I has been reading a lot of threads about this subject but I see that most of them are staying in the surface, debating about who likes what. I want to bring some insight into the debate.
I like Baldur's Gate. I love it, in fact. I like it as it is, with it's values and it's mistakes. It's a game that made me love this genre and there is no other game that, for me, ever surpassed the second part. You can imagine how excited I was when I saw the announcement.
Now I am reading a lot of people, fans of larian but not necessarily of Baldur's Gate wanting to change Baldur's Gate to their tastes. Would that still be Baldur's gate?. It would be a different game, one that I might like or not, but certainly not the game that made me come here.
Each game has different gameplay aesthetics and each player has their own liking about those aesthetics. All game aesthetics' combination (including different gradients of it) are completely valid, but they appeal to different player profiles. Turn based and Real Time with Pause are completely valid game mechanics but they offer different game aesthetics. You may like one of those, both, none, or prefer one over the other. Maybe you don't even care because you are here because of the narrative aesthetics or the fantasy ones. And that's OK and it is perfectly understandable. But, even if they are both RPG mechanics, they differ in the core aesthetics delivered by their respective games and they appeal differently to different players.
Here we have something else above this choice of target. We have a brand. The Baldur's Gate brand. The players who loved those games are players whose tastes are in synch with the game aesthetics provided by the original game. You may like the game but not like all what the game has to offer, but then, certainly you won't enjoy that game as much as other players who does would. And because of this, changing the system poses a very big problem: in order to attract other people to the new game (in this case, the lovers of DOS), they are going to sacrifice mechanics and aesthetics that are what the most engaged fans of the original games love. And that's not good at all.
I has been playing video games for three decades and I seen many, many brands. And when this happens, the brand goes for worse. I am not talking about the game itself: I am certain Larian can create a masterpiece no matter what. But the brand becomes broken: the fanbase is split in two, fans fight with each other and no matter what the devs do in the future, it will never please anyone anymore. And that's the logical consequence: the two parts of the fanbase loved it for different reasons, usually not compatible between themselves because one excludes the other. I saw that in brands that are legends in the videogame market: sonic the hedgehog, resident evil, final fantasy and the list goes on. On the contrary, for brands that are faithful to their roots, they keep on bringing out games and the fanbase is there on every iteration to make the purchase. Look at how pokemon sells millions no matter what they do as long as they respect their core.
So, TLDR; if Larian uses the brand of Baldur's Gate they should stick to it's roots and keep the core game design as the fans loved it. Else, they should just create any other brand, even if it's based in the forgotten realms universe, as Black Isle did with Neverwinter Nights. But please, don't split the fanbase.
This is what i think.. Impostors claiming themselves as a fan of Need for Speed in a new announced Need for Speed X game. Then said driving suxs and the game is best played like a Flight simulator and it should now be able to be fly like a plane. And they also claim what makes Need for Speed memorable is not because of it's driving but because of the world, the people, the story.
These fake impostors are really so funny.. I think i should do the same when DOS3 get announce?. I would tell Larian that what makes DOS great was not the Turn-Based but the world, the characters, the story were what made Original Sins great and therefore it should be played like a first person shooter aka Overwatch ane keep whining and arguing with the core fans why TB suxs and it should be played as a shooting game. Now how is that?
