Baldur’s Gate III is prepared to receive its first patch and by the looks of it, it seems like a huge one. Larian Studios CEO Swen Vincke confirmed a roadmap on Twitter, promising to fix issues and make relevant tweaks to ability balances, based on user suggestions. First up, is hotfix #4, which would make some emergency fixes to crashes and progressions blocks, in addition to any bugs that hinder the general interface. That will be followed by the massive patch, boasting over 1,000 fixes, followed by patch 2, which will ‘incorporate some requests.’ It’s unclear what those requests could be, but we already know that the team is planning an update that would let players change their character’s appearance mid-game.
That claim comes from Michael Douse, Director of Publishing, Larian Studios, who responded to a fan’s tweet requesting the ability to change their look in the game. Once you lock in a suited appearance at the start of your Baldur’s Gate 3 journey, the game simply doesn’t let you change it — forcing you to stick with whatever tattoos, hairstyle, or makeup you chose, leading up to the end game. This does not seem to be the case with character classes, which you can respec by simply interacting with the NPC Withers at your campsite in exchange for 100 gold pieces. It’s a wild anomaly for a role-playing game, considering how much customisation is present in other aspects of the game — some even tied to story elements. I’m going to assume that this has to do with hard coding one’s appearance to work flawlessly with all cutscenes from the moment they were created.
We’re all very enthused by your feedback. It’s very rewarding. Our focus now is fixing any issues you report, but we are listening to suggestions. Current roadmap: a) Hotfix 4, b) Patch 1 (+1000 fixes and tweaks), c) Patch 2. The latter will already incorporate some requests.
— Swen Vincke @where? (@LarAtLarian) August 15, 2023
Another reason I could think of why a person would want to change their appearance has to do with its lighting effects, where any punkish colours such as teal or pink might look fine in the character creation screen, but once they’re set against the game’s environment, it ends up looking way too dull or bright. When Larian does implement the update in the future, I feel like there are more creative ways to do it. For instance, instead of opening a menu or interacting with an NPC, we can walk over to the rogue Astarion’s tent and use his mirror to change our appearance — akin to the mirror at the Roundtable Hold in Elden Ring. I think it would also be great if there are no limits to how often you can change your looks or if it doesn’t ask for any in-game currency or consumables for it.
The newest hotfix (#3) makes it so that your dog Scratch now finds digging spots by himself, in addition to resolving several bugs in Act 3, some of which prevented game completion. Since its launch, earlier this month, Baldur’s Gate 3 has become a quick success, garnering 875,343 peak concurrent players on Steam, cementing its position as the ninth-highest-ranking PC game, sitting right beneath Hogwarts Legacy. In an interview, Larian boss Svencke claimed that since the RPG was already playable in early access for three years, he believed that the game had already peaked. For this reason, he was expecting the full launch to break only 100,000 players, only to be surprised with eight times the amount.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is out now on PC. The PS5 version releases September 6, while the Xbox platforms might not see a release before 2024.
