The latest Baldur’s Gate 3 patch adds an epilogue section to give players “closure” with their companions.
Developer Larian Studios broke down the changes in its Patch 5 Notes and Community Update #25. Shortly after Baldur’s Gate 3 launched in August for PC, the widely-praised title received some criticism for its abrupt ending. However, Larian says the new epilogue sequence finally gives players closure with their companions and the story.
What’s in Baldur’s Gate 3’s epilogue?
In the Baldur’s Gate 3 epilogue, players fast-forward six months to a new scene set at camp in High Hall. The player can swap stories with their companions with new cinematics and read letters from friends. Gale and Lae’zel also receive special cinematic endings depending on certain player choices. The epilogue and its contents rely heavily on player choices overall, according to Larian.
“Your epilogue is defined by you,” Larian explained in the community update post. “This is the culmination of every choice and consequence that you’ve made since the very start of your adventure, a gigantic tree of permutations that leads to an opportunity to reflect on that journey before you say goodbye. For the writers of Larian, this ‘final goodbye’ has resulted in some of the most complex writing in the game thus far, as it takes advantage of Baldur’s Gate 3’s reactivity across the entire adventure.”
Patch 5 adds plenty more than the epilogue. Besides bug fixes, the patch includes two new modes, Honor Mode and Custom Mode, and performance improvements — especially for the often buggy Act III. Players will no longer need to add a companion to their active party to access their belongings; the update lets players manage companion inventories in the camp without making them active. Players can now recruit Minthera and Halsin, as she appears at Moonrise Towers if only knocked out in Act I.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is now available on PC and PlayStation 5. After a delay, the Xbox Series X and Series S ports will launch sometime in December 2023.
