It’ll be the cheapest place, by an absurd margin, to play Baldur’s Gate 3.
Series S is the cheapest way to play the game by an absurd margin? Steam Deck is only about $100 more and it plays the game just fine.
Absurd is too strong of a word, but 100$ ain’t nothing. Not for everyone.
It’s literally 1/3rd more expensive and thats not an insignificant amount. If your rent increased by 1/3rd tomorrow you’d probably be pissed and if you had a 33.33 percent chance of getting struck by lightning by stepping outside tomorrow you’d probably stay indoors that day.
$100, plus the cost of the mandatory microSD or SSD you’ll need to add to even install the game on Deck, plus the $50 discount for the Series S if you have a modicum of patience. The difference is more like $175-200, and last year the Series S was $100 off for Black Friday. Assuming the game is targeting holiday 2023 for Xbox, you could potentially grab the Series S + BG3 for under $300.
I’ve played this on my deck, and it is playable, but the frame rate was not stable unless it capped it 30 and the graphics had to be dialed back a bit. If the S can hit 60 then it’s already a better version.
I play at 900p60. Turn literally everything to low or off except textures at medium. Enable the AMD upscaling to the highest quality setting (forget what it’s called). Be sure to turn off Antialiasing (don’t really need it at high resolutions) and God rays. Turn off all optional things but those two are the most important. Also, if BG3 is installed to an SD card, then enable slow HDD mode.
It still stutters a little when transitioning to cut scenes, but I believe that exists in all PC versions.
Edit: And I have made it (what I think is) mostly through Act 2. I’ve also hosted an online session with my friend (who also plays on Steam Deck using my settings) and my husband (gaming laptop) with no issues.
I was just playing it from a mates library, going to wait for the Series X version now to carry on. Cheers though.
It’s only able to hold a relatively stable 30fps in act 1. As soon as you hit act 2 it struggles to escape the teens, even on low settings. It was so bad that I had to abandon playing on Deck and move to my PC.
Asking out of genuine ignorance here: is there a setup that allows a 100+ GB game to be played on the 64GB Steam Deck?
You can plug in an SD card and install it there, it will have longer load times but shouldn’t affect gameplay much otherwise.
Edit: You can also expand the USB slots and get an external SSD
128GB micro SD cards are like $12. 512GB is maybe 40$. Can get a 1TB SD card for $100 but I think the 512 is a good middle ground between price and storage.
Yeah, 256 is around $20 last I looked, too. Not bad. Been considering getting one, probably not for anything with an install this large, but it’s nice to know I’d have the option.
You can also replace the internal storage yourself. The cost doesn’t get that meaningful until 1 TB + for the new drive.
USB-C SSD:
https://www.kingston.com/en/ssd/xs2000-portable-usb-c-solid-state-drive
I set up a 2TB Win 11 install.
God damn, I’m still somehow extremely impressed by how small storage has gotten. That’s wild.
Doesn’t even need dedicated power… runs off the port.
Yes, a 256GB+ SD Card. Be sure to enable slow HDD mode in BG3 settings if you’re installing to an SD Card. (It will help loading screen times at the cost of using more RAM.)
Not currently, no. They burned enough dev cycles trying to get split screen co-op on the S that now BOTH the S and X versions are delayed, which I guess is better than “not happening at all.”
The S has every right to exist, but as soon as it starts interfering with Series X development (which has been for a while now), it’s time for it to go.
Microsoft needs to cut it loose like the boat anchor it is and just release a discless Series X and call it good.
It’s one game. By and large developers have managed to get games running pretty well and feature complete ok the S. Some really impressive attempts like the Cyberpunk version. Everyone is thowing the baby out with the bathwater over one game.
It’s one game that actually utilizes the power of the series x, and isn’t watered down to work on the S.
Think of all the games that were made worse because they HAD to run on lower quality hardware
Quite frankly, I don’t think that’s true.
We’ve got games coming out at the moment that use Unreal 5 and it’s next gen features that are still coming out on the S like Immortals or Remnant 2. They have reduced fidelity on the S as expected but they still run fine there. BG3 is literally held up over one issue, the split-screen, that they’re apparently still working on to see if they can patch it back in post launch, MS clearly just let them launch without it to take a win back from Sony.
Modern games sucks. I truly believe this push for graphics has worsened game development and quality.
Every time we get more horsepower they mostly devote it to graphics that look slightly more spectacular. Booooooring
Wait until you hear about all of the dev cycles spent getting games on the Switch.
In most cases, Nintendo platforms are ignored by 3rd parties. Non-Nintendo games rarely sell well there:
https://www.vgchartz.com/article/449937/the-switchs-growing-third-party-problem/
All sorts of “impossible” poets were being made to switch a few years ago. Witcher 3, Doom, Wolfenstein 2, etc. The games have moved on to the point it’s not feasible anymore, but they would put them on there if they could.
All it becomes is a platform with its own strengths and tradeoffs should you decide to target it. It doesn’t mean that it’s time for it to go.
The series S is the only thing keeping spec sheets in check. Without the Series S, Id say the steam deck and low end PC gamers suffer.
My cheap mainstream laptop runs the game on mid settings just fine. It cost ~500 USD.
Good luck installing BG3 on that 64GB eMMC, mate.
I installed it onto a 256GB SD card. The Deck has an sd card slot.
Sure. My point was that a $400 Steam Deck can’t install the game. There needs to be some additional purchase.
Am I misreading your comment? You’re saying Series S is not the cheapest because Steam Deck is more expensive? Did you have a typo? Am I suffering CO poisoning?
I’m said the Xbox is not the cheapest, by a huge margin. It is, in fact, the cheapest by a $100 margin, which is not huge.
It’s not a $100 margin if you have to add in an SSD to play it.
I’d imagine it doesn’t look very nice on a big screen TV while providing decent performance on the Steam Deck.
Or you can stream it to your phone/laptop/android tv via GFN. As long as you bought it on Steam and your internet connection is ok.
AAA PC exclusive titles also have the right to exists.
I miss playing good first person shooters…
I don’t blame the lack of good shooters on consoles. Consoles never interfered with that before. I blame the popularity of Battle Royale. Everything is a fucking BR now. And it’s not like they just took the gameplay style; they also took the jank.
All the best new shooters are indy developed boomer shooters with retro aesthetics. And I’m getting kinda over that, too. The genre needs some new ideas.
I miss playing good shooters since the PS360 era, way before the battle royale genre entered the game.
It’s when the genre exploded on consoles and it was when the genre was overly simplified and dumbed down
Before, some multiplatform FPS changed between the PC version and the console version. The console versions often had maps changed or even completely removed (and enemies where altered too) because they where too much for a controller
Everything has the right to exist, whether it can financially justify the development costs is anoyjer matter.
Me too, but some of my favorites were console exclusive. There’s really no reason for those games to be PC or console exclusive these days. The financial math tends to not work out either.
Some games simply won’t work on controllers, though. Like Arma, or Tarkov.
If it literally can’t be done on a controller, then sure, but I’ve now seen people happy with the controls for Age of Empires II on an Xbox pad, so Arma can probably be done too. I’ve never played Tarkov, so I can’t speak to it.
Tarkov mostly because of how you loot. When you kill a player and start looting there are a bunch of nested containers that you need to rapidly search. You need to click and drag things out of pockets into your rig, maybe you want to pack the victims backpack with their own stuff and then put that backpack inside your own… It’s a lot of fast clicking and dragging. I’m not sure how you’d make that work on a controller. I mean, I know how, but having a cursor controlled by a joystick would make looting very slow.
That being said I have no problem with games being on all platforms. And also you could potentially make a KB/M game for consoles just plug those into the console. I remember Socom on PS2 supported keyboards for text chat, and there was that short lived Eve FPS on PS3 that supported the mouse. But you’d still have to make it support the controller by default.
having a cursor controlled by a joystick would make looting very slow
Perhaps, but aim down sights allowed for controllers to toggle two different sets of aiming speeds on demand, and Destiny-style cursors allowed for fast inventory management on character equipment screens that typically only worked on a mouse. There’s probably a way to do it that’s a little bit different than just mapping a mouse cursor to an analog stick that requires devs to be a bit more clever about it. The wildest one to me is that Baldur’s Gate 3 looks entirely different when using a mouse and keyboard as opposed to using a controller. The likes of Elder Scrolls come up with one UI that can be controlled with either device, but even if I think that UI works great in both realms, people who’ve been playing those games for 20 years have a certain expectation for how it should look and work.
Is FPS not literally the most overdone video game genre yet? How much more choices do you want to get spoiled with?
By an absurd margin? Motherfucker the steam deck is $400. If you buy a series s over a deck you’re a fool.
The Series S is very frequently on sale for $50 off, sometimes more, and often comes with a bundled controller or game.
The Deck is only playable in Act 1. The frame rate in other acts struggles to reach 20 FPS, even on low settings. Also, the $400 deck you’re referencing cannot even install the game unless you buy an accompanying microSD (which I can’t imagine provides a good BG3 experience) or an SSD which you then crack open the steam deck to install (which will be too intimidating to most casual, non-tech people).
$450+ is a more accurate price point for playing BG3 on Steam Deck; 50% more than the Xbox MSRP, which is significantly discounted every few weeks. The Xbox will also offer a much more convenient experience to those who want to play the game on their TVs, and the game will look nicer on that hardware.
The Deck is an awesome little device, but you’re overselling it here, and ignoring a lot of nuance.
I played the entire game on the steam deck AMA. I found it to be acceptable in act 3. I didn’t check the fps but it felt like 30-40
Curious to hear what settings you were using? Because after this steam deck fanatic kept harping about how it was a perfect experience from start to finish if you have the right settings, I went back and tried it on my Deck. In act 3, in a sparsely populated area of the city, I was hovering in the low 20s with frequent dips into the teens. With everything set to low (except textures on mediu) and all the visual flourishes like god rays, bloom, etc disabled. FSR couldn’t even improve things.
I mean it’s definitely not a great experience on the steam deck. I would imagine even the Series S can run the game better than the Deck can. Especially at 1080p since the deck only has an 800p screen. (Yes you can dock it but the experience will be even worse than the already reportedly poor visuals on the 800p screen)
If that report about the Series S losing split screen is true that seems like a pretty good compromise while also allowing a decent quality single player experience for Series S owners.
It is a great experience, I do not know where this sentiment keeps coming from.
How far are you in the game? It gets worse the further you get in the game.
I’m in the city.
And what exactly do you consider “a great experience”? Because in act 2, with the game looking as shit as it possibly can, it still struggles to stay above 20FPS. I haven’t bothered trying act 3 on Deck, but act 3 is even more resource-intensive than act 2 so I can’t imagine it fares any better. “A great experience” is admittedly subjective, so I can’t say you haven’t had what you consider to be a great experience on Deck, but vaguely describing it as “a great experience” is negligent at best and outright disingenuous at worst. My act 2 experience on Deck was abysmal, and I think most opinions on that level of performance would agree.
For those that don’t care about Linux, or portability, or the steam deck being a PC, and just want to play BG3 on their TV for as cheap as possible, the Series S is by far the best option. That the game will also look and run significantly better than it does on steam deck is icing on the cake.
You need to change some settings. I forget which, but I think it’s fsr completely off and a few others. Then I capped it at 40 fps and it stays there while looking pretty good even in act 3.
The steam deck is about half as powerful as the Series S. If you don’t want mobile gaming, there’s zero reason to buy the steam deck over the Series S.
The steam library, full Linux operating system, and emulation of current gen Nintendo games is far from zero reason.
And if a person doesn’t care about the steam library, linux operating system or emulation? If they just want to play BG3 and other modern games on their couch, running natively on their machine in a convenient, no-fuss manner? Will you admit that, for that person, the Steam Deck is a terrible option and they’d be far better served, both financially and visually, by buying an Xbox Series S, even at MSRP?
No, not at all. The deck is much more convenient and no fuss. It has sleep / resume. I can be in the middle of a battle in BG3, put the thing into sleep and set it down for a week. Press resume and I’m instantly back to where I left off. No turning on the TV, booting the console, starting the game, loading your save. And the portability is convenient even for just in the house. Play on the couch, at the table with coffee and breakfast, in bed before falling asleep.
Then when you factor in the value you get from being able to play modern games comfortably while traveling, I stand by my point that you’re a fool if you buy a series s over a deck.
Feel free to elaborate on how the Deck is convenient to someone that isn’t interested in playing on a tiny, washed-out 800p display with sub-2 hour battery life while playing BG3, and how playing on a TV is less fuss with the Steam Deck than the Xbox. Quick resume is a completely different topic that would be irrelevant, even if the Xbox didn’t already have the exact same feature.
Then when you factor in the value you get from being able to play modern games comfortably while traveling
Worthless to someone that only wants to play at home on their TV, or isn’t tethered to an outlet. It seems you’re wholly incapable of comprehending that there are people with different use-cases and priorities than your own, and for those people the Steam Deck is a vastly inferior and costlier option. Buying the device that best meets their needs doesn’t make them a fool. It’s astounding that you don’t get this.
This is wild.
I do almost all my gaming on the deck. It’s great because of what it is as a handheld. If you don’t intend to use those features, the lack of power makes a serious dent in the value it provides. And “no fuss” is correct compared to other PC handhelds, but crazy compared to an Xbox.
Yeah, this person is so deluded in their steam deck zealotry that they’ve lost touch with reality. In one comment they argue the steam deck’s value is in its Linux OS and ability to emulate Switch games, then in the next they argue that the thing is “much more convenient and no fuss”. The only convenience is in the portability. If you aren’t interested in sacrificing power for portability, that offers zero value. As for emulation, arguing that is no fuss would be laughable. Even native steam games can be iffy, requiring troubleshooting like swapping proton versions and entering launch commands. There’s a reason ProtonDB exists, and the Xbox doesn’t need something comparable.
The Steam Deck is great for what it is, but the only console it compares (and is vastly superior) to is the Switch.
It’s basically all I use, and most of the headaches are more about publisher hostility than any actual issues with Linux (no, you not being able to install your fucking rootkit is not a failing). I basically don’t even look at any of those statuses because I don’t feel like I need to. Almost everything actually does just work.
But we’re comparing it to a console lol. That, to the point of baked in performance settings tuned to the exact hardware, are their whole purpose.
This person is so deluded in their Xbox zelotry they lost touch with common sense.
I would probably save up for the seriesX or PS5. If the S is already getting iffy here, what content are they gonna take out in future games? Why take that chance instead of saving for a system that’s actually convenient? I’d say avoid the series S.
The only reason the S is iffy here is because of couch co-op, which is already virtually extinct in the AAA space. The S is fine for what it is. But I also wouldn’t buy one at MSRP. I own 2 Series S consoles, but I paid $350 new for both and got a free headset with one of them. At $200, which is what it will likely be selling for again this black friday, it’s a steal. It’s twice as powerful as the Deck and it can properly utilize game pass.
Sure, the Steam Deck is cool, but a Series S can actually be bought in most of the world. Last I checked, Valve only sells it in less than 20 countries
Article is well written, and I agree with most of it actually.
Microsoft did the right thing by softening their stance on system parity. Insisting on it would have hurt the Xbox further along the line, but now devs know they can still release on Xbox if they can’t get one or two features to run on the S.
I didn’t know it wasn’t on Xbox, that’s GOTTA be hurtin em. I’m sure they’ll learn from this and make whatever exceptions need to be made far earlier next time.
If I’m not mistaken the only reason it’s not already on Xbox is because Microsoft insisted it needs to have shared screen on all models, which proved to be problematic and eventually impossible on S, but they refused to release it on X in the meantime.
Basically it’s very much Microsoft’s own doing.
We don’t know that it’s impossible on the S. It may yet happen sometime after launch.
Oh I see, I thought the dev team had pretty much given up on it.
They’re still trying to get it to work and are working with Microsoft engineers, from the last I heard.
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It’s not in PS5 yet either. Doesn’t come out for another week.
Ah, gotcha. IDK I’ve had it on PC for 2 years now haha.
It’s already been hurting them a lot it sounds like. I don’t think Baldur’s Gate is the first game to not release on Xbox because they couldn’t achieve system parity with the S. If they’ve really softened on it, then that’s a good idea. Better late than never.
Yeah feature parity made sense in the beginning so the S didn’t get left behind but at this point its place feels secure to me. It’s the cheap option. I think most gamers understand that and accept the trade-offs that are inherent in that choice.
Also while it’s neat that they made the game as pretty as they did, this is at the end of the day an isometric turn based crpg. It shouldnt be that hard to scale down.
It’s not exactly isometric considering you can tilt and zoom the camera and get it all the way down to over the shoulder adventure style, allowing you to see off into those beautiful vistas. It has some performance issues even on PC in some places like the mountains and the namesake city.
Just gotta change some settings and it’s perfectly playable throughout the game.
