Larian Studios launched the extremely long-awaited third video game in the Baldur's Gate series last week on PC. The follow-up to BioWare's Baldur's Gate (1998) and Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn (2000), the game is another fantasy roleplaying epic drawing on Dungeons & Dragons rules, with the player taking control of a motley crew and setting out to save the world, or at least to start with, their skulls.
The game had a lengthy three-year gestation period in Early Access, during which time over two and a half million people played the game and Larian received extensive feedback on how to improve balancing, combat, classes and characters.
The extensive Early Access period and pre-release hype seems to have paid off. In the four days since release, the game has peaked at just under 815,000 concurrent players, making it the ninth-most-played game in Steam's history. Larian have not disclosed how many additional sales were notched up in the release period, but the game has sat at the top of Steam's sales charts for a considerable chunk of that time. The game has likewise been the biggest-selling title on GoG for the past week or so.
Baldur's Gate 3's sales are restricted to the PC format only for the time being. The game will launch on PlayStation 5 on 5 September and an Xbox release is planned for later, although Larian have encountered technical difficulties in getting the game to run well on the lower-specced Xbox Series S console. They hope to resolve the problem soon.
For myself, I'm a dozen hours into the game and so far it's been a satisfying fantasy adventure. It may be some considerable time before a review, however. This is a very, very big game.
No comments:
Post a Comment