Highlights

  • Baldur's Gate 3 Patch 5 will be released by the end of this week, so no later than December 3.
  • The update will address Astarion's broken kissing animations, in addition to fixing the slowdowns caused by the game's crime detection system, which was bugged by Patch 4.
  • The first four major updates for the game introduced around 1,000 changes each, with this upcoming release being expected to continue that pattern.

The fifth major update for Baldur's Gate 3 will be released by the end of this week, Larian has announced, in addition to sharing some details about the contents of the game's next patch. The upcoming release is hence confirmed to be arriving roughly two weeks after Baldur's Gate 3 received its Hotfix 11 update, which bumped its version number up to 4.1.1.3956130.

Aside from being the latest date on which Baldur's Gate 3 players can expect Patch 5, December 3 will also mark the four-month anniversary of Baldur's Gate 3's PC release. Larian has averaged one update per week since the game's launch, while also finding the time to finalize the RPG's PS5 port, which hit the market on September 6. The last major revision of the game rolled out on November 2 in the form of Baldur's Gate 3 Patch 4.

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Baldur’s Gate 3 Patch 5 Will Fix Astarion's Kissing Animations

Taking to X, formerly Twitter, Larian confirmed that the next large-scale update for the game is planned to launch by the end of this week, so no later than December 3. As is tradition, the upcoming patch will address a variety of issues, including a weird bug that recently broke Astarion's kissing animations in Baldur's Gate 3. That particular problem was originally introduced in Patch 4, with Larian only confirming it was aware of the issue as part of its Hotfix 11 changelog in mid-November.

The developer also revealed that the upcoming update will address the slowdowns caused by the game's crime detection system, which is another bug originating from the RPG's fourth major patch. The studio shed some more light on that issue in a subsequent statement to IGN, explaining that the problem stems from its attempt to fix another bug that caused the Scrying Eyes in Moonrise Towers to blow the whistle on the player's acts of theft that should have gone unnoticed. In doing so, Larian accidentally made the game indefinitely track all overlooked crimes, which eventually caused some severe Baldur's Gate 3 performance issues.

While the developer hasn't shared any more concrete details about the contents of Baldur's Gate 3 Patch 5, it did confirm that other improvements will also be part of the upcoming package. The first four major updates for the game had absolutely gigantic changelogs with around 1,000 items each, so it stands to reason that Patch 5 won't be lacking in bug fixes and other types of refinements, either.