Baldur's Gate 3 Confirms Sad News For Next Update (2024)

The announcement of Baldur's Gate 3's Patch 7, which heralds the arrival of official mod support, may have been championed by the community, but Larian Studios wants to set expectations to avoid any major disappointments. When it comes to developing custom content for the sprawling RPG, there have been some impressive fan-made add-ons but nothing that fundamentally overhauls the experience. Players hoping to design new quests, characters, locations, and scenarios may want to temper their excitement given that Baldur's Gate 3's mod support won't be as robust as expected.

Per DarkElfMagic on Reddit, the user shared an image of the official Baldur's Gate 3 account on X (formerly Twitter) noting that players will be unable to create new levels or quests due to what it describes as "technical constraints and platform-specific guidelines."

The full extent of the toolkit is currently unknown, but based on the comment, it sounds like it will be more focused on creating surface-level cosmetic tweaks to the game and perhaps custom classes and abilities. While there's always the possibility that modders will ultimately manage to create new stories and locations, this won't be officially supported by the toolkit provided by Larian Studios.

Modding Baldur's Gate 3 Is Still Exciting

Just Don't Expect Entire Reworks

Following the Reddit post, many expressed concern that the introduction of mod support on consoles will force Larian Studios to implement restrictions for PC users. Community manager SaloAtLarian noted that the developer has no intentions of going this route and those who opt to make and install mods on PC won't be locked inside a box. The team will ensure that everything created with the toolkit will "pass an additional curation process for cross-platform support," ensuring that PC players aren't limited in what they can install.

Realistically, it seems feasible that modders on PC might ultimately find ways to create custom quests, something that could go a long way in adding to everything that Baldur's Gate 3 has to offer. When it comes to tools for creating new areas, however, the process could be a lot more complicated. Without any official support or prepackaged assets, everything would have to be made from scratch, including the actual framework to implement anything.

Larian Studios Has Made Map-Making Possible In The Past

It's cool that Larian Studios is officially supporting mods at all, something that the majority of games never actually put systems in place for. Compared to what the studio has offered in the past, however, it does seem like a step back. Divinity: Original Sin 2 provides access to The Divinity Engine 2, a free DLC that allows for the creation of custom maps, scripts, and more. This can be used to expand the story or tell new ones in mods, and pairing this with the GM Mode in the game even provides a platform for running custom DnD campaigns.

Even in this case, however, the number of new maps and story additions released for Divinity: Original Sin 2 is a very small percentage of the overall modding scene for the game. As powerful as The Divinity Engine 2 is, it can be challenging to use, and making new areas, even with official support, is an especially involved task. The enormous success of Baldur's Gate 3 means that there definitely would have been more activity on that front if the toolkit made it possible, but the bulk of creations probably still wouldn't have made use of it.

It isn't clear exactly what technical constraints make this impossible for Baldur's Gate 3, but it could very well be a combination of factors. Outside the basic challenges of making tools available to the public, there can also be proprietary license concerns that limit what Larian Studios can actually release. Further complicating things is the involvement of the DnD license, which inherently comes with partnership requirements from Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro. Although it's hard to say how it might impact a map editor, a GM mode (or DM, in this case) could compete with DnD's own virtual tools.

Baldur's Gate 3 Has Plenty Of Custom Content

The Modding Scene Is Already Robust

The launch of an official Baldur's Gate 3 modding toolkit is still an exciting feature, but the inability to create new levels and quests has left many disappointed. Without Larian Studios' official support, those same restrictions have hindered the modding community since the game launched into early access in 2020, so many were hoping that the developer would be able to override these limitations. That may not be the case, but the amount of custom content that's still available for Baldur's Gate 3 is still staggering.

It ultimately seems unwise to look a gift horse in the mouth, and this one is definitely a gift. Larian Studios has made it clear that the company won't be working on a follow-up to the game, so receiving patches with any tools to help the community extend its life could go a long way. The company also never set any false expectations for what would be included in the patch, with most hype and speculation simply coming from the lack of information and the possibilities implied by Divinity: Original Sin 2's approach.

Even with the aforementioned constraints, Baldur's Gate 3 certainly isn't lacking mods. The RPG boasts one of the largest catalogs of mods on sharing hub Nexus Mods, so one has to imagine that the launch of an official toolkit will cause this number to grow even higher. Baldur's Gate 3 players will just have to wait and see what they can create when Patch 7 drops in September.

Source: DarkElfMagic/Reddit, SaloAtLarian/Reddit, Nexus Mods

Baldur's Gate 3

Developed and published by Larian Studios, Baldur's Gate 3 is an upcoming role-playing game set to release in August of 2023. Players will create a character to embark on a large-scale journey and can do so solo or cooperatively with a friend. Combat is a turn-based style this time around.

Franchise

Baldur's Gate

Platform(s)

PC , Stadia , macOS , PS5 , Xbox Series X

Released

August 3, 2023

Developer(s)

Larian Studios

Publisher(s)

Larian Studios

Genre(s)

RPG

ESRB

M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Partial Nudity, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Violence

Number of Players

1-4

Local Co-Op Support

1-2 Players