Baldur's Gate 3's beefy patch 7 will finally drop next week

At the end of a PAX West panel looking back on the development and reception of Baldur's Gate 3, Larian boss Swen Vincke revealed that the game's highly anticipated Patch 7 will finally arrive next week after months of teasers and playtesting.

We first heard about Patch 7 back in April, and the marquee additions are official mod support and overhauled evil endings. On the modding front, we won't be seeing a full campaign-building toolset like Divinity: Original Sin 2 had, but BG3's tools and support will make it far easier to create and install custom classes, UI elements, spells, QoL fixes, dice, and more. Further, the official tools will hopefully make it less likely that future patches⁠—Larian has said it's almost, but not quite done tweaking BG3⁠—will bork your mods or modded saves. Patch 7 definitely will though, at least until mod authors catch up, so watch out for that.

The evil endings look like they'll be bone chilling extended cutscenes for the vilest of the vile bastards out there, something to make up for their lack of a feel-good shindig when all is said and done. Larian's teased snippets of two main deviations: a Dark Urge and non-Dark Urge version with slight variations of the non-Durge evil ending for other Origin characters. The default evil ending is pretty classico, reminiscent of something like Knights of the Old Republic, but that's not a bad thing. The protagonist asserts psychic control of all the tadpoled schlubs out there to found their own evil not-Mind Flayer kingdom. I really dig a clip Larian showed of one such schlub's perspective, imagining they're just picking apples and having a gay old time while in reality they're a psychic slave in the dark world. Kinda reminds me of Meet the Pyro in a weird way.

The Dark Urge one is gnarly though, with previews showing the default albino Dragonborn Durge killing off their companions and wandering through a meaty, bloody afterscape under a darkened sun. Think The Eclipse from Berserk or Elden Ring's Frenzied Flame ending. It's not like the game didn't warn us: "At night, you dream of a dead world," reads an early in-game journal entry for the Durge's personal quest. "Lakes of gall, pulsating heaps of expired flesh. You're the only living being. When the red sun burns out, you drive the last dagger through your heart."

Partial patch notes for the update, as well as scuttlebut from playtesters on the BG3 subreddit, indicate there'll be plenty for non-omnicidal players as well. Continued QoL changes, added reactivity throughout the game, and what sound like some pretty big changes to the side character, Alfira.

I was a big dummy though and started a new Honour mode run a little bit ago though⁠—I lost my first one at 80 hours early this year and have been itching to get back at it. I've already blasted through to the middle of Act 2 in 45 hours, but hopefully I don't get too much farther before Patch 7 drops. Previous patches haven't followed any pattern to when in the week they come out, and rather than getting an exact date from Larian ahead of time, the studio will probably just implement it in the coming days.