Highlights
- Cross-saves in Baldur's Gate 3 allow players to continue their campaign across different platforms, making it a convenient feature.
- Players on the PS5 can quickly unlock the game's platinum trophy by using cross-saves and strategically loading PC saves.
- Larian Studios possibly isn't bothered that this shortcut is available, as a similar loophole existed in the PS4 version of Divinity: Original Sin 2, and it will likely also be available on Xbox consoles.
Obtaining a platinum trophy on the PlayStation 5 version of Baldur's Gate 3 can be as straightforward as spending around an hour loading PC saves, according to some early player reports. This discovery emerged online at the tail end of the Baldur's Gate 3 PS5 early access period leading up to its official September 6 release on Sony's console.
Larian Studios has been touting cross-saves in Baldur's Gate 3 as one of the game's key quality-of-life features since 2020. Much like the studio's previous RPG, Divinity: Original Sin 2, its latest title allows players to continue their campaign across any supported platform. In order to activate cross-saves in Baldur's Gate 3, fans merely have to sign up for a free account with the developer and then make sure they're logged in to their profile after launching the game.
Apart from the inherent level of convenience offered by this feature, it turns out that Baldur's Gate 3 cross-saves are also useful for quickly unlocking the game's platinum trophy on the PS5. At least two players already managed to do so within hours of the RPG's official release on Sony's console, PlayStation LifeStyle reports. PSNProfiles forums user StyxSense also confirmed that popping achievements via cross-saves is a viable strategy after doing so to unlock the Critical Hit trophy for "completing" the PS5 version of the game on Tactician difficulty.
Since Baldur's Gate 3 has 53 achievements in total, using cross-saves to fast-track the game's platinum trophy on the PS5 still requires players to have access to a fairly extensive library of strategically made saves. Nevertheless, completionists who care about achievements might find that spending some time loading saves is a fairly efficient time investment, even compared to most PS5 games with extremely easy platinum trophies.
This relative ease of unlocking the platinum trophy on the PS5 version of Baldur's Gate 3 is plausibly not an oversight on Larian's part, but merely a side effect of the RPG's cross-save support. After all, a similar loophole also allowed players to fast-track their way to a platinum trophy on the PS4 version of Divinity: Original Sin 2.
And though it's theoretically possible to side-load someone else's saves on PC before using them on Sony's console to pop trophies, doing so still requires buying the game twice. Between that requirement and the fact that Baldur's Gate 3 isn't a competitive game, Larian is presumably fine with letting anyone who wants to obtain a platinum trophy by abusing cross-saves to do so. This shortcut is hence also likely to be available on Microsoft's consoles, as the developer already confirmed that the Xbox version of Baldur's Gate 3 will support cross-saves as well.
Baldur's Gate 3 is available now on PC and PS5. An Xbox Series X/S port is expected to launch in late 2023.
