Well this is certainly exciting! Ahead of the release of Baldur's Gate 3, which is going to easily be one of the biggest releases this year, the Director of Publishing at Larian Studios teased playing it on Steam Deck on Twitter (uh, sorry on "X").
Michael Douse (Director of Publishing) said on in a post on X "Playing Baldur’s Gate 3 on Steam Deck is absolutely wild. The quality of models etc really holds up in cinematics. Can’t wait for you to try it" and in a follow-up reply to another user about performance Douse mentioned "We’re aiming for solid 30 on around medium, but optimisation is ongoing. Worth remembering we have cross-save between PC and PS5 ;)".
The good news is that it will also have full controller support at launch as well. However, no split-screen co-op on Steam Deck as that was disabled. While you could hook it up to a bigger screen with a Docking Station, presumably this was done due to the lower power of the Deck.
Picture credit - Michael Douse, Larian Studios
Will you be picking it up? I've yet to hear back about a review key but I'm hoping to give it a run and see just how well it works on Steam Deck and desktop Linux.
You can pre-order it on GOG and Steam. It releases August 3rd.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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The comments on this article are closed.
Quoting: garrettlChoosing Vulkan directly didn't work, but I didn't try experimental or GE yet, just the latest version of standard Proton 8.
I ran the Vulkan rev on my now ancient Geforce 970ti using both the latest Proton-GE, and Experimental, and it worked fine. I believe the developers would prefer people use Vulkan to play the game, but from my, admittedly unscientific very half-assed experimentations, I didn't notice much of a difference in quality or performance.
Last edited by Renzatic Gear on 2 August 2023 at 9:40 pm UTC
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williamjcm Aug 3, 2023
Quoting: soulsourceHmm, I can't confirm without the game, but there are reports that look like Vulkan on AMD is working.
It might have worked at some point, but clearly not anymore.
Also, the first report I saw when I clicked that link you posted said the Vulkan renderer did crash their Steam Deck when trying to load the main menu, which was also my experience when I tried it yesterday on my own handheld, and the average RADV experience.
AMDVLK, the official Linux driver, crashes more "gracefully" (the game displays an error message instead of crashing the entire driver) during the Larian video before the main menu.
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soulsource 
Aug 3, 2023
Quoting: williamjcmThe issue with the link seems to be an issue of the protondb website. If you go to the address bar and press return there once the site finished loading, the anchor works.Quoting: soulsourceHmm, I can't confirm without the game, but there are reports that look like Vulkan on AMD is working.
It might have worked at some point, but clearly not anymore.
Also, the first report I saw when I clicked that link you posted said the Vulkan renderer did crash their Steam Deck when trying to load the main menu, which was also my experience when I tried it yesterday on my own handheld, and the average RADV experience.
AMDVLK, the official Linux driver, crashes more "gracefully" (the game displays an error message instead of crashing the entire driver) during the Larian video before the main menu.
Here is a screenshot of the report I wanted to link.
Be as it may, I might buy the game today and try it myself. If it doesn't work with good performance on my AMD GPU I'm going to be sad.
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Quoting: soulsourceBe as it may, I might buy the game today and try it myself. If it doesn't work with good performance on my AMD GPU I'm going to be sad.I've bought it on GOG and both the Vulkan and DX11 versions are running fine on my RX 6600. The only thing I did was setting a custom executable instead of the launcher. Played a bit with both versions but didn't spot major differences.
The only bad thing I noticed so far is that it will not work unless Galaxy is also running. Kinda defeats the purpose of buying from GOG in the first place.
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soulsource Aug 3, 2023
Quoting: kaimanI got the Steam version, but didn't really play yet. However, as far as I tried it (the character creation menu), it's running fine on my Rx 6700 XT. The only things I needed to do to get it to launch was to switch to Proton Experimental, and to disable the launcher (to be honest, I don't know if disabling the launcher is necessary, I just hate launchers).Quoting: soulsourceBe as it may, I might buy the game today and try it myself. If it doesn't work with good performance on my AMD GPU I'm going to be sad.I've bought it on GOG and both the Vulkan and DX11 versions are running fine on my RX 6600. The only thing I did was setting a custom executable instead of the launcher. Played a bit with both versions but didn't spot major differences.
The only bad thing I noticed so far is that it will not work unless Galaxy is also running. Kinda defeats the purpose of buying from GOG in the first place.
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DebianUser Aug 4, 2023
Quoting: williamjcmA shame the current version of the game doesn't run on AMD GPUs on Linux (except Steam Deck, it seems) if you select the Vulkan renderer, no matter if you use AMDVLK or RADV drivers.
The D3D11 renderer does work, but vegetation has some nasty flickering.
I really hope it'll be fixed for the game's launch.
I dont understand, im on Debian 12, last stable MESA (RADV), with an AND RX6600XT and it runs out of the box.
I dont have any workaround, command launch option or anything like that, bought and installed trought Steam, select Proton GE 8.4, and go (i have not disabled anything).
Maybe it was not working before official release ? i have installed it yesterday, created my character, and played it like 2 hours without any issue.
Last edited by DebianUser on 4 August 2023 at 4:09 pm UTC
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williamjcm Aug 4, 2023
Quoting: DebianUserMaybe it was not working before official release ?
Yes, it was completely borked in the last early access build.
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Quoting: williamjcmA shame the current version of the game doesn't run on AMD GPUs on Linux (except Steam Deck, it seems) if you select the Vulkan renderer, no matter if you use AMDVLK or RADV drivers.Yeah, the launch version had it fixed. I chose Vulkan and everything worked out of the box on launch day.
The D3D11 renderer does work, but vegetation has some nasty flickering.
I really hope it'll be fixed for the game's launch.
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williamjcm Aug 5, 2023
Quoting: 14Yeah, I noticed it too.Quoting: williamjcmA shame the current version of the game doesn't run on AMD GPUs on Linux (except Steam Deck, it seems) if you select the Vulkan renderer, no matter if you use AMDVLK or RADV drivers.Yeah, the launch version had it fixed. I chose Vulkan and everything worked out of the box on launch day.
The D3D11 renderer does work, but vegetation has some nasty flickering.
I really hope it'll be fixed for the game's launch.
I'll be honest, I'm glad Larian gave it some love, because we need more Vulkan games around. Shame it still has a D3D11 renderer, which shows games on custom engines aren't willing to fully ditch proprietary APIs yet.
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Quoting: williamjcmI'll be honest, I'm glad Larian gave it some love, because we need more Vulkan games around. Shame it still has a D3D11 renderer, which shows games on custom engines aren't willing to fully ditch proprietary APIs yet.A transition period is perfectly reasonable. Don't let great be the enemy of good, ya know? Good is on the way to great.
Sniper Elite 5 also has a Vulkan option, and that game is technically impressive! The graphics look better than the 4th game yet impressively perform noticeably smoother with my same hardware. It's a delight.
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