Baldur’s Gate 3 had to be scaled back for the Series S, but the console still has a right to exist

stopthatgirl7@kbin.social to Gaming@beehaw.org – 109 points –
vg247.com

It'll be the cheapest place, by an absurd margin, to play Baldur's Gate 3.

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Series S is the cheapest way to play the game by an absurd margin? Steam Deck is only about $100 more and it plays the game just fine.

Absurd is too strong of a word, but 100$ ain't nothing. Not for everyone.

It's literally 1/3rd more expensive and thats not an insignificant amount. If your rent increased by 1/3rd tomorrow you'd probably be pissed and if you had a 33.33 percent chance of getting struck by lightning by stepping outside tomorrow you'd probably stay indoors that day.

$100, plus the cost of the mandatory microSD or SSD you'll need to add to even install the game on Deck, plus the $50 discount for the Series S if you have a modicum of patience. The difference is more like $175-200, and last year the Series S was $100 off for Black Friday. Assuming the game is targeting holiday 2023 for Xbox, you could potentially grab the Series S + BG3 for under $300.

I've played this on my deck, and it is playable, but the frame rate was not stable unless it capped it 30 and the graphics had to be dialed back a bit. If the S can hit 60 then it's already a better version.

I play at 900p60. Turn literally everything to low or off except textures at medium. Enable the AMD upscaling to the highest quality setting (forget what it's called). Be sure to turn off Antialiasing (don't really need it at high resolutions) and God rays. Turn off all optional things but those two are the most important. Also, if BG3 is installed to an SD card, then enable slow HDD mode.

It still stutters a little when transitioning to cut scenes, but I believe that exists in all PC versions.

Edit: And I have made it (what I think is) mostly through Act 2. I've also hosted an online session with my friend (who also plays on Steam Deck using my settings) and my husband (gaming laptop) with no issues.

I was just playing it from a mates library, going to wait for the Series X version now to carry on. Cheers though.

It's only able to hold a relatively stable 30fps in act 1. As soon as you hit act 2 it struggles to escape the teens, even on low settings. It was so bad that I had to abandon playing on Deck and move to my PC.

Asking out of genuine ignorance here: is there a setup that allows a 100+ GB game to be played on the 64GB Steam Deck?

You can plug in an SD card and install it there, it will have longer load times but shouldn't affect gameplay much otherwise.

Edit: You can also expand the USB slots and get an external SSD

128GB micro SD cards are like $12. 512GB is maybe 40$. Can get a 1TB SD card for $100 but I think the 512 is a good middle ground between price and storage.

Yeah, 256 is around $20 last I looked, too. Not bad. Been considering getting one, probably not for anything with an install this large, but it's nice to know I'd have the option.

You can also replace the internal storage yourself. The cost doesn't get that meaningful until 1 TB + for the new drive.

Yes, a 256GB+ SD Card. Be sure to enable slow HDD mode in BG3 settings if you're installing to an SD Card. (It will help loading screen times at the cost of using more RAM.)

Not currently, no. They burned enough dev cycles trying to get split screen co-op on the S that now BOTH the S and X versions are delayed, which I guess is better than "not happening at all."

The S has every right to exist, but as soon as it starts interfering with Series X development (which has been for a while now), it's time for it to go.

Microsoft needs to cut it loose like the boat anchor it is and just release a discless Series X and call it good.

It's one game. By and large developers have managed to get games running pretty well and feature complete ok the S. Some really impressive attempts like the Cyberpunk version. Everyone is thowing the baby out with the bathwater over one game.

It's one game that actually utilizes the power of the series x, and isn't watered down to work on the S.

Think of all the games that were made worse because they HAD to run on lower quality hardware

Quite frankly, I don't think that's true.

We've got games coming out at the moment that use Unreal 5 and it's next gen features that are still coming out on the S like Immortals or Remnant 2. They have reduced fidelity on the S as expected but they still run fine there. BG3 is literally held up over one issue, the split-screen, that they're apparently still working on to see if they can patch it back in post launch, MS clearly just let them launch without it to take a win back from Sony.

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Wait until you hear about all of the dev cycles spent getting games on the Switch.

In most cases, Nintendo platforms are ignored by 3rd parties. Non-Nintendo games rarely sell well there:

https://www.vgchartz.com/article/449937/the-switchs-growing-third-party-problem/

All sorts of "impossible" poets were being made to switch a few years ago. Witcher 3, Doom, Wolfenstein 2, etc. The games have moved on to the point it's not feasible anymore, but they would put them on there if they could.

All it becomes is a platform with its own strengths and tradeoffs should you decide to target it. It doesn't mean that it's time for it to go.

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Good luck installing BG3 on that 64GB eMMC, mate.

I installed it onto a 256GB SD card. The Deck has an sd card slot.

Sure. My point was that a $400 Steam Deck can't install the game. There needs to be some additional purchase.

My cheap mainstream laptop runs the game on mid settings just fine. It cost ~500 USD.

Am I misreading your comment? You're saying Series S is not the cheapest because Steam Deck is more expensive? Did you have a typo? Am I suffering CO poisoning?

I'm said the Xbox is not the cheapest, by a huge margin. It is, in fact, the cheapest by a $100 margin, which is not huge.

It's not a $100 margin if you have to add in an SSD to play it.

I'd imagine it doesn't look very nice on a big screen TV while providing decent performance on the Steam Deck.

Or you can stream it to your phone/laptop/android tv via GFN. As long as you bought it on Steam and your internet connection is ok.

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