‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ slowdown issues caused by crime admits developer

nme.com:

Baldur’s Gate 3 will receive Patch 5 later this week, with developer Larian Studios confirming that performance issues have been caused by crime.Baldur’s Gate 3 Patch 4 was released at the start of the month to a mixed response, with several people on the Baldur’s Gate 3 Reddit complaining about performance issues.

One user noted that Act 3 was a “buggy mess” and was absolutely “unplayable”, with companions refusing to follow the player around, and conversations also lagging.Larian offered a statement to IGN explaining the reason that performance issues had been cropping up, stating that a fix in Patch 4 which would “prevent the Scrying Eyes in Moonrise Towers from immediately calling the guards on you” was behind the issue.According to the statement, the fix that the developer made caused the game to essentially always think about the crimes that you’ve committed “without ever moving on or verbalising them”, with players who are more prone to committing crimes in front of Scrying Eyes adding a massive amount of data to the behind the scenes of the game, which caused slowdown issues in Act 3.As Larian put it: “Essentially, the dungeon master becomes unable to operate.”In a five-star review by NME, Andy Brown called Baldur’s Gate 3 a “must-play fantasy”, with our writer stating that “the scope of Baldur’s Gate 3 should be impossible – but time and time again, it proves there’s no such thing.”The game launched in August to near-universal critical acclaim on PC, before launching on PS5 a month later.