Larian has just revealed what new content will be added to the role-playing game next year. Patch 8 will probably be the last really big update.
Even though patch 7 sounded like the last big update for Baldur’s Gate 3 after one of the last big updates, some promised features were still missing. Now Larian has finally announced what is likely to be the final patch 8, and it contains a lot more than we would have expected.
But doing more than even the most loyal fans could hope for has almost become standard practice at Larian. Update 8 is planned for sometime in 2025 and will add a ton of new content and even features to the game. And yet, BG3 is already the best role-playing game under the sun!
This is all in patch 8
In addition to further bug fixes and the like, the 8th update for Baldur’s Gate 3 is supposed to have three major new features. Two of them were already known, one comes as a bit of a surprise. Let’s start with the known new features:
Crossplay
As required by the gaming gods. This is how Larian describes the full implementation of cross-play with Update 8. Don’t be confused by this – there is there is already cross-progression in Baldur’s Gate 3. This means that you can continue playing the same save on both your PC and PlayStation or Xbox thanks to account linking.
With cross-progression, you can now play with everyone else on all other platforms in multiplayer. So you can form a party of four with a PC, a PS5, an Xbox Series, and maybe even a Mac player. Which class do you think suits which platform best?
Photo Mode
A photo mode that allows us to take fancy screenshots of fancy characters or environments at any time has become standard in most major productions. Baldur’s Gate 3 has fancy characters and environments, so fans have been hoping for such a mode for a long time. Patch 8 finally delivers it!
And as so often, Larian doesn’t do things by halves here. Photo Mode doesn’t just let you add a filter or frame and rotate the camera a little, as in some other games; you can have all the characters strike certain poses. There’s even a selfie camera. And yes, filters, frames, and stickers are available too.
12 new subclasses
And now for the big surprise: Update 8 brings even more subclasses into play, along with a whole host of new abilities. This means that you will soon be able to access an even wider range of classes without any mods. In total, a new subclass has been added for each of the twelve main classes. Each of these is based on an official template from the D&D E5e ruleset.
When is all this coming?
Don’t count on the big update this year. It may well be that you have to wait a few more months before Patch 8 properly spices up the role-playing game. Before it goes live, a stress test is planned. The team wants to find out with the help of the community whether the patch could cause problems.
Said stress test is scheduled to start at the beginning of January at the earliest, but you will have the opportunity to register for it before then. Larian will announce more details soon. The last time, there were about six weeks between the beta for patch 7 and the release. If it is similar this time, March 2025 would be a possibility for the release of update 8.
