The long-awaited Baldur’s Gate sequel has come out of early access this month, and PC gamers are foaming at the mouth for it. PC gaming has exploded, and gamers are having tons of fun, and for good reason.
Unfortunately for console players, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S versions are still a fair bit off. Baldur’s Gate 3 has completely captivated the attention of PC players, and based on Steam Charts, has had more than 600,000 concurrent players on just that version. This game will sell millions more when it finally makes the jump to consoles. You can also get Baldur’s Gate 3 on GOG if you want to avoid DRM. OK, enough gushing, back to the point. The game is popular, but that has people asking a lot of questions about the various parts of the game.
There’s one question I’m seeing that’s a bit more surprising, and it has a basic answer. A lot of people are asking what engine this game runs now.
What Engine Does Baldur’s Gate 3 Run On?
The Baldur’s Gate 3 engine is the 4.0 Divinity engine.
If that sounds familiar, it should. Larian used a previous version of the same engine for their last big CRPG, Divinity: Original Sin 2. That game had pretty similar, and fairly impressive, graphics. Based on that, it’s no surprise Larian rehashed the software suite for their huge AAA release.
Game engines are a complicated bit of technology, and they can absolutely make or break a game. With the Baldur’s Gate 3 engine, there seems to be a lot less issues with bugs and other issues. Hopefully that means there’s not a ton of bug fixes going to be need to patch things lingering from early access.
The BG3 system requirements are pretty forgiving for a modern PC game with as pretty of graphics as this game has. There is another question that people have related to the engine, and that’s what graphics API to use. However, Baldur’s Gate 3 supports Vulkan, so that is an option. Ultimately, you can use DirectX 11 or Vulkan if you wish. You would likely have to test things out on your rig, as both are pretty comparable in performance. Without getting into the weeds of which API you should use, just use the most recent one that your GPU supports. If you have a recent AMD GPU, Vulkan may work better.
