The Evolution of Baldur's Gate 3: Hotfix 17 and Beyond

The Rise of Baldur's Gate 3

Baldur's Gate 3 has released Hotfix 17 across all platforms, an update that fixes performance issues on the PS5, compresses save game file size, and improves on some of the game's narrative flow.

The baldur's gate companions

As the best-selling game on Steam in 2023 and the recipient of many accolades including Game of the Year 2023 at The Game Awards it's safe to say that Larian built a worthy sequel to Baldur's Gate 2. Though the developers openly admitted that Baldur's Gate 3 greatly benefited from its three-year Early Access period, the level of detail and care that went into the game is still impressive.

That being said, it's also important to recognize that Act 2, and especially Act 3, have lacked the polish of Early Access content. Larian has done its utmost to fix the game's technical issues through five major updates, with Patch 5 even adding the Epilogue to Baldur's Gate 3, but there is still work to be done.

Hotfix 17: Save Games and Companions

Listed as Hotfix 17, the latest Baldur's Gate 3 update primarily tackles save games, crashes, and one of the more annoying aspects of having Gale around in early Act 1.

While Microsoft claims that it will fix Baldur's Gate 3's save game issue on January 16, all three platforms should still benefit from a reduced file size, as outside of Honour Mode, the number of manual saves can easily pile up. Not only does the new update bring better compression, but it also removes stored data that the game no longer uses (such as summons).

The other key improvement concerns Gale, one of the main companions in Baldur's Gate 3. The Wizard of Waterdeep notoriously gets hungry for magical artifacts rather early in the game, and if players fail to feed Gale when starting a conversation, he can end up leaving the party for good.

The Future of Baldur's Gate 3

Overall, Hotfix 17 is another incremental step in polishing Baldur's Gate 3, and the team at Larian has certainly shown that they're willing to support the game for as long as it needs.

Though no DLCs or expansion packs were announced by the developers, the precedent established by the Divinity: Original Sin games leaves the door open for a Definitive Edition of Baldur's Gate 3 coming in the future.