The birds are shining, the trees are singing, the sun is swaying in the breeze: it’s the year 1999, and Baldur’s Gate has just got another patch. Everything is perfect, and nothing hurts.
Wait, no, my mistake. It’s 2026, and everything is bad. Good news, though: the Baldur’s Gate patch thing is actually true. 14 years after it released (and 28 years since the original came out), Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition has a new 2.7 patch in beta. So too do Baldur’s Gate 2: Enhanced Edition and Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition. “We’re truly sorry it took this long,” write the devs. “With 2026 marking 14 years since BG:EE first launched on PC, we want to thank you for staying with us on this journey.”
Which, let me be the first to say: hell yeah. Old bangers getting new patches? I’m all about that, and this new update has at least one fix that’s very significant for me specifically (you have to be allowed to write a news post just for yourself sometimes—keeps morale up). Specifically, 2.7 brings native Apple Silicon support to the majority of Beamdog’s Enhanced Edition suite—no more running the Intel build via Apple’s Rosetta translation layer, like some kind of mediaeval serf.
The patch also makes the games’ Steam cloud functionality work like, well, every other game. Up to now, getting cloud saves going on the Infinity Engine collection required checking a box in the in-game settings—now it’s entirely dependent on whether you activate them in the Steam client. It might not sound like much, but it’s happened more than once that I’ve installed the games and worried that my saves had been lost before remembering I have to go and check the Steam cloud box in settings to get them. So, you know, I’m spared ever having to face that trauma again in future.
The only bad news is that Planescape: Torment doesn’t yet have an equivalent beta, but Beamdog says it hopes to get that going later on. More promisingly, the studio detailed its philosophy towards similar updates going forward: “Our goal is to keep these classics running smoothly amid evolving technical requirements and operating systems on both PC and mobile… We’re focused on improving the overall quality-of-life experience.”
So no sweeping overhauls—which you wouldn’t want for these classics anyway—but maybe some more tweaks to keep things ship-shape down the line. My incredibly pernickety request? I’d like an easy way to toggle BG1’s original UI back on in place of the Siege of Dragonspear one that replaced it when I bought that DLC. Why? Nostalgia. That’s really it.
Read the full article here
