Patch 5 of Baldur's Gate 3 is just around the corner. It's been promised to arrive 'later this week', alongside an announced fix for a bug that was breaking the game because it was thinking about your crimes too much. Now, thanks to a festive tweet by Larian Studios, we can also expect updates to the game's ending.
I mean, probably. Best I can tell from this cryptic, unhinged statement, it's an epilogue that'll see us… reminiscing by the campfire, with Withers? Who reminds us that “Fun is Mandatory”. Which, considering he is likely an avatar of the former god of death, is supremely upsetting. As is his dumb little hat.
In all seriousness, further updates to the epilogue are a welcome change. As much as I adore the story of Baldur's Gate 3, the ending was admittedly on the slimmer side. Especially at first, though past patches have added to it, such as a whole new set of scenes for Karlach which I personally thought were pretty metal.
It'll be interesting to see if this epilogue will bring any of the 'cut content' fans were murmuring about after the usual datamining. However, it's entirely possible that we'll be getting something entirely new.
Back when those theories were still swirling, Larian noted that those 'axed' scenes were removed not to save on development time, but simply because they didn't work. Here's an excerpt from Tyler Wilde's great roundup of the studio's blog post back in August.
“One of the reasons why we trimmed the epilogue is because we were afraid the ending cinematics were becoming too long and would detract from the epicness of the experience … but clearly, not everyone agrees with us! So we're going to do something about it.”
Now they're doing something about it, it seems. I've already gone on record about how impressive Larian's post-launch support for the game has been, though in fairness, when it comes to certain game-breaking bugs, fixes are less appreciated than they are mandatory.
In regards to the kind of size we can expect, I've learned to stop being surprised at how massive these patch notes are, or how elaborate new cutscenes can be. In an interview on the official D&D channel back in September, CEO of Larian Studios Swen Vincke described how determined they were to improve Karlach's ending scenes based on player feedback, and how hard they pulled to get things done.
“Within the week [Samantha Béart], the actress, was called back … first the scene was written, but that went fast, then that was recorded using the pipeline that's been set up, it went to the cinematics team, then they spent two weeks working on putting everything in, then it just rolled into whatever next patch or hotfix was in the pipe.”
While a touch-up of endings for other characters is definitely less urgent, I wouldn't be shocked if the whole cast has enjoyed a little extra work for this epilogue extravaganza. Just… don't put the hat on Withers in-game, Larian. Please. I'm begging you. He's already an immortal mummy man, he doesn't need more power.
