Christmas music as a genre is rife with earworms (I’ve got chuffing Slade stuck in my own head right now) but the makers of Baldur’s Gate 3 have gone one step further with Christmas brainworms. Larian Studios today dropped the surprise Christmas present of Tadpole For You, Tadpole For Me – a festive song about being infested by Mind Flayer parasites. And yes, the devs sing it themselves. After all, iiiiiiiiiiiiitt’s Christmaaaaas. Ah god damn it.

(more…)

Baldur’s Gate 3

is continuing along its merry way through early access with patch three called “Inspiration, Freedom & Pacifism” that will address feedback from players like an overabundance of fire and nitpicky companions. This is the first of the early access patches that will break your save compatibility after you update, as Larian have warned. Here’s what’s new and changed in patch three.

(more…)

A new early access update is headed to Baldur’s Gate 3 soon, and be warned: it will break save file compatibility, requiring players to start a new save to play with the patch. You will be able to revert to the previous version of the game to continue an existing save, mind, just without any of the newness. Yeah it’s a hassle but it’s to be expected when playing an unfinished game in early access, really.

(more…)

No matter how intelligent a game’s AI is, how immersive the story turns out to be, or how believable the characters are, it can never actually simulate the thing that makes Dungeons & Dragons a great game: human shenanigans.

I’ve adored my time with (more…)

I love a good game with romanceable companions. I have not yet had the pleasure of playing Larian’s Baldur’s Gate 3 to flirt with it’s eligible characters, but thanks to yesterday’s update, I know exactly who you’re all falling for. Turns out 33% of players have romanced Gale, while 31% have taken more of a liking to Shadowheart.

Sure, Larian mentioned a load of the fixes in the latest patch, too, but I think we need to talk about your taste in fictional lovers.

(more…)

A little while back I restarted Baldur’s Gate III to play through as the most interesting person I could make in the current character creator. Owing to several comments misunderstanding a cheap joke I made in an image caption, this character is now known as Wonderwall, although technically the game thinks their name is Tav.

Despite my misgivings about the chaotic and impractical nature of their build, ol’ DoubleDoubleyou and crew are actually going okay, mainly because all of the NPCs are competent at their roles, and Wonderwall is a decent archer so they can stand at the back and not get in anyone’s way. But as well as going okay, their adventure is also going very slowly, and I am finding this an ideal turn of events.

(more…)

Comb your hair, spray that perfume and suit up for a night of high culture, readers – the third edition of the Game Music Festival is underway. Starting last night, you can already tune into a full evening of orchestral rearrangement of scores from Bastion, Transistor, Pyre and Hades, with Larian Studios picking up the mic tonight for a more high-fantasy swing at the concert scene.

(more…)

7 minutes! It’d take me thrice as long just to get through character creation, at least. Baldur’s Gate 3 may only offer a portion of the final planned experience right now, but even that lengthy chunk has been boiled down to a mere 7 minutes by speedrunner Cary “Professor Palmer” Palmer, who’s figured out a way to quite literally jump through the entire thing in the blink of an eye.

(more…)

The plan has always been for Baldur’s Gate 3 players to leave behind their old saves when the RPG leaves early access, but it wasn’t meant to happen so soon. Larian Studios released the first official patch-patch last night, following a string of wee hotfix patches, and found it accidentally stopped some players from accessing their save games. So they rolled back the patch, reverted the game to its previous version, and say they’ll launch the update again when it works properly.

Larian also shared some of their data on where players are dying, for those who enjoy looking at heatmaps and finding out “oh thank god it’s not just me hating that spot”.

(more…)

I’m told today is Prime Day, which I can only imagine is a day wizards travel from far and wide to pay tribute to the Prime Sorcerer. Among them are Wizards Of The Coast, who come to the court of Mammon with [cms-block] deals on tabletop RPGs and Magic cards. But wait, as if by magic, these are connected to video games! You’ll find Descent Into Avernus, the Dungeons & Dragons campaign which serves as a prequel to Baldur’s Gate 3, as well as some Magic cardboard decks that are also Magic: The Gathering Arena digital decks.

(more…)