Baldur’s Gate 3 With the Steam Deck, sometimes I don’t understand what’s going on, but it’s fun.
I doubted it was the case.all the things i’ve seen Baldur’s Gate 3 Before I downloaded it, it promised a vast, expansive adventure, and every stream of the game I watched on Twitch featured incredibly detailed characters and worlds. I think most of those streamers were running their games on top of the line rigs. I thought it might be because of the steam deck that I had trouble with recently. The Last of Us Part Imight not be the best place to play Larian Studios’ new RPG.
That said, the game looked so much fun that it won’t be coming to PS5. until September, I wanted to find a way to play faster. A colleague read his Ash Parrish’s Beginner’s Guide and was even more intrigued. And after a few days Baldur’s Gate 3 Officially released, I saw it Has your Steam deck been verified?. I knew that didn’t necessarily mean the game looked pretty, but it was enough to dive in. Baldur’s Gate 3 on my steam deck.
Here’s what I ran into after downloading a huge 122GB game.
- Characters often have a blurry sheen, and their faces can sometimes look like amorphous, pixelated blobs as they wander around Faerun.
- During combat, it was sometimes difficult to distinguish between the enemy and the environment.
- The Steam Deck’s fan explodes like a jet engine and the back of the device gets very hot to the touch.
- Baldur’s Gate 3 Chewing the steam deck battery. I expect my deck to last about 1 hour and 40 minutes during gameplay from a full charge. (But this doesn’t require me to fiddle with the settings to make it even more effective.)
- Sometimes I play with my Steam deck hooked up to my 55″ TV. This means that visual problems will be magnified on a much larger screen.
- even found a way Enable local co-op In my Steam deck of games — What Larian specifically disabled on the platform — that is, the game should behave in such a way that both characters can be managed at the same time. (And we’re always playing TV.)
You’ll notice that the screenshots in this article aren’t pretty, but for some reason, at first glance bad than it should be. I promise I didn’t go out of my way to make the game as bad as possible. After I first published this article, Sean Hollister and I may have discovered some discrepancies. Baldur’s Gate 3 Something is probably going on with the default Steam Deck settings that makes the game look worse. Perhaps it has something to do with AMD FSR AI-powered upscaling, which can improve performance by running games at lower resolutions before they explode.
- Shawn and I originally started playing on the Steam Deck with default graphics settings, but I remember seeing blurry and pixelated images from the beginning, like the screenshots in this story.
- But when Sean did a clean reinstall on Friday, he said the game’s “default” settings turned out much better than my screenshots.
- Sean noticed that these default settings set AMD’s FSR 1.0 to “Balanced” and still does. His game still claims this to be the default as of today. However, when I used the “restore defaults” option during testing today, the FSR defaults were turned off. However, we are both using the latest version v4.1.1.3648072. (Yes, it doesn’t make much sense. Also, my settings default to ultraspec for some reason, but his default is medium.)
- Sean’s copy of the game claims it is set to FSR 1.0 Balanced by default, manually After switching the game out of FSR 1.0 Balanced and back again, the game looks blurrier than it did on first launch.
We reached out to Larian to clarify a few things, including the default FSR mode for Steam decks. I will update if I get a reply.
Despite all this I am really fascinated Baldur’s Gate 3 on the steam deck.
i just keep marveling how much game It’s packed into a relatively small machine that you can hold in your hand. It clearly struggles with my Steam deck, but I’m impressed that it works just as well as the graphics demanding game and I’ve seen subpar results on low spec desktops. doing.
I’ve already rolled four different characters, but each time I went through the early sections of the game, I discovered new areas and dialogue. Baldur’s Gate 3 is so vibrant that sometimes you have to squint to make sense of where you are, but it’s a lot of fun to talk to the characters. Surprisingly, I haven’t run into any major issues with co-op. I mean, my wife and I spent hours yelling at ridiculous accidents. (RIP, Berkus Route, our gnome accidentally fell from the windmill. )
I’ve also noticed that playing games on mobile devices is more personal. That’s one of the reasons I love the Nintendo Switch. It sure is a lot of fun to share your adventures on TV with everyone in the same room. But my favorite time is Baldur’s Gate 3 sat on the couch, the steam deck on a pillow above her lap, headphones plugged in and wandering around Faerun. (It’s helpful that the game’s gamepad controls are starting to make some sense, although they’re a bit complicated, though picking up nearby objects can be difficult at times.) Next vacation he’ll be bringing his Steam deck with him. I am also thinking of going.you can play Baldur’s Gate 3 — What better way to relax than a cold drink and a successful persuasion?
All my feelings can change. I’ve got about 18 hours of playtime, but I’m still scratching the surface. Baldur’s Gate 3, and I’m not sure if the later areas will look or feel worse on the Steam deck. (A colleague notes that the dark regions that appear later are particularly difficult to analyze.) Will implement FSR 2.2which might make it look better.
But overall, it’s been a surprisingly smooth ride so far. We look forward to restarting our adventures with Cross Save on PS5, but we will still be spending a lot of time together. Baldur’s Gate 3 on the steam deck.
Updated August 18, 7:41 PM ET: Added details about graphics settings for Steam decks.