Baldur's Gate III is prepared to receive its first patch and by the looks of it, it seems like a huge one. Larian Studios CEO Swen Vincke confirmed a roap on Twitter, promising to fix issues and make relevant tweaks to ability balances, based on suggestions. First up, is hotfix #4, which would make some emergency fixes to crashes and progressions blocks, in addition to any bugs that hinder the general interface. That will be followed by the massive patch, boasting over 1,000 fixes, followed by patch 2, which will ‘incorporate some requests.' It's unclear what those requests could be, but we already know that the team is planning an update that would let players change their character's appearance mid-game.
That claim comes from Michael Douse, Director of Publishing, Baldur's Gate 3 journey, the game simply doesn't let you change it — forcing you to stick with whatever tattoos, hairstyle, or makeup you chose, leading up to the end game. This does not seem to be the case with character classes, which you can respec by simply interacting with the NPC Withers at your campsite in exchange for 100 gold pieces. It's a wild anomaly for a role-playing game, considering how much customisation is present in other aspects of the game — some even tied to story elements. I'm going to assume that this has to do with hard coding one's appearance to work flawlessly with all cutscenes from the moment they were created.
Another reason I could think of why a person would want to change their appearance has to do with its lighting effects, where any punkish colours such as teal or pink might look fine in the character creation screen, but once they're set against the game's environment, it ends up looking way too dull or bright. When Larian does implement the update in the future, I feel like there are more creative ways to do it. For instance, instead of opening a menu or interacting with an NPC, we can walk over to the rogue Astarion's tent and use his mirror to change our appearance — akin to the mirror at the Roundtable Hold in Elden Ring. I think it would also be great if there are no limits to how often you can change your looks or if it doesn't ask for any in-game currency or consumables for it.
The Hogwarts Legacy. In an interview, Larian boss Svencke claimed that since the RPG was already playable in early access for three years, he believed that the game had already peaked. For this reason, he was expecting the full launch to break only 100,000 players, only to be surprised with eight times the amount.
Baldur's Gate 3 is out now on PC. The before 2024.