Almost a month has gone by since the last colossal Baldur’s Gate 3 patch was dropped by developers Larian Studios and players can expect to see the next significant update roll out sometime this week. Patch 5 aims to squash as many of the issues brought up by Patch 4 as possible, amid increasing reports of technical issues and slowdown (especially throughout the third act) that have begun to pop up after said prior update.
In a statement to IGN, an explanation for the issues was given by the team at Larian. Turns out “unnoticed thefts and acts of vandalism” were the culprits all along, with the game refusing to forget the incidents had occurred, thus tanking the performance as a result.
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Larian Studios talked about the various fixes and changes players can expect in the new update as well as the issues initially brought up by the last patch:
“In Patch 4 we introduced a fix that would prevent the Scrying Eyes in Moonrise Towers from immediately calling the guards on you when stealing, even if you were sneaking, or invisible for example. This fix had the unintended consequence of causing unnoticed thefts and acts of vandalism to remain stuck forever within the ‘did anyone see me’ pipeline, rather than timing out and moving on, as is intended. Essentially, your dungeon master — in a real-world sense — constantly thinks about the acts of theft and violence the player keeps doing, without ever moving on or verbalising them. Mulling on it ad infinitum.”
Larian continued in the statement:
“These unnoticed and eternally-active acts of theft and violence eventually bogged down the game. The more a player commits those acts, the more the game is trying to keep that all up to date and in memory, and so the more slowdowns start happening. Essentially, the dungeon master becomes unable to operate. By Act 3 this caused slowdown issues, which after some sleuthing we’re extremely happy to say we’ve solved in Patch 5, which is in testing and scheduled to release this week.”
Baldur’s Gate 3 was finally released on PC earlier this year in August after a lengthy early access period, followed by the PS5 version in early September, to universal praise – and has been the recipient of multiple accolades, including snagging seven victories at the Golden Joystick Awards. The title is currently sitting pretty with eight nominations (including Game of the Year and Best Narrative) for The Game Awards, tied with Alan Wake 2.
Source: IGN
Article written by Ryan Pretorius