Baldur's Gate 3 Releasing On Steam Early Access Later This Year
Baldur’s Gate 3 will be coming to Steam Early Access later this year, according to Wizards of the Coast’s parent company, Hasbro. Earlier this month, Google leaked a 2020 release date for Baldur’s Gate 3. Developer Larian Studios said that the announcement was a mistake, but didn’t explicitly rule out a 2020 launch for the game.
Larian, the studio behind the popular Divinity: Original Sin series, began teasing its new project last year before it officially revealed Baldur’s Gate 3 as part of a Google Stadia presentation in June. Not long after, Larian spilled more details during E3 2019, revealing that it will be based on Dungeons & Dungeons Fifth Edition, the current version of the long-running tabletop role-playing game. It will take place 100 years after the end of Baldur’s Gate 2, with the tabletop campaign Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus, released last September, serving as a prequel to fill in some of the gaps between the two games.
Now, it’s been revealed that players won’t have much longer to wait before getting their hands on Baldur’s Gate 3 for themselves. It was made clear from the beginning that Baldur’s Gate 3 wasn’t going to be exclusive to any console, despite being announced during a Google event, and it seems that PC players will be the first to play the game. At the recent New York Toy Fair, Hasbro announced that Baldur’s Gate 3 will be coming to Steam Early Access this year, according to DSO Gaming. Both Divinity: Original Sin and its sequel also launched in the Steam Early Access program before their official releases.
No Early Access launch date has been announced yet for Baldur’s Gate 3, but fans will get to at least see the game in action soon. Larian Studios recently announced that it will be showing the first gameplay of Baldur’s Gate 3 at PAX East on February 27, along with “a special guest.” The event will be livestreamed on YouTube for fans who can’t make it to the convention. Larian will be hosting a Q&A session at the same time, so a lot more details about Baldur’s Gate 3 could be revealed soon.
For anyone who’s been following Larian’s work, taking on the Baldur’s Gate series seems like a natural fit. The Divinity: Original Sin games are incredibly deep RPGs with a level of interaction and narrative complexity that earned them comparisons to Dungeons & Dragons well before the announcement of Baldur’s Gate 3. The developers will be under a lot more scrutiny from picky D&D fans this time around, but the upcoming gameplay reveal and Early Access launch will give them the chance to prove they’re doing right by the series.
Source: DSO Gaming, Larian Studios