Update: After the initial response to the Baldur’s Gate 3 trailer on the State of Play showcase, Larian Studios has shared a message on reddit. In short, they have explained that they are working on an Xbox Series X|S version, but aren’t ready to announce it quite yet.
You can read Larian Studios’ message from reddit below:
“Hey all,
Thanks for all the hype and enthusiasm following yesterday’s announcement that Baldur’s Gate 3 is coming to PS5 day and date with PC on August 31st!
Xbox players, we’ve seen your questions about if/when you can expect Baldur’s Gate 3 on Xbox. We’ve had an Xbox version of Baldur’s Gate 3 in the works for some time, but we have run into some technical issues – particularly with split-screen co-op. We are still working on an Xbox version of BG3, but we’re not yet confident enough to announce it. We don’t like announcing anything until we’re ready, because we don’t want to get peoples hopes up until we’re sure we can deliver.
There’s no platform exclusivity preventing us from releasing BG3 on Xbox day and date, should that be a technical possibility. If and when we do announce further platforms, we want to make sure each version lives up to our standards & expectations. Thanks for understanding!”
The original article is unedited below for the sake of clarity:
Baldur’s Gate 3 is a console exclusive for the PlayStation 5.
Sony unveiled the role playing game in their recent State of Play event. This reveal was significant because Baldur’s Gate 3 was seemingly going to stay a PC only game right until this announcement. For now, we don’t know if Baldur’s Gate 3 will also make its way to other platforms, such as Xbox or the Nintendo Switch.
Now, for those who don’t know, Baldur’s Gate 3 is actually a part of the Dungeons and Dragons’ license. As opposed to the live streaming version of Dungeons and Dragons, which is a virtual recreation of the board game pen and paper experience, Baldur’s Gate 3 is an adaptation, or translation, of that experience, in the form of a turn based RPG.
Although it doesn’t follow of Dungeons and Dragons piece by piece, Larian Games has resolved to make a version of the world that feels real to that experience. They have announced that Baldur’s Gate 3 will be following the latest Dungeons and Dragons rulebook, and that includes adding the latest classes in an upcoming update.
For now, we do have quite a lot to look forward to, as Baldur’s Gate 3 is set 100 years after Baldur’s Gate 2, leaving the events of that game behind as your Fae’run faces a new threat: the illithids, or as they are most commonly known, the mind flayers.
The mind flayers are a classic stock Dungeons and Dragons enemy, essentially mental vampires. With their squid heads and human bodies, they are certainly evocative of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu, but instead of imagining a giant flying spaghetti monster, think of an army of human sizes squid men, eating humans or taking control of them to do violence unto others.
We won’t go through the whole history of it here, but since Bioware was forced to cancel Baldur’s Gate 3: The Black Hound, fans had been chasing a sequel and continuation of the series for decades. It had become a highly sought after IP, particularly for developers who were themselves part of the original Bioware team that made the Baldur’s Gate games, like InXile and Obsidian. However, those studios would eventually give way to Larian Studios, a new studio that made their name in the same genre with their own original Divinity: Original Sin video games.
Baldur’s Gate 3 will be coming to PlayStation 5 and PC, via Steam, Epic Games Store, and GOG. It releases on August 31, 2023. You can watch the trailer below.
