Sven Vinka: Separate screen – “is mandatory” for Baldur’s Gate 3 on Xbox Series S

Currently, the Xbox versions of Baldur’s Gate 3 are hanging a question mark. They will be released, but their output is delayed due to Xbox Series S, which can hardly cope with joint work in a separate screen at an acceptable level of performance.

An additional difficulty is that Microsoft wants to achieve functionality parity in versions of games for Series X and S – so that there is an assumption that the Larian cannot release one Xbox version of the Baldur’s Gate 3 with a cooperative mode with a separate screen, and the other without it.

The last time we heard from Larian that she was working on this issue and weighing some "compromises" – It was assumed that a joint game with a separate screen on the Xbox Series S could be canceled. Therefore, journalists when talking with Larian head, Swen VinCke, asked him about this.

"It is not simple", – answered Vinka after a small pause.

The team worked a lot to work, but she was still engaged in this. And the problem with optimization is that you are finishing one thing, and then a new one appears. So here we are dealing with a situation where we just work. The team will cope because they managed to force Divinity: Original Sin 2 to work on Switch – but it took time.

Does this mean that Vinka is sure that this will happen?

I’m sure the team. If possible, they will do it. But this is a very big game. The other day, someone told me something, and I thought it was a very good way to say about it. They talked about Call of Duty and said that every time a player enters the game, a small zone forms around him, and the more such zones, the slower it becomes more slowly. In games such as BG3, everything is fine if one character walks around the city, but if the party is divided and four characters go in four different directions around the city, and they begin to do the same as me – fire balls, [and t.D.] – these are a lot of simulations that should occur on one screen. And it loads. This requires memory.

And here is an elephant in the room: if Larian cannot provide a standard joint mode of a joint game with a separate screen on Xbox Series S, whether it can, if it wants, is remembering the desire of Microsoft to parity of functions – remove it?

"If we talk about the ratio of capabilities, then the separate screen is a prerequisite for us, ”he said,“ and we do not want to release the game without a separate screen, so we would not do this".