Baldur’s Gate 3 really is an astonishing game—and I don’t just mean in the sense that it’s quite good (it is). Rather, it’s astonishing because of its sheer longevity. Traditionally-speaking, single player RPGs have their moment in the sun, sure. But they usually only stay there for a handful of months, after which their player bases understandably finish them, then go off to do something else with their hard-earned gamer time.
This game, however, has defied most expectations. Per Larian’s own publishing head, it had more daily users in 2024 than 2023, its release year. Head on over to SteamDB, and you’ll notice it’s not dipped significantly below 100,000 daily concurrents in 2024—only really hitting the 80,000 mark now that we’re close to Santa doling out gifts. Those are successful numbers for your average midweight live service game, let alone in a genre that’s—y’know, designed to end. You can’t play RPGs forever, but BG3 fans have certainly tried.
In this article, I am going to—through the lens of someone that’s been reporting on this thing for a year and a half—try to examine the chemical X that’s kept this game healthy and doing laps around its competition. Or, well, chemicals X, Y, and Z. Because it turns out that much of Larian’s success can be credited to the studio firing on all cylinders.
Pitch-perfect patches
Baldur’s Gate 3 didn’t necessarily need the post-launch support it’s gotten—but boy howdy is it a good thing it received it. While its first half a year brought a bunch of improvements, I’m going to be focusing on the patches from 2024… by starting off with a patch that appeared in 2023. Look, it was November, that counts.
Patch 5, which dropped November 30, truly feels like the starting gun for BG3’s success in 2024. Its two mainline features, a new epilogue and a permadeath Honour Mode difficulty, were a double whammy of incentives to get players signing up for a second go on Swen Vincke’s wild ride.
The epilogue—which sees you having a party with Withers and all your old mates (or none, if you merked them all)—was sorely needed. While the game’s original ending was never strictly bad, it was a speedy wrap on an otherwise heartfelt and well-written journey. Throwing an epilogue in there likely got a ton of people to reinstall, boot up their old save, and then go: “Well, I’ve never tried an evil playthrough, I wonder how this’ll change things?”
Conversely, the Honour Mode difficulty was an open challenge to veteran TTRPG freaks and CRPG lovers alike. New legendary actions for most bosses meant that you weren’t just seeing if you could beat it without beefing it—you actually had surprises in store to react to. Meanwhile, the option to keep your save alive by simply converting a failed Honour Mode run into a normal save (with less bragging rights) meant players were more liable to give it an honest try.
I probably wasn’t going to pick up Baldur’s Gate 3 again, but Honour Mode dragged me back in for a handful of failed attempts before I finally stuck the landing with my bard, and then an evil attempt, which made it to Act 3 before I got a bit sad and stopped.
Patch 5 set the game up for success, then, before Patch 6 and Patch 7 grabbed the baton and kept running. Patch 6 added more legendary actions to Honour Mode and custom kiss animations to romances (both equally enticing reasons to have another bash). But Patch 7 was really the one to set Baldur’s Gate 3 up for long-term popularity, adding a mod browser to the game as well as a construction toolkit. Oh, and evil endings, lest we forget the horrors.
Mind, there was a bit of controversy with that last one. Namely, the modding community, who had already been kicking about and fiddling with the game a whole ton, grew a little rowdy when Larian’s updates kept (understandably) busting up their stuff. But the patch itself seems to, at least from my viewpoint, redirected the energy of that furor into enthusiasm.
If that wasn’t enough, Larian made a fool out of me for taking them at their word and, deciding Patch 7 wasn’t their final major update after all, announced Patch 8. That’ll be arriving in early 2025, throwing 12 new subclasses and a photo mode at the thing, because why not.
The sheer haul on Larian’s part has been nothing short of colossal, especially considering these are all free additions. The studio’s seen riproaring success from the game, so I don’t doubt it had the money to spend, but still. Baldur’s Gate 3, and its subsequent patches, have seen Larian at the absolute apex of its game.
Mischief and pingu posting
Baldur’s Gate 3’s enduring spot in the cultural consciousness has been partly down to Larian… well, continuing to be nominated for and winning heaps of awards. But I think it’s also commendable how the studio handled its online presence with scarcely a controversy in sight—words I’m hoping age well in the years to come.
In a year with harrowing layoffs and studio closures, big-name acquisitions that led to industry fallouts, and a trifecta of live service games falling short, Larian has been taking its victory lap with relative grace. Speaking out against said layoffs as they were happening, for one, but also continuing to do talks about their successes, dancing gracefully between accolades—even if Swen Vincke feels like they’re maybe suffering under the weight of all their trophies, at this point. Please give the man a break.
As a result of its success, Larian has swelled into the first real AAA-sized indie developer in terms of scope, influence, and power. While, yes, Tencent does have a 30% “preference” share in the company, that share’s given without any voting power in regards to Larian’s decision making. The company’s being piloted exclusively by Vincke and the hundreds-strong, global studio he’s amassed.
And yet, Larian’s managed to keep its public face relatively earnest and straightforward, despite being ‘one of the big boys’ in terms of mass and ambition. While, yes, the studio’s sometimes taunted us with pingu, it’s also been remarkably transparent about the development process, even when having to swat away rumours.
I’m not saying Larian’s some big, innocent, can-do-no-harm golden child of the industry—you should never make the mistake of treating a company like it’s a living, breathing person you can put trust in. Capital rules all, and it’ll probably come for Larian Studios too one day, sure as the heat death of the universe. But for the time being, the usual slings and arrows of an unkind society have clanged off with nary a scratch.
Not to mention the fact that Larian could’ve signed on for Baldur’s Gate 4, or oodles of expansions. Yet it decided to walk away from both simply because its development team just wasn’t feeling it. Honestly? More power to ’em. Especially with how weird Wizards of the Coast has gotten about the whole franchising thing. As it stands, Larian’s a studio that does what it wants and does it well, and that’s honestly refreshing in our shareholder-saturated market of big spender flops.
Design built to last
I spaketh a bit of an untruth in my opening paragraphs: yes, Baldur’s Gate 3 is a single-player RPG. And yes, these aren’t games designed to be held onto for this long. But it’s also a special summer child in that regard, too—every iota of design, from Astarion’s silvery locks to Raphael’s tunes, is built to be experienced at least a few times.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is stacked with hidden interactions and dialogues for just about anything, like the Dark Urge getting dunked on by a banker for forgetting to pay the taxes on their evil inheritance. Or a specific gang of kobolds that only shows up if you dropped an important quest item in an underwater lair before blowing it up, or a whole animated ending that only occurs if you’re a specific character who made a set of bad choices.
Even if we’re talking datamining or edge-cases, looking for those is its own treasure hunt. There are a ton of hidden scenes tucked between the files. Even when the game finally buckles under its own weight and breaks, it’s somehow still entertaining. Baldur’s Gate 3 is a labyrinthine maze of cause and effect, and the desire to pick such a thing apart has kept it active for far longer than its contemporaries.
Then there are challenge runs. Baldur’s Gate 3 allowed for more magic items than D&D 5th edition does, despite being based in its ruleset, allowing for some utter shenanigans. Behold, a player beating the game by casting its worst cantrip 2,469 times, or rolling through the Sword Coast as a gang of cats. This sort of mischief is plentiful and commonplace.
And there’s speedrunning, which has been shockingly wild for a CRPG. The sheer immersive-sim level nonsense Larian enables (Critical Role’s Matt Mercer was stacking boxes to skip a section almost immediately after release) has allowed for some utterly bonkers glitchy nonsense. Like throwing Shadowheart’s corpse in a box to teleport to the end of Act 2. My personal favourite trick is the Owlbear orbital strike, but I’m biased.
One for the ages
Dear reader, I don’t quite know how Larian Studios is going to follow up Baldur’s Gate 3. It really is an aberration—meant as a compliment—in our current industry. A game with a AAA size and budget, created by a company unbeholden to shareholders. One stuffed full of entirely optional scenes and missable content just for the heck of it, one built on a system that revels in busting its own rules, pushed further by the developers adapting it.
Just having this game in its launch state would’ve been a rare enough treat, let alone the patches that followed, expanding on its ending, constantly hooking players back in for another 100-hour bash. As I said, astonishing, but not surprising. A herculean undertaking gets a herculean result.
We know that the studio’s got two similarly-big RPGs in the pipeline, and I can only hope we’re in for a hattrick. But for now, Baldur’s Gate 3 has enjoyed one and a half years of genre-defying success. Here’s to that last hurrah before the next Larian game saunters along and—Mystra preserve us—does it all again.