Baldur's Gate 3 is a big game, there's no denying that. It's been in the oven for a while now, including a lengthy Early Access period with a bunch of updates. But it's about to get a whole lot bigger, with its full PC launch on August 3, later this week. Just don't get your hopes up about playing it on launch day unless you have a really strong internet connection - and a decent amount of free space on your hard drive.
Even without any patches, Baldur's Gate 3 will take up 122GB of space. No, it doesn't matter if you've been playing in Early Access - you'll have to uninstall the current build and download the full game all over again. Worse yet, there's no preload, so you'll just have to start downloading as soon as it goes live this Thursday and hope that it leaves you enough time to actually play the game before the day is over.
This news comes from a Steam community post ahead of the launch. Here, Larian Studios explains what players should expect on launch day.
"The full release of the game weighs in at approximately 122GB," reads the post. "Please note that your Early Access save games will not be compatible at launch; however, so much has changed that it’s really worth it to start afresh."
We've known for some time that any progress on Early Access would be lost, so this isn't a huge surprise. But we now know that this will extend to all game files, so you can't just install the full-release updates on top of the Early Access build to save time.
As frustrating as this may be, it gives you some time to prepare. Basically, you have no reason to keep playing the Early Access version now, so you might as well uninstall it ahead of August 3.
There's some good news in the post too. Here, it's confirmed that Baldur's Gate 3 will have cross-save functionality across PC, Steam Deck, and PS5. Presumably, this will extend to the Xbox Series X/S version when it launches too. Speaking of Steam Deck, Larian says it's aiming to be Steam Deck Verified by launch day, but even if it isn't, improvements have been made to how it runs on the hybrid console.
On top of this, Larian has announced the specific time the game will go live: 3pm GMT. That means it's a convenient 4pm for those of us in Ireland, but a not-so-great 1am for Aussie players. And on a school night too, the horror. Still, at least you'll be able to let it install overnight.