian would never engage in it," he states. "What I'm trying to say is that most creative souls are sensitive souls, and those sensitive souls are the ones that care the most. When they check out because they can't handle the vitriol, we all lose because what's left are those who don't care."

Vincke says, "The effect the words have on those sensitive souls may not be underestimated. You don't want them to lose their idealism and love of players," before concluding that "you don't have to verbally hurt the people behind the game to express your disdain." Should enough folks stop playing a game, "those in charge will get the message and change course soon." After all, "There's enough other games there."

Although I'm not sure how I feel about Vincke's message in its entirety – I feel both negative and positive reviews are valuable and differing opinions will always lead to both – I do think that the community could benefit from being less vindictive overall. Some commenters seem to agree, with one writing, "The rise of the hating-games-as-a-hobby crowd has genuinely ruined gaming communities from a discussion standpoint."

They then add, "We have more great games than ever. Yet some people spend more time and invest a greater part of themselves in hate than in engaging with things they enjoy. It's sad." Others aren't so sure, though. "If you deliver an uninspired, unpolished game for a genre that most gamers have fatigue over, I think it's valid that you're going to have backlash," as one person explains in a separate response.

It's a complicated subject to discuss, that's for certain. One thing is for sure, though – there are plenty of wonderful games to enjoy in 2026, and you don't have to do a lot of searching to find one you'd probably like yourself.

Looking for something to wishlist? Be sure to browse our roundup of some of the best new games coming this year and beyond for great titles to anticipate.

A modder has restored some of the cut early access content from Baldur's Gate 3, including more than 1,000 lines of dialogue.

As spotted by Rock Paper Shotgun, NexusMods user HyperspaceTowel – who previously released early access content bit by bit previously – has released the "Early Access Scenes Restored" mod, which brings back scenes, encounters, and NPCs that were cut from the final release of the 2023 RPG. This includes "over 100 conversations and more than 1,000 lines of voiced dialogue back from the dead" and restored reactivity from the companions and NPCs like the seashell kid.

However, this isn't an entirely comprehensive restoration of early access content, as HyperspaceTowel explains, "Early Access Scenes Restored injects content into the game that (IMO) still fits into the full release story (so no Early Access Karlach, Wyll, Dream Visitor, etc)." However, it also includes brand new scenes – namely for Wyll and Karlach in order "to match the others' newfound chattiness," but all of the lines added by the mod were "sourced from the full release game," so no AI slop here.

Some scenes that didn't make it include Astarion's Nightmare and a Hermit Crab Quest, which "no longer fit neatly in the current game due to rewrites, recasting, etc." However, HyperspaceTowel has previously made mods for both of these scenes, so if you really want to see that vampire's nightmare, or more importantly: crab, you still can do so.

HyperspaceTowel also notes that they aren't done yet, with their future plans including "Thralls on the Nautiloid," "More Wyll and Karlach reactivity," and "More voiced dialogue for Tav." Plus, there are some known bugs with the mod, with Gale's beard looking weird when speaking the early access lines, however, there's the Gale's Beard Fix mod to remedy this.

Baldur's Gate 3 lead and Larian Studios founder shouts out the "unsung heroes" who make games like Divinity possible

Baldur's Gate 3 actor Neil Newbon, who plays Astarion in the hit 2023 RPG, is once again making it very clear he doesn't want generative AI anywhere near his video games.

Of course, Newbon has never been shy about sharing his feelings on AI, having previously said it "sucks," "doesn't work very well," and "sounds crap," alongside other, more expletive-laden repudiations.

During the finale of his 126-part YouTube video series in which he played through the entire game, Newbon once again ripped into the prospect of generative AI being used in video game development, specifically because, when amazing games like Baldur's Gate 3 exist without the help of AI, why would anyone want to use it?

"It just goes to show to you, folks, fuck AI," Newbon said. "This game could never be made by AI. It's too interesting, subtle, crazy, off the wall, pathos-filled. It's too human. So yeah, there's no fucking way AI could make this."

While the industry has more or less been forced to accept some degree of AI in things like task automation, generating art, writing, or acting is the big sticking point. That's why, despite initially admitting to and defending the use of AI in concept art development for Divinity, Larian has since pulled a 180 and committed to there being no such use of the tech.

Somehow only slightly off topic: Larian says Divinity won't have AI-generated penises: "I can guarantee that all the genitals in the game be manually crafted with love."

Neil Newbon, the actor behind Astarion from Baldur's Gate 3, has completed his two-year-long playthrough of the game and surprise, surprise, he loved it.

With all due respect to Newbon, there's very little that hasn't been said about the greatness of Baldur's Gate 3. The game was a triumphant sweep at all of the major game award shows from 2023, topped many GOTY lists that year, and scooped up all sorts of other prestigious awards for various elements like music, performances, and narrative. Still, it's neat to hear Newbon's unique perspective as someone who worked on the game since 2019 as an actor.

"There won't be another game like this either ever, or for a very, very, very long time," Newbon remarked as the credits rolled on what appears to be his first-ever completion of the Baldur's Gate 3 campaign (thanks, FRVR). "There's a lot of things that went right initially to make this game possible ... Hell of an adventure, folks. Hell of an adventure. Yeah, one of my all-time favorite greatest games ever." Newbon added, "it is, what I would define, in retrospect, a perfect game."

Newbon began his 126-part playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3 more than two years ago, playing as a half-elf druid named Bow'ee alongside his friend and horror writer Tom de Ville. The duo agreed that they probably wouldn't embark on a new save file any time soon, as Baldur's Gate 3 is "a two-year game, we found out" but Newbon said he'll be "exploring" the extensive collection of mods available online in his personal time. After a second of thought, he then admitted another Baldur's Gate 3 run with "the stupidest mods we could find" would be "fun," and as much as I sympathize with Newbon and the potentially enormous loss of his free time, I wholeheartedly agree that that sounds very fun indeed.

The thing I wanted more of from Baldur's Gate 3 is also something Larian wants to improve on in Divinity: "More interaction between companions"

In the wake of Larian Studios announcing a new Divinity is on the way, Baldur's Gate 3 and Divinity: Original Sin 2 have seen nice big spikes in sales. As much isn't surprising, since Larian had the honor of being the biggest publicity stunt and final reveal of last year's The Game Awards, but the sheer amount is a pleasant surprise for the company.

Founder Swen Vincke expressed his polite astonishment on Twitter. "Sales for both Baldur's Gate 3 and Divinity: Original Sin 2 have been incredible since the announcement of Divinity," he says, quote-tweeting a post about Baldur's Gate 3's concurrent players on Steam. "Divinity: Original Sin 2 really surprised us by having its best month since release in 2017."

Indeed, the Baldur's Gate threequel drew in over 110,000 concurrent players on Steam on Saturday, January 18, according to SteamDB, just down from a peak of over 127,000 on January 4. Looks to me like quite a few took advantage of the 25% discount in the winter sale on Valve's store to see what all this Dungeons and Dragons-related malarkey is all about.

Not bad for an RPG that's primarily single-player and has been out for almost three years. Also on SteamDB, Original Sin 2 topped out at over 27,000 concurrents around January 4 as well, with the Enhanced Edition at a hefty 75% off likely doing some business there. That’s over a quarter of the game’s all-time peak of 93,701.

These figures are on top of whatever amount the Divinity: Original Sin 2 releases on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch 2 have done since arriving in December 2025. Larian was truly ready for the oncoming flurry of interest.

Honestly, if I were unfamiliar with Larian's work or didn't really think it was for me, the Divinity reveal trailer would've grabbed my curiosity. I mean, it features human sacrifice, dark forces, and an orgy - it's hard not to at least have some questions.

Vincke also used his tweet to take him at his arch-nemesis, a woodland critter in Original Sin 2 he'd like to erase from history. "Wish I'd removed the squirrel in time," he finishes. Hey, if it ain't broken, don't fix it.

Baldur's Gate 3 and Divinity lead writer says AI-generated writing is a "3/10 at best" and "doesn't" actually improve game development

Larian Studios has been taking some heat of late due to the apparent use of generative AI in the conceptualization process of development. One of the leads on Baldur's Gate 3 and the upcoming new Divinity game took an opportunity to quell concerns, making it clear such tools aren’t being used for any actual scripting because, to be blunt, what they make is generally terrible.

Adam Smith, writing director at Larian, responded to a question on the subject during a Reddit AMA. "We don't have any text generation touching our dialogues, journal entries, or other writing in Divinity," he says, unequivocally dispelling the idea of the technology encroaching on actual creativity.

He goes further, responding to whether using generative text as a placeholder helps game production with a simple, "it doesn't," before expanding on Larian's process. "We had a limited group experimenting with tools to generate text, but the results hit a 3/10 at best and those tools are for research purposes, not for use in Divinity," Smith writes.

Comment from r/Games

"Even my worst first drafts - and there are a LOT of them - are at least a 4/10 (although Swen might disagree)," he continues, "and the amount of iteration required to get even individual lines to the quality we want is enormous."

There are a "great many eyes and hands" that touch any given line or piece of text before something ships, he says to finish. That's something which shouldn't be under-appreciated: large studios have layers of approval for each department. For a company like Larian, producing RPGs as deep as Baldur's Gate 3 and the Divinity series, no creative choice is an island, and utilizing ChatGPT or whatever derivatives simply can't substitute for actual collaboration.

Smith's other point stands, too. The slop this software produces is subpar to human hands in every meaningful way, and any feedback session would only make that even clearer. However the next Divinity stands up, it'll be due to the hard work of Larian's devs all the way around.

As Baldur's Gate 3 devs move onto Divinity, Larian lead says the writing process is to "encourage the chaos" and break situations "in every conceivable way"

For as much as is in Baldur's Gate 3 – and it's a massive game – there's plenty that hit the cutting room floor or simply feel by the wayside. Wyll, the beloved warlock, was a victim of the latter, as devs at Larian had much loftier goals for his storylines before life prevented them from coming to fruition.

Kevin VanOrd, a senior writer at Larian, reveals he wanted more for Wyll during a Reddit AMA, saying: ""I wish Wyll had gotten more content and a more fulfilling arc too." He explains: "A lot of decisions came later in development than was ideal – and there was a key situation near Baldur's Gate that I intended to heavily involve Wyll in (the Red War College) that got cut.

"That meant [going] back to the drawing board again," he continues. "We eventually tied him to Duke Ravengard and started to work on that element of his arc just in time for me to get unexpectedly ill. I was out of the office for quite a while, and again after the epilogue's release."

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VanOrd credits Swen Vincke, Larian founder and Baldur's Gate 3 director, for Ansur's lair, and says that limitations meant the team could only really manage to give Wyll one dungeon of his own, with a singular boss. There's a cutoff point where they have to write and develop the story points and encounters.

"Wyll's content is sparser than I'd have liked as a result. He's also split into two stories, really – the Mizora story and the Ravengard story, and that might have been a mistake in hindsight," VanOrd adds. "I also wish I could [have] given him a stronger endpoint – it always bugged me that he can end up just as he started, as the Blade of Frontiers, without any meaningful difference."

But there's still plenty to enjoy about Wyll, and VanOrd remains proud of "his sincerity, his good nature, and his eager heroism," while still wishing things were different. "I'm truly sorry I didn't give you more quality time with him," he finishes.

Baldur's Gate 3 director says Larian had "all the freedom we needed" to make the D&D RPG but adapting the tabletop format provided its own "limitations."

CEO of Larian Studios and director of Baldur's Gate 3 Swen Vincke claims that Wizards of the Coasts gave the team "all the freedom we needed" to develop a game based on the Dungeons & Dragons IP, but did feel some limitations when it came to adapting the tabletop game system for the video game format.

In a Reddit AMA that includes 11 lead developers from Larian, the team answers numerous questions about the studio's upcoming game Divinity. One of the questions comes from a user curious as to whether the developers were held back by Wizards of the Coast as the owner of the Dungeons & Dragons moniker, and if being Divinity's license owner will allow Larian to do anything differently.

However, Vincke claims that the team were completely free to use the Dungeons & Dragons IP exactly how they saw fit. "We had all the freedom we needed on BG3," Vincke says. While Wizards of the Coast gave the devs the freedom to create the game they wanted to, not everything went smoothly with the adaptation from tabletop to video game.

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"The game was based on 5e," Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition rule set, "which is a system that was made for tabletop, not for video games. Most of the limitations came from that," Vincke says. No one from the studio explains what these limitations are, but players in the comments believe they include the restricted level-ups.

With complete freedom over the upcoming game, Divinity, we wonder what Larian is cooking up for us.

Baldur's Gate 3 wins Steam's Labor of Love award following 2 years of updates and community support: "Pretty f***ing good way to start 2026."

More than two years after its initial release, Larian Studios' Baldur's Gate 3 has won Steam's 2025 Labor of Love award. The Dungeon and Dragons-style turn-based RPG is one of the most highly rated games of all time, and has sold more than 20 million copies as of last year.

Baldur's Gate 3 cleaned up at The Games Awards in 2023, but that wasn't the only year that it picked up a prestigious trophy at the show. In the years since, it has picked up Best Community Support at both The Game Awards 2024 and 2025.

Known for continued updates and the team's fantastic communication with the game's players, Baldur's Gate 3 continues to receive accolades. Most recently the fan-voted Labor of Love award, an accolade given to developers that "continue to nurture and support their creations" on Steam

Larian Studios' publishing director Michael Douse posts on Twitter thanking everyone for their votes and support. He writes, "Pretty fucking good way to start 2026. Thank you everyone!"

The win was not without controversy, with fans split on whether Baldur's Gate 3 really deserved the accolade, with many saying that No Man's Sky did far more in 2025. While players still love Baldur's Gate 3, they point out that Hello Games did more to support its game in 2025.

"I hate when people vote for things based on how much they like them rather than how much they deserve them," one user writes on the Baldur's Gate 3 subreddit. "BG3 is a great game, sure, but it received one final major update this (last) year. No Man's Sky received four and it's still going."

Baldur's Gate 3 director says "a lot has become lost in translation" since Divinity's announcement and the AI blowback that followed: "It would be irresponsible for us not to evaluate new technologies."

Baldur's Gate 3 director Swen Vincke says "a lot has become lost in translation" since Larian's announcement of Divinity and the intense AI backlash that followed comments made by Vincke seemingly in embrace of AI in game development.

When Divinity was announced at The Game Awards 2025, initial reactions ranged from intense anticipation, to disgust at some of the more explicit content, and confusion about whether the game will be a turn-based CRPG like the Original Sin games, or if it were an action-RPG like the Diablo-inspired early entries to the Divinity series. But, just a few days later, Vincke did a couple of interviews where he candidly explained how AI is helping accelerate Divinity's development. In short, you won't see any AI-generated content in the game, but AI is being used for placeholder text, concept art, and other tasks.

"It's been a week since we announced Divinity, our next RPG, and a lot has become lost in translation," Vincke wrote in a tweet seemingly referencing the whole AI controversy.

"Larian's DNA is agency. Everything we work towards is to the benefit of our teams, games, and players," Vincke added. "A better work day, and a better game. Our successes come from empowering people to work in their own way and bring the best out of their skill & craft, so that we can make the best RPGs we can possibly make.

"In that context, it would be irresponsible for us not to evaluate new technologies. However, our processes are always evolving, and where they are not efficient or fail to align with who we are, we will make changes."

If I'm reading this right, it sounds like Vincke is hinting at Larian potentially reconsidering its embrace of AI in the development of Divinity. Larian is one of the most beloved RPG developers of all time, and is usually pretty consistently on the right side of history – and even if its use of AI is entirely innocuous, it's a PR lose-lose.

We'll know more after the holiday break, as Vincke confirmed there will be an AMA "featuring our different departments" where you'll have the chance to ask anything you want about Divinity's development, presumably including questions about AI.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 lead says AI "may mean the demise of humanity" and the "end of most big publishers," but if "AI can help me make an epic game in a year with a smaller team like in the old days, I'm all for it"