Remember Baldur's Gate 3? Because Baldur's Gate 3 didn't forget you. Especially not the incorrigible villains among you looking for a little extra plot catharsis. Larian's best RPG lingered in the shadows while you were busy with other games. It lingered silently while you were heisting on Tatooine or slaying Golden-Eyed Monsters, waiting and waiting for the perfect moment – and now, it's finally arrived with a sinister new patch that adds 13 new Bad Endings, a revamped split-screen, and an official modding toolkit. Too late to run, stupid summer boy.
The last we heard about Patch 7 was back in July, in the form of a blog post that included at least 10 mentions of kissing. Then there was a scathing note about players eating soap. The full changelog goes into less detail about both soap and sauce, with only five kisses to reveal and minimal discussion of cleaning products. It also details revisions to the game's “Show Cinematic Nudity” option, which is now “Show Sexual and Violent Cinematics” and has a more comprehensive description.
I'm highlighting the Show Sexual And Violent Cinematics setting because you'll need to disable it if you want to watch the aforementioned new bad endings in their entirety. After all, these are A lot bad. “This setting does not affect your adventure, your choices, or your access to romance options,” the changelog assures. “However, it does block sexual content that includes nudity and especially scenes of bloody violence.”
If you’re playing as a Dark Urge character, the update also lets you add a specific Tiefing bard to your party as a controllable character, given an empty slot in camp. But this is largely a “one-night thing.” “There are no new companions,” the devs say. “Only death.” If you were hoping for a surprise influx of permanent full-time party members, you’ll have to console yourself with the new Honor Mode features instead. These include new Legendary Actions — Dror Ragzlin can now befriend pit spiders, while local doctor Malus Thorm has a new trick called Grasping Appendages.
And then there's the official in-game mod manager and accompanying toolkit available via Steam, which are too voluminous to summarize. “With this new, supported way of creating and installing mods, you should see improvements in compatibility and accessibility, and you can be more confident that your supported mods will work everywhere you play Baldur's Gate 3, which will also be available on consoles in the near future,” the developers note.
Patch 7 has a size of about 11.6 GB on the computer and requires 160 GB of free space for installation. If you don't have space, the developers recommend uninstalling the patched version and reinstalling it in one go.
Larian is still working on crossplay and a photo mode, but this will be one of the last major Baldur's Gate 3 patches as the developers bid farewell to Sword Coast and begin work on at least two new games. As the patch notes state, “it's time for our team to go back to our caves and hang the armor on the wall while we focus on bringing you our next project.”
Disclosure: Former RPS associate editor Adam Smith (RPS in peace) is now at Larian and is the lead writer on Baldur's Gate 3. Former contributor Emily Gera is also working on the game.