That is the kind of Steam Deck support I wanna see, awesome. These news convinced me to buy BG3 once it goes on sale again
I really didn’t enjoy this game when I played 8-ish hours on my PC, but maybe I’ll give it another go and see if a handheld form factor changes that. I like these kinds of games sonetimes but I really don’t understand what it is about BG3 that makes it so well loved. It just wasn’t evident in my time with the game. I feel like I played a different game than everyone else did.
Without knowing how you approached it, it’s really hard to say why you might not have liked it. All of my friends that liked it were d&d players and treated it like a d&d campaign, where you try to make choices that a particular character would make, instead of just playing as yourself. That on top of enjoying all the little things the developers thought up, and trying to explore all the companion story routes. Crazy ways your act 1 decisions impact the content of the end game - like saving the gnome from the windmill leading to detailed interactions in acts 2 and 3 that wouldn’t be possible at all if you don’t save him.
Or stuff like knocking a giant spider into the under dark during a hidden fight in a cave under a blacksmith house, then later on realizing you can use a mushroom guy’s “raise a corpse as a minion” power to have a huge undead pet spider for a while in the under dark.
There are entire voice acted scenes that 0.001% of players will see because they managed to meet 8 different sets of increasingly unlikely criteria. I dunno, there’s just a depth to the game that made it feel like playing D&D with a skilled dungeon master, and I found it lovely.
I played through it 7 times (neutral playthrough, good guy paladin playthrough, dark urge indulgent, dark urge good guy, dark urge starts bad becomes good, drow minthara romance, succubus bard build who just charms her way into winning) before I eventually managed to get tired of it back in early 2024.
I’ve recently gotten back into it, planning to play an “evil but hides it and betrays everyone” character this time lol
Well, taste is not the same for everyone and that is totally okay. Its normal not to like every popular game, I don’t like many popular games too.
If anyone from Larian is lurking, please do a GDC talk on this. I’m super interested in their approach to shipping a (native) Linux build of the game.
I like that they’re passionate and supporting Linux and all, but unpaid work like that should be discouraged, imo.
In this case, it’s an enthusiastic employee working for his own benefit, being able to play the game on his preferred OS. And thankfully recognized and supported by the company.
I think Discord and Spotify are similar situations. The companies don’t particular care, but a few employees wanted it and made it happen.
The best companies will do something like “20% time”, leaving one day a week or something to work on whatever, which is fantastic for stuff like this. Some of your employees almost certainly have the best ideas, if you just trust them with the space to prove them out.
Great way to get cool stuff like this without unpaid labour.
The place I work says they do this and will claim with a straight face that our sprints are budgeted to allow approximately 20% slack time.
This is of course not even remotely true in any practical sense. I have not received an explanation for how it’s even possible when sprint targets are intentionally set at slightly more than was done in the previous sprint, every sprint.
Haha, you’re not wrong. Ours tend to ebb and flow with whatever urgent priority upper management has set as well, and it tends to take slack alongside our tech debts. Our management is listening and getting better though, I’m hopeful that in a few years we truly will catch up on our tech debts and have all our managed products in good shape at once.
That said, even in that environment, we’ve had some pretty incredible 20% success stories. Some of my own experiments from when I’ve had the time have become proper released features, although I mostly use it to skip the bureaucracy and address my pet peeve tech debts, which isn’t the point but is nice to be able to do. And one of our major internal products, with a large dedicated team and roadmap, began as one developer’s 20% project a few years back.
There is a saying (paraphrasing) that sadly is almost never implemented.
“Don’t tell your employees what to do, hire really smart people and listen to their ideas”
Maybe it wasn’t considered work for this person? They wanted to try and do something better in their own time. I am not saying they shouldn’t be compensated but doing something of your own will doesn’t have to be work, it can be fun.
Alongside that, it seems like there’s a good chance that next time, they’ll be the goto for doing this sort of porting.
I think it about shouldn’t be encouraged. Leave it at that. If they felt the need then by all means.
wow, yes please!
Native Steam Deck version is actually native Linux version, with settings optimized for Steam Deck. But I really like the tone and expression of developers looking at the Steam Deck as a target, like a game console. This is awesome!
Thats what valve was talking about games optimizing for the reference platform this is great to hear
Yeah I absolutely love this. Would love more detail on a technical level (what challenges they faced trying to compile for steam deck) but still awesome to hear
Fine fine fine, twist my arms, I’ll play BG3 again!
Well, looks like I’m gonna try a hard-core run now.
Don’t forget mods
Ooooh, I did get it working on deck before but yeah, looked kinda janky. That’s exciting news, although I’m still 50-50 on wanting to play with controller controls.
Extra smooth controlling controller controls.
larian <3
That’s great and all, but it’s locking up my Deck for quite a bit of time while it slowly and painfully downloads and patches.
does that mean that we have a proper linux native build, ir will Linux towers still rely on Proton? (Which works excellently so there won’t be much difference for me i think)
They are working on Linux native.
When I played it, Steam Deck controls were ok but absolutely not comparable to PC. Has this changed?
Did connecting a mouse and keyboard not work for your deck?
Dunno, but doing that would kinda defeat the purpose of a handheld, wouldn’t it? I guess I could do that if I were staying at an hotel or something, but this was not the case at the time.
What do you mean Steam Deck controls were not comparable to PC? I mean a PC with plugged in controller is not much different from a Steam Deck.
Yeah I don’t play RPGs with a controller
So you mean the controller on the Steam Deck does not compare to a keyboard and mouse? And don’t want to play with a controller? Why do you play it on the Steam Deck then? If not, you can still attach a keyboard to the Steam Deck. I really don’t understand your critique here.
I don’t understand what you’re getting at. I don’t mind controllers, but in my opinion the controls for BG3 on the Deck aren’t great; I mentioned the Deck because that’s what I used, I have no idea how it is with other controllers. I played it on the Deck because I own one, I own a copy of BG3, and I like playing on the go? But it wasn’t great so I moved to the PC.
I didn’t issue any critique, I just asked a question because I wanted to see if anyone had info, no need to go all fanboy.
I just ask what you were actually comparing to. If you say the controls on Deck are not great compared to PC, than you do actually just compare the gamepad controls versus keyboard right?
no need to go all fanboy.
What the hell?! Why fanboy now, I just asked for clarification.
Yeah I mean I though it was implied that I played it with a keyboard on the PC, what kind of comparison would it be, the Steam Deck is itself a big controller
I play with a controller or the Deck controls all the time, and I actually prefer the controller UI to the M&K UI; once I got used to the way everything was laid out, and how to manipulate the wheels, it just felt like a better experience to me. To answer your original question, there are no functions or information missing from the controller UI, nor is any of it particularly difficult to get to in normal play… you just have to get used to where everything is.
They are radically different UIs though, and I wouldn’t expect everyone to like them both. If you give the controller UI a solid try and it doesn’t click for you, it’s definitely okay.
Fucking awesome. I was playing last night until 2 AM and in the third act so I’m getting not so great frame rates so I’m excited to keep going once this patch is done downloading.
I’d love to see some benchmarks on this.
Hope it’s good because honestly BG3 was unplayable on Steam deck for me despite being “verified”.
I had a good time with BG3 on Deck… until I got to Act 3.
