Larian is making Baldur's Gate 3 now and Baldur's Gate is such a beloved franchise. How are you going to live up with the fans' expectations?
Swen: I don't think we can live up to the expectations. I think that's impossible. Those expectations are soaring through to the roof. For instance, some fans want there to be over 500 hours' worth of content for a single playthrough but our budget simply precludes us from making a game of that magnitude. Nevertheless, we very much appreciate their enthusiasm and efforts to introduce people who aren't big on either D&D or Baldur's Gate to the series and we acknowledge some of their concerns, which will certainly be reflected in BG3.
That's not a real quote of course. That is simply what I would have said if I had been the one addressing each and every fan of the series.
This boils down to subjectiveness. If that had been the real statement, you could just as well have another forum user argue that it sounds like he's hanging some fans out for dry, making fun of how ridiculous some user's expectations are. They could argue it would have been less of a professional handling of the question.
My idea of cryptic after going through that interview is addressing the entire fanbase with general statements such as "Sometimes the weather is very good and other times it's very inclement" or "Dogs are man's best friend but some dogs I like better".
Those aren't cryptic. Those are general statements of status or subjective opinion. For example, I am a man, I don't like dogs, they're not considered my best friends by a long shot. Doesn't change the statement, as it's a commonly known saying; Recognizing that dogs are generally a very loveable household companion. My opinion doesn't change the truth of the statement, because it's a saying, not a fact.
How interviews go really isn't up for you to judge. Sure, it's ok to want "more details", but here's the thing: You have company procedure. Larian is generally reluctant to release very many details about their projects outside of official statements/releases of media that comes directly from them at their time and leisure. The extreme opposite of this, would be Murray's handling of interviews prior to No Man's Sky's launch, giving answers of features left and right that were within the ambition, but turning out to not be available at launch. Cue backlash.
This sounds like you simply want interviews to provide more "meat to the bone" for us as a player to learn more details about the game. That is possible to some extent to happen in an interview, within reason. If anything, the interview was lacking preparation or insight in asking the right questions, that would allow Swen to give more interesting answers. Which is a skill an experienced games journalist might develop over time, knowing how to ask questions in such a way to ask specifics without 'really' asking specifics. Then again, Baldur's Gate 3 is only in an announced status, there's no rule or reason to expect concrete details or more information yet. You may want it. I certainly want it. You may think, or argue it's been x-months since we heard something last and they should give us something more by now. That's fair. I feel impatient some mornings too, checking Google Alerts if there's anything new yet. It's also only a subjective opinion.
Interviews aren't beholden to any explicit rules to abide in order to meet whatever ambiguous expectations a player/reader might have to get out from it. They're simply a company/freelance journalist inquiring a subject of interest with what they believe might be interesting questions that may lead to interesting answers in order to get an interesting article to draw clicks and readers. That's basically every interview in existence.
We may judge an interview individually and decide whether or not it was a good interview. Ultimately, that will inevitably also be another personal opinion.
