I tried out GeForce Now's expanded mod support for Baldur's Gate 3, and it's nothing but a good thing for the future of the game
GeForce Now, Nvidia's cloud streaming gaming service, has just implemented support to add even more mods to your (probably already mod-ridden) Baldur's Gate 3 save.
Baldur's Gate 3 on GeForce Now now supports "the same curated mods from Mod.io that are available for Xbox Series X/S consoles". Unfortunately you do need the premium subscription plan to access mods, though, which is any of the paid plans.
Effectively, each plan 'rents' out a digital rig that you use to stream games to your device. The free plan is a very basic non-RTX setup, which is ad-supported, and comes with long queue times and a max session length of a single hour. For $10 a month, you can get 1440p RTX performance, shorter queue times, and a max session length of six hours.
Finally, for $20 a month, you get the shortest queue times, 4K 240 fps RTX-enabled gameplay with DLSS 3, Nvidia Reflect, and Cloud G-Sync. Gaming sessions are limited to eight hours, though, so plan accordingly.
It works out a bit cheaper to get 6-month plans but you can also buy single-day passes if you are travelling for just a day or just generally don't think you will use the service all that much. GeForce Now will only work with Baldur's Gate 3 if you already own it on Steam so there are a few things you have to sort out to play it through the service.
However, having tested it, the new mod support is super seamless. From the mod menu, you can simply open up Mod.io, log into an account and 'subscribe' to mods, adding them to your game.
Given it works through the cloud, mods you have enabled will stay on for subsequent gaming sessions. The first few pages of mod.io are mostly the same as the most popular mods you can find in Baldur's Gate 3 itself, which were previously already enabled on GeForce Now. If you are looking to extend the UI, add new bosses, or play as a polyamorous Tav, you can do so without the new mod database.
There are 311 approved mods available on the Baldur’s Gate 3 built-in mod manager as of the time of writing and there are only 306 Xbox-approved mods on Mod.io right now. There also seem to be some differences between versions on either platform.
However, this grander support is hopefully a great sign for the future of the game, with more info yet to come. "Stay tuned to GFN Thursday for more information on expanding mod support for more of the game’s PC mods at a later time.", says Nvidia. I shall. Could this be the start of more mods being integrated into a variety of Geforce Now games? One can only hope.
Playing the game, you won't actually see a huge expansion of mods from just last week, as we don't know how many from both stores are duplicates, but greater mod support is a bigger incentive for those creating them. The barrier to entry could be a little lower for those wanting to make their own content.
Fine, I'll start another playthrough. It's not like I needed much convincing, anyway.
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