Baldur’s Gate 3 dev explains performance issues ahead of Patch 5 fix

Larian Studios has explained why so many Baldur’s Gate 3 players are facing slowdown issues following Patch 4, with a bug fix planned for this week’s Patch 5.

Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Larian Studios has announced that the game’s next update, Patch 5, will be released later this week.

Like other patches, it seems that this will be a big one that addresses some issues players have been reporting following Patch 4. This includes a fix to Astarion’s kissing animation, which was promised in Hotfix 11’s patch notes.

Patch 5 will also fix an issue that caused Baldur’s Gate 3 to lag heavily in Act 3 to the point that some called it unplayable, especially on PlayStation 5. Ahead of the update’s release, Larian has explained what was causing the issue and says it was able to sort it out.

Larian Studios

Baldur’s Gate 3’s Act 3 performance issues were caused by a Patch 4 change

In a statement shared with IGN, Larian explained in detail what was causing those frustrating performance issues fans have been facing since the last major patch.

As they say, “In Patch 4 we introduced a fix that would prevent the Scrying Eyes in Moonrise Towers from immediately calling the guards on you when stealing, even if you were sneaking, or invisible for example.”

However, this attempt to fix the problem introduced another one, “causing unnoticed thefts and acts of vandalism to remain stuck forever within the ‘did anyone see me’ pipeline, rather than timing out and moving on, as is intended.”

Larian continues to explain the problem in Dungeons & Dragons terms: “Essentially, your dungeon master – in a real-world sense – constantly thinks about the acts of theft and violence the player keeps doing, without ever moving on or verbalising them. Mulling on it ad infinitum.” This “eventually bogged down the game,” especially for players who continue to commit crimes, as “the game is trying to keep that all up to date and in memory… Essentially, the dungeon master becomes unable to operate.”

Baldur’s Gate 3 Act 3 is already known for having performance issues, many of which are explained by the sheer size and scope of the titular city. However, things have definitely gotten worse following Patch 4. With that in mind, it’s good to see that Larian has seemingly pinpointed the issue and is nearly ready to fix it.

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