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First Baldur’s Gate 3 patch fixes save issues by temporarily cutting a feature

By Tomas Franzese Published August 4, 2023

Larian Studios released the first hotfix patch for Baldur’s Gate 3 following its wildly successful launch on August 3. The port comes with plenty of crash and bug fixes, but the most notable of them is a change that prevents a glitch blocking players from saving the game. To fix this problem, Larian had to remove the game’s cross-save functionality, which won’t even be useful for another month.

Laezel in Baldur's Gate 3 — Larian Studios

As soon as Baldur’s Gate 3 launched yesterday, many players reported an issue that prevented them from being able to save their game. As Baldur’s Gate 3 is an RPG that can take over a hundred hours to complete, you can see why that would be an issue. Previously, Larian recommended players turn off cloud sync for the game on Steam to circumvent the issue, but it is now blaming Baldur’s Gate 3′s preemptive cloud-save functionality for these issues.

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The RPG will release on PS5 in September, but Larian already let players enable cross-save so they could seamlessly carry over their saves come September 6. A feature that isn’t even useful yet ended up hurting PC players’ experiences more than helping, so it’s been temporality cut.

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“We’ve been reading your reports on issues with saving your game, and have found a culprit — our cross-saves,” Larian explained in a Steam post about Baldur’s Gate 3 Hotfix #1. “Bearing in mind this will only be a useful feature come September 6 when the PlayStation 5 version launches (and beyond), we’ve decided to disable it for now to allow us to solve the issue in the interim. You shouldn’t notice anything in-game and Steam Cloud saves are unaffected by this change.”

Check out that full patch notes post for more details on the other crash and bug fixes Larian Studios made in this 210.7 MB hotfix. Baldur’s Gate 3 is available now on PC and launches on PS5 on September 6.

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As a Gaming Staff Writer at Digital Trends, Tomas Franzese reports on and reviews the latest releases and exciting…

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Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t getting DLC or a sequel from Larian, and that’s OK

Shadowheart post-launch outfit in Baldur's Gate 3.

Baldur's Gate 3 game director Swen Vincke shocked fans of the Dungeons & Dragons RPG when he revealed that the critically acclaimed game would not get any expansions and that Larian Studios would not go right into making Baldur's Gate 4. Considering how much of a runaway success Baldur's Gate 3 has been, it seemed like that would be the most logical continuation of things. Larian isn't the only studio to leave behind a wildly successful game either; Nintendo has confirmed The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom also won't get any expansions.

Those might seem like baffling decisions, both from a business perspective and from the point of view of an eager player who just wants more of a thing they love. But they become a lot more understandable when you learn to view these games as complete works, appreciate the post-launch support that has happened for a game like Baldur's Gate 3, and turn that excitement toward whatever is coming next from these developers.
A complete work
Vincke explained to IGN that Larian had actually started to do some preliminary work on Baldur's Gate 3 DLC but that the constraints of working within D&D 5th edition meant that work "wasn't really coming from the heart" and that the team's passion lied with two other projects Larian wanted to make. As a result, leadership at Larian made the decision not to work on a massive expansion or sequel to Baldur's Gate 3 for the time being, and Vincke claims the studio was "elated" by that decision. Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma offered a similar sentiment when he revealed Tears of the Kingdom wasn't getting DLC, explaining that "we feel like we have already fully explored and exhausted the gameplay possibilities in this world" and that "the next [Zelda] game will offer a completely new experience."

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All companions in Baldur’s Gate 3 and how to get them

Wyll with horns dancing.

There's a lot to see in Baldur's Gate 3, but you're not going to get far without a few good companions by your side. Thankfully, you'll stumble upon a wide assortment of NPCs that'd love nothing more than to accompany you on your journey. These friendly faces fill several different roles -- from mages and healers to archers and warriors, there's bound to be a companion that augments your playstyle.

Many of these companions also come with their own series of quests and unlockable skills, turning them into more than just faceless characters to help you in combat. In fact, you can spend hours unraveling their narratives, and depending on your actions, your companions might look very different at the end of Baldur's Gate 3 than when you first met them.

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The long, winding road to Baldur’s Gate 3 was paved with these Larian games

Divine Divinity (2002) gameplay

A career-crowning achievement as monumental as Baldur's Gate 3 doesn't come out of nowhere. From Divinity to Dungeons & Dragons, Larian Studios has long been one of the loudest advocates for rich storytelling and true, meaningful freedom in Western RPGs.

Larian Studios' story is a rags-to-riches tale about a group of passionate developers whose deep and diverse portfolio of games piled up for nearly three decades before Baldur's Gate 3 ever saw the light of day. Amid canceled projects, Larian narrowly skirted total bankruptcy. In order to survive, there are several points in its history when the independent studio experimented. There were dives into real-time strategy, educational games for the Belgian kids' TV station Ketnet, the Diablo-esque Divine Divinity, and Divinity 2: Ego Draconis, a third-person action RPG built on Bethesda’s Gamebryo engine.

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