Baldur’s Gate 3 finally being announced, and coming soon, has a lot of fans going nuts, and for good reason. The legendary CRPG franchise is about to get a new lease on life from Larian Studios, and they’re taking it very seriously. So seriously in fact that they pushed the game back to make sure it was of a decent quality. The original debut of Baldur’s Gate 3’s early access was initially supposed to happen last month in August. It has now been pushed to around September 30.
And as for price, it’s kind of surprising that it will come out at such a high price. Baldur’s Gate 3’s early access will cost $59.99. That means that players will essentially be paying full price for the unfinished game. It does kind of put a bit of sticker shock on the news doesn’t it? So why is this the case?
And it turns out that the price for the period of Baldur’s Gate 3 early access will be the same as on the full launch. So expect to pay the full $60 USD to get access during this period. And yes, there will be more content added over time as the game nears release. So if you’re not into paying full price for what is essentially a beta, you might want to skip this.
If you’re inclined to stomach the inevitable bugs and problems, there’s one lingering question, what do you get for that price of admission?
The game will feature about 25 hours worth of content for this price. That’s according to Sven Vincke, founder of Larian Studios, who spoke about the early access phase during a recent Livestream promoting the game.
So why make it full price? Simple, it took a lot of time and money to make. There’s a definite fan incentive there to support the team at Larian. But when you look at the herculean task of making this game, the scope of the project can be pretty insane. There are countless missions, NPCs, towns and other locales that needed modeling, coding and other work. Players have to have a world to explore after all. The game also needs optimization and voice work, as well as a host of other content added over time. These kinds of games aren’t cobbled together overnight.
All this time would normally be monetized after release, but with Early Access, it’s much more immediate. Think about all the bug fixes and QA work that goes into any game, now imagine doing that across a world with dozens of characters, endless dialogue trees and who knows how many models. The sheer volume of work that went into Baldur’s Gate 3 deserves some early rewards, and Baldur’s Gate 3 early access may be the ticket to it.
There’s so much to this game for genre fans to enjoy as well. With a rich class system players will be able to craft various unique playstyles that have sword and sorcery aplenty. The CRPG trends are alive and well over at Larian.
And with all of that comes a lot of work testing and fixing it. So in short, the more people pump into Baldur’s Gate 3 early access, the more they should get out of it.
