After a long week of teasing from the weirdly Pingu-centric Larian Studios Twitter account, the sixth patch of Baldur's Gate 3 is now live, adding a bunch of shiny new touches to the Sword Coast's cast and crew.
Those promised smooch improvements are now in the game, and while they're suitably steamy, Astarion won't be grabbing your throat every single time—thank Mystra, honestly, I don't think my knees could handle that.
"All characters now have unique kisses that reflect their personality, with an emphasis on the plural. These kisses are randomised and vary from the incredibly romantic to… uh, a little more intense. Kisses have also been improved for shorter and taller body types, so embrace without delay."
For the romance-averse among you, you'll be pleased to know that there are some more platonic animation improvements. Companion characters now have more idle behaviours at your campsite: Halsin whittles, Jaheira whispers to rats sometimes, and Minthara does her best Hamlet impression by contemplating a skull.
There've been some gameplay upgrades, too—as shared by Larian previously, party management has had a huge quality-of-life boost: you don't need to dismiss your companions before swapping them out anymore. The game should also try to "prioritise your avatar character as the main speaker" when a dialogue is unexpectedly triggered.
Not a big deal when quicksaving is a thing, but a major pain in Honour Mode's one-save-only environment. I've had plenty of dialogues get all skewed because the game decided no, I think Lae'zel wants to handle this next persuasion check. Oh—and Shield Bash finally works, meatshields rejoice.
Honour Mode also has some fun (terrifying) new legendary actions to contend with (die to), turning Act 2's Shambling Mound into a fully-fledged boss, adding actions to Act 1's Dror Ragzlin and Act 2's drider, and increasing "the difficulty of the Ketheric encounters in Tactician and Honour Mode," whatever that means. Lorroakan should also be less of a pushover, which'll make giving him a swirlie all the more satisfying.
Ketheric should also start combat if you "attack him in the Mind Flayer Colony without being spotted." Whether that scuppers Mae's famous invisible 11,000lb bear from the top rope strat, it remains to be seen.
As always, Larian's big stonking patches are too huge to summarise here. New dialogue improvements, questline fixes, snipped bugs, and story flow buffs can be read in the full list of patch notes on the game's website. As per the Baldur's Gate 3 Twitter account, the patch is 21GB, and you'll need 150GB of free space to update your game—though you can always do a fresh reinstall if there's nothing you can delete.
