Back in June Larian Studios CEO Swen Vincke announced that a Baldur’s Gate 3 Early Access period was coming. it appears that those plans have now been shifted around a bit. The planned period will still happen, just not this month as originally announced.
The delay was announced after fans had become very excited about the prospect of getting to help test the game in its early stages. The planned Early Access period has now been shelved. The tweet says that the game is still “right around the corner.” This implies that the August 18 “Panel from Hell” should have some good news for fans. That panel will be hosted as a Q&A and a discussion about the future of the game on August 18 at 1:00 PM ET.
The delay does suck, especially if you were looking forward to getting to play the Baldur’s Gate 3 Early Access release. These things happen, and with ongoing COVID-19 plaguing the world, it’s pretty understandable that the team would need more time to get things in a decent state. If Larian were to release an extremely broken or buggy test build, it would just anger more fans than an outright delay.
The reveal of this new sequel to fans all over the globe was seen as a return to a golden age of CRPGs. The franchise this new game is latching on to is a classic for many reasons, and it helped launch a whole new breed of RPGs into a new level of prominence. The release of Baldur’s Gate 3 needs to live up to that legacy. It’s going to be hard to satisfy the nostalgia, but the game is in good hands.
And judging from what we’ve seen so far, things are looking up. Taking the extra time to tune the combat, balance gameplay elements, and just make the game more fun can’t hurt. The improvements being made to the genre through this sequel, which should make it more accessible to new players, should be well worth the extra wait.
The reveal of some fresh gameplay this year helped stoke the fires of hype for the game as well. You can check out that gameplay in the preview video down below, it’s very cool indeed.
