Baldur's Gate 3 Patch 2 will improve Karlach's ending and adjust performance, co-op kicking teased

It's been roughly a month since Baldur's Gate 3 launch and the game has made quite a splash. Most players and our official review recognized its grand sense of depth and reactivity, capturing some of the best aspects of classical CRPGs and the tabletop RPG experience. Players also acknowledged quite a few rough spots, particularly in the late game and issues having to do with technical hiccups and performance shortfalls. Developer Larian Studios got on the path to addressing those sticking points with its recently released Baldur's Gate Patch 1, which contained over a thousand miscellaneous fixes. They're not done yet, though, and the latest Community Update post previews more to come in Patch 2, which is in development and due out "soon."

The Baldur's Gate 3 Community Update #24 blog post from Larian laid out a look at the game's future in the short and medium term, as the team gets to addressing not just bug fixes but also complaints about the general experience of play, covering issues ranging from performance on various PCs, late-game bugs (particularly in Act 3), and allegations of "cut content" and player-spread insinuations resulting from datamining.

Larian said that it plans for Patch 2 to bring major performance improvements across the entire game, but that the team is also targeting improvements for Act 3 specifically. These improvements will use new techniques that will be worked on throughout September 2023, so they may be deployed as a hotfix if they can't accompany Patch 2 itself. Patch 2 will also bring more major bug fixes, including some that players have alleged are "cut content".

Addressing the issue of "cut content", Larian acknowledged that it's "okay" to datamine the game looking for insights, but clarified that not everything players might find is "cut content". Larian likened the situation using an analogy to a "giant box of Lego," saying that "not every block" is needed "to create the experience we ultimately envisioned and intended over years of iteration."

Additionally, Larian also said that some items alleged to be "cut content" were actually simply the results of bugs affecting the game. In one cast, reactions and lines of dialog from the character Minthara were accidentally suppressed in the final release, leading some players who discovered the content to speculate that the lines had been deliberately removed. They were not. 

One complaint the team is addressing directly is about the epilogue scenes for each character at the end of the game. During Baldur's Gate 3's development, the team worried that the ending cinematics were growing too long and distracting, so it trimmed the epilogues somewhat. As it turns out, players didn't agree, and many complained that they seemed too curt after the detailed treatment characters got during the game proper. From Patch 2, Larian will begin expanding the epilogue scenes, starting with Karlach's epilogue. Larian said that the revised epilogue is "fiery, poignant and gives [Karlach] the ending she deserves."

Regarding future additions and patches, Larian reiterated that it is listening to feedback and monitoring for more bugs to address as they appear. It closed out the Community Update by teasing a new addition planned to allow players to remove co-op party members who've gone offline and risk styming a player's solo progress. 

They call it "Withers' Wardrobe of Wayward Friends", and it takes the form of a special closet that allows players to "store" co-op party members so that they can continue their Baldur's Gate 3 campaign solo, retrieving them when the co-op player in question returns.

Baldur's Gate 3 is available on PC. It'll launch on PS5 on September 6, 2023, and on Xbox Series X|S within 2023. Check out our full slate of guides for the game, including build guides, character guides, and content-specific hints and tips.