// PC GAMER — GAMING
Forget this GTA 6 stuff, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 just got a hot new update
And Icewind Dale, about which I don't have strong feelings, so.
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There's a lot going on this week, folks. Monday saw a thick glut of Steam Machine news, and today Rockstar switched on the Grand Theft Auto 6 info-hose. I am here to tell you not to care about any of it. Here's the real story: Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 have got new patches.
Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition, Baldur's Gate 2: Enhanced Edition, and Icewind Dale—Edition? You better believe it's Enhanced—all just got a new 2.7 patch courtesy of Beamdog. This is the patch that entered beta last February, now available for all and sundry. Well, I suppose the beta was also available to all and sundry, but now all and sundry are getting it whether they click a button or not.
It's a doozy of a patch, too. Beamdog says that it's focused on quality-of-life updates for the Infinity Engine games this far out (14 years) from their Enhanced Edition releases, and the two big ones in 2.7 are: Steam cloud saves that work how they ought to (GOG cloud saves work "properly", too) and Apple Silicon support on Mac.
Cloud saves on Steam are now controlled, uh, by Steam. That is to say, if you toggle them off in your Steam client settings for BG:EE, they will be off. Turn them on? They'll be on. You might think, "Surely it always worked like this?" but you'd be wrong. Previously, cloud saves were configured in the gameplay menu for the games themselves—the Steam client settings were a kind of vestigial organ. Which is very counterintuitive and not how pretty much every other game on Steam works, so this is a welcome change.
Apple Silicon support, meanwhile, means the games will now run natively on Apple's ARM-based Mac hardware. This was almost certainly done because Apple is set to phase out its Rosetta 2 translation software that lets x86-based applications run on the company's M-series chips (though it does promise to keep it for some older and unmaintained bits of software). Anyway, it's good news—I can't pretend these games didn't already run like a dream on my M1-series MacBook Air, but now they'll be even dreamier, and potentially a little lighter on the ol' battery.
Anyway, I am as ever very pleased to see these classics continue to get care and attention. Here are the full patch notes for 2.7:
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One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.