With Baldur’s Gate 3 soon to be every RPG fan’s new obsession, the question of whether it will be Steam Deck compatible has now been answered thanks to a response from the game’s developer Larian Studios.
Will Baldur’s Gate 3 Be on Steam Deck?
From an update post ahead of the game’s launch, Larian has confirmed Baldur’s Gate 3 will be playable on the Steam Deck.
“Yes, you can play Baldur’s Gate 3 on your Steam Deck at launch and it looks rad,” says Larian Studios.
“We are aiming for Steam Deck Verified by August 3’s launch date. It launches on Steam Deck with what we consider to be the most optimal graphics settings, but feel free to play around.”
What’s interesting here is it sounds like Baldur’s Gate 3 will have its own Steam Deck-specific settings, meaning those who don’t like to tinker will be able to play the game with minimal fuss.
I’ll, hopefully, be testing out Balder’s Gate 3 on both the Steam Deck and ASUS ROG Ally, so be sure to check back in with RetroResolve to see whether I can find any extra performance tweaks.
FSR Is Coming
While Baldur’s Gate 3 won’t launch with FSR 2.0 support, Larian says it is on the way and is expected by September 6, 2023.
For those who don’t know, FSR is AMD’s upscaling solution designed to let high-end games run on lower-powered devices. Options normally include the following:
- Performance Mode: A higher framerate at a slight cost to visuals.
- Ultra Performance: More fluid performance at a high cost to visuals.
- Quality: Sharper visuals.
- Balanced: A mix of performance and quality.
I tend to avoid ultra performance at all costs due to how pixelated it makes the image quality. Broadly speaking, the quality and performance modes are the ones you want to play with if you want to keep the visuals looking nice.
Will Baldur’s Gate 3 Have Controller Support?
For those who prefer to play on a gamepad, Baldur’s Gate 3 will have controller support on the Steam Deck.
How well this works no one knows just yet, but Larian has said it’s been implemented.
Larian also goes on to note that split-screen has been disabled on the Steam Deck, though that’s presumably down to the Deck not being powerful enough to run it. Admittedly I’m not sure how many people would want to play split-screen on the Steam Deck’s handheld screen anyway, so hey, that’s perfectly understandable.
