Pact of the Blade does not work without The Hexblade subclass/patron(not to be confused with the Hex spell) because that patron enables the Pact of the Blade weapon to use your warlock's charisma modifier and therefore be effective...that subclass is not in BG3. What that means is that this would be a worthless pact incompatible with BG3 warlocks because it would require significant investment into strength to make the weapon work.
In the interview they say that they're adding Hexblade features to the Pact of the Blade benefits, not that they're adding Hexblade as a Pact without that subclass/patron.
Nick: An example? Warlocks must choose a pact. One of these pacts is the pact of the blade, which allows him to devote himself more to weapons, create a pact weapon related to him, and so on; the part of the pact that was missing was the extra attack: a lot of martial classes have an extra attack available and Warlocks don't. The problem is that the weapons are balanced around the number of attacks per turn, so we added this to make the pact of the blade more interesting.
Interviewer: So have you integrated some of the elements of the hexblade ( a very popular Warlock subclass, but absent in Baldur's Gate 3 nd. Pregianza ) into the normal sword bond? Is that why it's missing from the game?
Nick: Exactly. It won't be possible to make a full Hexblade, but we absolutely researched the class when we implemented the changes to the Warlock. Small details, like attack modifiers, to make the playstyle possible.
Now, this doesn't actually make sense, because Pact of the Blade Warlocks could always get Extra Attack through the Eldritch Invocation: Thirsting Blade.
Additionally, they don't mention anything about using your Charisma modifier, which is *the* benefit of being a Hexblade... Edit: my b, they *do* mention modifiers.
