Since Baldur’s Gate 3 has come out, there have been two major asks from players. While Mac players wanted a full release and support, many others already playing expressed an interest in changing their characters’ appearance. I was mostly content with the way my character turned out, but others were not so lucky. For example, former TMS writer Madeline Carpou quickly came to regret the haircut she gave to her Half-Orc, Olive. Not looking to wait for Larian to address this, one of the first popular mods allowed players greater customization capabilities. Now, the latest game patch has addressed these two desires of players.
On August 29, Larian Studios (the creators of BG3) released Community Update #24. Here, they address a number of long-term issues, cut content rumors, and more. Additionally, Larian shared its approach to community feedback and revealed the ability to change the characters’ look once the campaign started was in the works. The studio gave no date as to when this would happen. However, less than one month later, Larian revealed this feature and full Mac support were now live with Patch 3! Like the first two patches, this note was so long that it didn’t fit on Steam. So, be careful when trekking to the website because there are spoilers in the long version.
Changing your appearance
Until now, several gameplay-related elements of your character could be changed. Players could respec stats/abilities through Withers—as long as you picked him up in Act 1—and of course character armor and sleepwear. (Don’t sleep on the dyes!) Now, with Magic Mirror, players can change their gender, voice, and most elements of their physical appearance except race/subrace and body type. This means you can change your body art, genitals, skin/face, eyes, makeup, and hair, including facial hair. Additionally, for races that include tail and horn customizations, that’s changeable too!
Patch notes emphasized that cosmetic differences due to your choices in the game will not be changeable. So if you let anyone take your eye by accident or as part of a nasty bargain, you have to live with that. In the notes, Larian wrote, “There’s no Magic Mirroring those big life decisions away.” Another restriction is that players cannot change the physical appearance of hirelings, full illithids (if you know you know), and Origin Characters. You can still work around this with mods, just not with the Magic Mirror. Players will find this device sitting at camp. Mine was near Mizora.
I know some people will be really bothered by this, but I like that the Origin Character stays as is. For one, it prevents people from changing the skin color of people like Wyll. Also, their physical transformations tend to be related to the story. Shadowheart, Astarion, and Wyll come to mind. The designs of these characters take the personality and background of these characters in a way that not all players will. (Looking at everyone who thinks Astarion had dark hair before crossing Cazador’s path.)
Mac support comes to the Sword Coast
In addition to the rollout of Magic Mirror, BG3 is now fully supported on Mac. Until this point, many Mac users were experiencing issues with cross-save and general compatibility issues. TikTok users offered some janky solutions like using an ice and towel or cloud gaming options. (The latter is not a bad idea to try for those with lower-end computers.)
Mac users looking to play the full version of this game on their device should fully uninstall and reinstall the game. Yes, this includes mods. Unfortunately, like the full PC release, this means previous save files will not be compatible. I’m not sure how many people this effects because many Mac users wanting to play decided to wait rather than put their computer through the stress of a pre-release version of the game.
In fully rolling out Mac support, the minimum and recommended requirements increased, too. The details are on the Steam store page. The biggest differences are increased needs with the processor, OS version, and storage. Xbox users looking for the BG3 port need to hold out a bit longer for a big rollout like Larian Studios did with PlayStation. Y’all are still in a better place than Switch users who might never get this game.
(via Steam, featured image: Larian Studios screencap by Alyssa Shotwell)
