If you’re finding that your Baldur’s Gate 3 is slowing down when you reach Act 3, without any obvious cause, then you’re not alone; it’s an issue that has been plaguing players for some time now. Thankfully, at long last, Larian Studios is confident that it has a fix for this issue – which, to be fair, it caused in the previous update – and the new Baldur’s Gate 3 patch (Patch #5) will eliminate the issue entirely.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is easily one of the best RPG games to come out this year, but Larian Studios’ latest release is far from perfect; one thing that has been giving PS5 players grief in recent weeks is an unusual issue where Baldur’s Gate 3 just sort of slows down when you reach Act 3. Without an obvious cause that players can avoid, it’s been a performance issue that players have just had to suffer with for a while now. Thankfully, though, Larian has identified that a fix from Patch #4 (which was released almost a month ago now) was actually the reason to blame for this performance issue and is making amends with Patch #5 – which is due at some point before December 4.
As per this IGN report on the issue itself, Larian explains that “a fix that would prevent the Scrying Eyes in Moonrise Tower from immediately calling the guards on you” when you were doing something you shouldn’t “had the unintended consequence of causing unnoticed thefts and acts of vandalism” – and generally all other types of crimes – “to remian stuck forever within the ‘did anyone see me’ pipeline”. We’re not sure if that’s the technical term for the process or not, but it’s an issue that unintentionally caused Baldur’s Gate 3 to horde information unnecessarily and this eventually affected the RPG’s performance.
What does this actually mean, in layman’s terms, though? Well, it means Baldur’s Gate 3 wasn’t forgetting about all the minor crimes you committed without being seen. So, by the time players were reaching Act 3, the game was still trying to work out if players had been spotted or not for any number of crimes at once, bogging it down and slowing the whole experience.
Yeah, we know – it’s actually quite funny when you think about it. Larian explains that, in real world terms, it’s like your dungeon master constantly thinking about the crimes you’re committing throughout your Dungeons and Dragons session “without ever moving on or verbalising them – mulling on [the crimes] ad infinitum”. We can certainly see why that would start slowing things down, both in reality and virtually in Baldur’s Gate 3.
Thankfully, however, as this official social media post states, Larian Studios is aiming to release Patch #5 this week – an update which fixes the “eternally-active acts of theft and violence causing slowdowns”. Oh, and it’s also going to fix some issues with Astarion’s kisses, which is far from a bad thing.
While we don’t know any more details about this update just yet, Larian Studios is promising big things and Baldur’s Gate 3 players can rest assured knowing that regular service should resume soon.
If you’re an Xbox player still waiting on the Baldur’s Gate 3 Xbox release date to arrive, this is also good news – even though it might not seem like it. Larian Studios’ director of publishing Michael Douse confrims that the Xbox version of Baldur’s Gate 3 will actually launch with Patch #5 in December 2023. So, you shouldn’t have to deal with it at all, which is nice.
That means, while you’re not worrying about that, you can spend time reading up on all the best Baldur’s Gate 3 spells available and the best Baldur’s Gate 3 class to pick when you get your hands on the game. If you’re still waiting to try Larian Studios’ RPG, you can actually play around 2% of the game thanks to this new Baldur’s Gate 3 PS Plus trial – which isn’t a lot, we know, but it’s better than nothing.