Baldur's Gate 3 Early Access launch date revealed

What you need to know

• Larian Studios plans to kick off early access for Baldur's Gate 3 on Sept. 30.
• The CRPG will be available simultaneously on Steam and Google Stadia.
• New game footage reveals players will start in Avernus, one of the Nine Hells in Dungeons & Dragons.

Barring further delays, Baldur's Gate 3 is expected to hit early access on Google Stadia and Steam on Sept. 30. Larian Studios announced the date during today's "Panel from Hell" livestream event, but warned that there's still a lot of work to be done on the massive CRPG so another postponement is possible. Larian Studios had previously announced in June that early access would begin in August.

Larian Studios understandably wants to deliver a polished experience for the latest chapter in the genre-defining game. Since Baldur's Gate II came out in 2000, another month isn't much of a delay. The game is based on Dungeons & Dragons and kicks off in Avernus, the setting of the recent D&D adventure module Descent Into Avernus. The first layer of the Nine Hells, the plane is ravaged by an eternal war between demons and devils.

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During the stream, Larian Studios creative director Swen Vincke emphasized the scope of the project by comparing the amount of content that will be in the Baldur's Gate early access to the first build of Larian's last game, Divinity: Original Sin 2. Baldur's Gate 3 will have 80 combat encounters vs. 22 in Divinity and 146 different spells and actions compared to Divinity's 69.

While the full list of playable classes and races will be shared closer to the launch, the developers confirmed five starting characters: the vampiric elf rogue Astarion, human wizard Gale, githyanki warrior Lae'zel, half-elf cleric Shadowheart, and human warlock Wyll. New gameplay footage showed Lae'zel helping out an Intellect Devourer, a classic D&D monster that's basically a human brain with tentacles. There are plenty of choices in just that scene, providing a glimpse of the decision making that will affect character outcomes and lead to different plots.