Baldur’s Gate 3’s 122GB Download Cannot Be Preloaded

ign.com:

Larian Studios has revealed Baldur’s Gate 3 has an install size of 122 GB and that players can't preload any of it before the game's August 3 launch.

“Baldur’s Gate 3 will launch on August 3 at 5pm Ghent time, or your non-Belgian time zone equivalent as shown above," read a community update posted to the RPG's Steam page. "There will be no pre-loading of the game before then.”

The post also noted that early access save files would not be compatible with the full version of the game at launch, while reasoning that "so much has changed that it’s really worth it to start afresh.”

As reported by PC Gamer, Larian Studios’ Swen Vincke said in July it would not be advantageous to have the early access version of the game installed, as while “there might be a few bytes that are the same”, the launch game was essentially going to require "a full reinstall”.

Vincke declined to outline how much of the game could be preloaded ahead of launch. “I actually don’t know what they’ve planned for it, but I imagine they are going to do something, but I actually don’t know,” he said.

Back in June Larian Studios revealed that it was bringing Baldur’s Gate 3’s PC release date forward by a month while indicating the move was done to avoid clashing with the launch of Bethesda’s upcoming sci-fi RPG Starfield.

The PlayStation 5 version of the game was delayed a week to September 6 to allow the team to hit its 60 frames per second performance goal. Larian Studios is also hoping to release Baldur’s Gate 3 on Xbox Series later this year after running into technical issues in getting splitscreen co-op to work on the consoles.

Anthony is a freelance contributor covering science and video gaming news for IGN. He has over eight years experience of covering