Does Baldur's Gate 3 have ray tracing?

Baldur's Gate 3 is easily the most ambitious and expansive role-playing experience created by Larian Studios, and that's saying a lot, considering the studio's pedigree with the RPG genre. From its moment-to-moment gameplay to its branching narrative, Baldur's Gate 3 is a stellar example of what a quality role-playing adventure should feel like.

What makes the game even more immersive and engaging is its top-notch visuals and presentation, bringing it on par with some of the best and most impressive-looking AAA games out there. Capitalizing on the modern PC and console hardware, Baldur's Gate 3 boasts some really amazing visuals.

While the game's baked lighting does the job just perfectly, what can alleviate the visuals to a different level is the addition of ray tracing. Unfortunately, at the time of writing this article, Baldur's Gate 3 does not feature support for ray tracing.

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Baldur's Gate 3 does not feature support for ray tracing and advanced global illumination on Windows PC or the PlayStation 5

Baldur's Gate 3's lack of ray tracing support does feel a tad bit underwhelming. However, the game still manages to look incredibly amazing, thanks to Larian Studios' proprietary Divinity 4.0 engine. If you have enough headroom to max out texture resolution and lighting quality on PC, the game can look absolutely breathtaking.

However, with real-time ray tracing, Larian Studios could've enhanced the visuals, especially in the shadows and ambient occlusion department. The game also features an average SSR (screen space reflections) implementation, which could've benefited from RT reflections and advanced global illumination.

Although it's sad to see the game miss out on real-time ray tracing, even on PCs, it is very much possible that Larian Studios might end up adding support for RT in the future.

However, it goes without mentioning that with the addition of RT, Baldur's Gate might also get a bump in its current PC requirements, which are as follows:

Minimum Requirements:

• GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 / AMD Radeon RX 480 (4GB+ of VRAM)
• CPU: Intel Core i5-4690 / AMD FX 8350
• RAM: 8GB
• OS: Windows 10 64-bit
• Storage: 150GB available space
• DirectX: Version 11
• Notes: SSD required

Recommended requirements:

• GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Super / AMD Radeon RX 5700 xt (8GB+ of VRAM)
• CPU: Intel Core i7-8700K / AMD Ryzen 5 3600
• RAM: 16GB
• OS: Windows 10 64-bit
• Storage: 150GB available space
• DirectX: Version 11
• Notes: SSD required

The game boasts modest to high system requirements, especially for the recommended settings, and this will undoubtedly go up with support for RT. However, Larian Studios' Divinity engine is quite scalable; hence, PC performance will potentially be rock-solid, even after the addition of ray tracing.