A public service announcement here for anyone taking this Thursday off work to play Baldur's Gate 3 on its PC launch - beware that the game is a hefty download, and there's no pre-loading available.

On PC, at least, Baldur's Gate 3 weighs in at 122GB. It's global launch time is 4pm UK on the 3rd August - that's 5pm CET, 11am Eastern or 8am Pacific.

If you've been playing via Early Access, your saves won't carry over - but "so much has changed that it's really worth it to start afresh", developer Larian has said.

From here on out, though, it should be plain sailing with save files - with cross-save possible as soon as Baldur's Gate arrives on PlayStation 5 (on 6th September) and Mac (at a later date).

As a reminder, Larian isn't talking too much about the game's Xbox version yet - with work still to be done to get its Series S version up to scratch.

Larian's latest blog post states that Baldur's Gate 3 is still on track to be Steam Deck Verified at launch. Split-screen will be disabled, however.

There's detail, too, on the game's mind flayer abilities - which you willl be able to tap into (at a cost). A hidden skill tree lets you power up the parasites in your brain after tracking them down throughout the Forgotten Realms.

If that sort of thing is for you, there are 25 mind flayer abilities to unlock themed around manipulation, health restoration and psionics. You can even turn into a displacer beast. But all of this comes at a cost - and while Larian is keeping the plot details under wraps, it sounds like certain party members will not be too chuffed with your brain bug experimentation. Fun!

Larian recently discussed the ending of Baldur's Gate 3, and how many of its 17,000 variants actually constitute separate story branches.