Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Split-Screen PS5 Feedback After Act 1 (Spoiler-Free)

My fiancée and I binged the game over the 3 day weekend and just finished Act 1. We played in split screen; I've previously finished the game on PC, she had only played a few hours in early access a year or two ago, so she was the one who did most of the talking and decision-making. This had some varying consequences on each of our experiences. We've been having a great time but have some feedback on QoL improvements and have encountered a few bugs described below.

- Every time one of us switched characters, summoned anything, grouped/ungrouped characters, etc. the entire game would freeze for a brief period. Usually 1-5 seconds.

- The cursor would stop working so I couldn’t cast spells, jump, even move sometimes, etc. This would effectively make it so that we would have to restart the game unless we wanted to get through a combat encounter without one or more useless characters. This usually happened in combat and would happen independently for different party members, but happened to both of us multiple times.

- We would both have to initiate going to camp and sleeping to trigger our respective quests at times. The dark urge and oathbreaker quests wouldn’t trigger for me as the second player until I specifically initiated sleep. I wouldn’t have figured this out if I hadn’t seen that other people were having the same problem.

- Audio was frequently missing / cut out, especially for the second player (me). Player one seemed to almost always have their audio play correctly, but mine would stop even if player one was listening or wasn’t doing anything else.

- Please make R3/Alt to highlight and label objects a toggle. It's a real hassle to keep R3 clicked in while trying to control the camera every time you want to search a room, new area, bodies after a combat encounter, etc.

- I felt like it was extremely difficult to increase party members attitudes towards me as the “player two.” I mostly let my fiancée be the face of the party, go in first, etc. since I’ve already played through the game. This was fine for me except it seems like I didn’t really develop a strong relationship with any characters at the camp. For example, I controlled my custom character and Karlach, and I talked to her every day in camp, but at the end of Act 1, she still had a neutral attitude towards me.

- When a player character would turn invisible, they would sometimes leave behind a ghost. It would basically leave a copy of the invisible character model in the place that they originally turned invisible.

- It would say “listen (empty)” sometimes when the second player wants to listen to the conversation.

- It would be great to be able to temporarily follow another player who isn’t under your control, like in WoW. You can do this by giving control of all characters in the party to player one then later taking them back, but that’s much more tedious than a quick, brief follow option in the Action menu for QoL.

- At the top of the screen, the names of our online accounts were overlaid on more text. I couldn't tell what was underneath, but I’d rather not see the account name on the screen at all.

- Sometimes the aforementioned account names would cover the turn order pictures in combat, making it difficult to see whose turn it was on occasion.

- The list of objects found when holding X to do the circular search didn’t show what had/hadn’t already been searched (e.g. with an asterisk)

This has really been bugging me! Would love a way to turn the account name display off.

Yes, it's crazy how long it freezes for sometimes. Summoning a mage hand or a spiritual weapon or a familiar would just stop the game for several seconds. Switching characters did as well, though usually for not as long. However, asking a character to leave or join the party does cause it to freeze for pretty long. It also freezes for the other player when one of us fast travels to a waypoint. Wild Magic Rages and the Sorcerer's Wild Magic Surges sometimes cause a freeze as well.


This happened to me once with the Deathstalker's Mantle and we just had to reload because it persisted even after combat was over. I couldn't move, cast spells, jump, anything. Couldn't even move the camera while controlling that character. I assumed it was an issue with that item, because it only happened once it turned me invisible, and that was my first time using it. I haven't used it since. But I guess it's potentially not why that happened?


This would happen to both of us with dialogue. Sometimes it would be every other line. If one of us was trading while the other was talking, usually all the audio would cut out. Sometimes the narrator's voice would be mute for no apparent reason.


YES, PLEASE. A toggle would be so much better.


I've seen that too. Thought it was intentional - like showing where the enemies last saw you. Is it not?


Agreed, have been having some of the same issues with this.



Yes, please fix this! My wife and I keep searching what the other one has already searched.


To add my own feedback, Intelligence skills don't show up in our skills tabs at all. I know I'm proficient in either Investigation or Arcana but I can't remember which and I have no way to check. I have no idea what Gale is proficient in. I've read online that this also happens on PC when using a controller, so this seems a widespread issue.

Balanced difficulty seems too punishing. Explorer mode helped us a lot, but it's crazy that we needed our HP doubled to not struggle through every combat. I understand it's a tactical combat game, but it seems like there should be more in-between difficulties. I play actual D&D every week, and we do just fine. Part of that is because a DM can react in real time to how we're doing. I don't want to have to use optimized builds and intensive strategies for every battle. Something between Explorer and Balanced would be good.

Why does falling prone initiate a Concentration check? It doesn't in the tabletop game because you don't take damage. It's pretty annoying to walk through a grease puddle after a battle and lose your concentration because you fell down.

We also had a glitch where throwing a potion at an ally who isn't unconscious doesn't heal them. I thought maybe this was by design, but then I saw an enemy do it on a conscious ally and it worked for them. Is it maybe because it was a "critical miss?" I thought that didn't matter because the potion bursts in a little radius anyway. We always miss those potion throws and they still heal downed allies.

Occasionally in battle I won't be able to cast spells for some reason. Even though I have an action and spell slots available, it will say "Not available" when I hover over a spell to cast and it won't work if I try to use it. This happens when I'm not silenced or anything, and it also applies to cantrips. I haven't yet been able to figure out what triggers it and why it just seems to go away by the next turn usually.

Overall, fantastic game. It really is quite an achievement, so we really appreciate all you've done Larian!

That would make sense, I hadn’t noticed any enemies interacting with the “ghost” left behind so I assumed it was a bug. It’d be cool to see how my last known location affects the enemies actions.

But I’m glad I’m not the only one who experienced the cursor glitch causing us to have to completely restart the application. Hopefully that helps bring some attention to the issue because it’s gotten worse over the past few days. Within 20 minutes of starting the game up it seems like one of our characters just won’t be able to move, cast spells, etc. We’ve sometimes been able to get through a combat encounter without the cursor by selecting a spell then using left/right on the d-pad to target an enemy.

We tried just sharing a controller last night instead of split-screen and it seemed like there were no issues with the cursor, audio, or the game freezing when changing/adding characters. Unfortunately we might have to finish the playthrough this way until these bugs are fixed.

Now that it's been a few more days, I'll add that the freezing seems to be getting worse, and the issue with the cursor not working is becoming more frequent. Reloading or even relaunching the game is the only fix. We are in the Underdark right now and just had it happen to multiple characters in one battle where we couldn't control them.

The freezes feel like garbage collection in C# to me.

Modern TVs have the same issue with their UI.

Same here, it seems like the cursor issue might be related to the freezing issue. Things like summoning a spiritual weapon (where you have to use the cursor to select a location followed by an immediate freeze after selecting) seem to frequently break the cursor. We've mostly stopped summoning and doing things that are more "risky" for causing this bug, and it does seem to have worked somewhat. We didn't miss summoning that much anyways since it would freeze for over 30 seconds when only summoning a single thing.

In another thread about split screen (yes, there are more than one which shows the disappointment we have) another member posted this link.
Along with making sure to keep these threads up near the top so they are visible to Larian, please fill this out and send it to them directly. Also, make sure to choose Feedback and not Bug.

https://larian.com/support/baldur-s-gate-3#modal