Can I play Baldur’s Gate 3 on Steam Deck?
Does Larian’s huge new RPG run well on Deck? Here’s what you need to know.
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Can I play Baldur’s Gate 3 on Steam Deck?
Yes, Baldur’s Gate 3 is playable on Steam Deck. However, there are a few tweaks you’ll need to do in order to get everything running properly. Thankfully, they’re pretty easy to do, and we’ll go over the details below.
How to play Baldur’s Gate 3 on Steam Deck
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After several years of Early Access, the full version ofBaldur’s Gate 3is officially here — and it’s launched to widespread fanfare and universal critical acclaim. It’s quickly become one of 2023’s best games, and as a result, many hopeful fans are curious to know if they’ll be able to play Larian Studios' gargantuan fantasy RPG on theirSteam Deck.
If you’re one of them, you’ll be happy to know that Baldur’s Gate 3 is fully playable on Valve’s handheld gaming PC, though there are a few things you’ll need to tweak before you jump in. We’ll go over what you need to do below.
To get Baldur’s Gate 3 running properly, you’ll first need to enable the Proton compatibility layer. Here’s how to do that:
Secondly, you’ll want to disable Larian’s Baldur’s Gate 3 launcher so that launching the game on Steam immediately starts it. Here’s how:
And you’re good to go! Note that doing this also defaults the game to run in DX11 instead of Vulkan, which is best for Steam Deck since Vulkan doesn’t play nicely with SteamOSat all.
The best Baldur’s Gate 3 Steam Deck settings
-The best Baldur’s Gate 3 classes-Baldur’s Gate 3 PC specs-When will Baldur’s Gate 3 come to Xbox?
Baldur’s Gate 3 runs pretty well on the Steam Deck, and luckily, you don’t even have to turn the settings down to Low to get playable framerates like you often have to with other new games. Here’s what we recommend using in order to achieve the best balance between visual quality and a consistently smooth framerates:
With these settings, you can expect a smooth 30 FPS experience through the vast majority of your playthrough, though things might dip a bit in large battles with lots of visual effects.
Something worth noting is that Baldur’s Gate 3 doesn’t currently support the newer version of AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution upscaler, FSR 2.0. Instead, it’s using the original version of the software, which doesn’t look great on anything below Ultra Quality. However,Larian Studios says that FSR 2 support is coming “closer to September 6,“so when it’s added to the game, you can choose a more balanced FSR setting to get even more stable framerateswithoutmaking the game look horrible.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is available on PC now, with the PS5 version scheduled for Sept. 6. It stands tall as one of thebest PC games of 2023, and is a must-play for fans of fantasy RPGs and the D&D universe.
Baldur’s Gate 3 |See at GOG
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Brendan Lowry is a Windows Central writer and Oakland University graduate with a burning passion for video games, of which he’s been an avid fan since childhood. He’s been writing for Team WC since the summer of 2017, and you’ll find him doing news, editorials, reviews, and general coverage on everything gaming, Xbox, and Windows PC. His favorite game of all time is probably NieR: Automata, though Elden Ring, Fallout: New Vegas, and Team Fortress 2 are in the running, too. When he’s not writing or gaming, there’s a good chance he’s either watching an interesting new movie or TV show or actually going outside for once.Follow him on X(Twitter).
