Larian has released Baldur’s Gate 3’s hotly anticipated Patch 5, which adds loads of new content to the sprawling Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game.
Patch 5 fixes slowdown issues caused by Patch 4, adds a brand-new epilogue providing closure to each player’s journey, and even new game modes.
The new playable epilogue gameplay, accessible to all players loading the game prior to the final fight, takes place before the credits. Players find themselves in camp, six months after the events of Baldur’s Gate 3’s story, where they “meet new friends and old, taking all the time they need to say their final goodbyes to the party.”
Larian called this epilogue a “final goodbye”. “For the writers of Larian, this ‘final goodbye’ has been some of the most complex writing in the game so far, as it takes advantage of the game’s reactivity across the entire adventure,” the developer said. “A gigantic tree of permutations defines the content, with new writing (3,589 lines to be exact), cinematics, and even characters joining the get-together at camp, organized by Withers.”
Elsewhere, Patch 5 adds two new game modes: Honour Mode and Custom Mode. Honour Mode makes the game more difficult in and out of combat and introduces over 30 new tweaks to all of the game’s boss fights, with a new Legendary Action system designed to catch players off-guard and increase the challenge. Now bosses can perform new actions, adding twists and turns to all major fights throughout the game, Larian said.
Inspiration points become more valuable in Honour Mode, Larian explained, because loading previous games – or ‘save scumming’ – is disabled, meaning players need to keep count. Some of the more powerful ‘unintended exploits’ have been removed for players who embark on an Honour Mode adventure, though have been kept open for players to exploit in other difficulty settings. When a player dies, they will be presented with statistics of their journey, including how long and how far they survived for. Should players choose, they can continue their adventure, which will then disable Honour mode. Players who do manage to complete the entire game with Honour Mode enabled (without dying) will be awarded the coveted Golden D20.
Custom Mode, on the other hand, lets players pick and choose a type of experience best for them. Options include the ability to hide the required roll to succeed dice checks, which gives a more realistic D&D experience, as well as the ability to hide enemy HP in battle, again more closely simulating the tabletop style. Other options include short rests fully healing the party, disabling death-saving throws, and hiding failed perception checks, which means you’ll never know there was even a roll to begin with.
Patch 5 also improves inventory access, letting players manage the inventory of all companions from one single UI, regardless of whether or not they’re currently in your party. Larian also mentioned performance improvements engineered as a consequence of the Xbox version of Baldur’s Gate 3, which benefits all platforms.
Patch 5 weighs in at 30GB, but needs 130GB of free space to install. Larian suggested those without the space to install the update uninstall Baldur’s Gate 3 and then re-download the patched version.
Larian is currently on a victory lap following the breakout success of Baldur’s Gate 3, with seven wins at the recent Golden Joysticks and eight nominations at the upcoming Game Awards. Larian is set to announce Baldur’s Gate 3’s long-awaited Xbox release date at the awards show on December 7, and has even started to tease its “next big game”.
Baldur’s Gate 3, of course, has been a massive commercial and critical success since its official release on PC in August. We gave it a 10/10, praising its “crunchy, tactical RPG combat, a memorable story with complex characters, highly polished cinematic presentation, and a world that always rewards exploration and creativity.”
Source: IGN
