I find his candor refreshing. Typically, you have a dev either claiming they're purely living up to the past, while taking a dump on it, OR they use vague phrases like, "re-imagining" to justify warping the source material.
Videogames as a medium have now been around long enough generations of men have fond childhood memories of games. In this regard, for many men, novelty can never trump nostalgia. The first x is more impactful on a timeline than the Nth x experienced later, even if objectively the latter x is superior to the first experienced. Our brains form engrams which calibrate us to treat what we experience as a baseline, normal. So the biggest RPG fans are liable to find any new rpg game the least distinct.
That said, I'm sure their game will get love. Divinity 2 was beloved enough by fans to get funding pre-release. Part of the goodwill earned by the studio is not bsing. Instead of saying something like, "we need more money" in the Kickstarter pitch, the studio lead goes, ~"we could finish and release with what we have but we want to expand the content in the game and need more funding to do so".
Marketing's wrong. Avoiding concrete definitions in favor of nice-sounding evasions is not endearing to the masses. Just tell the truth, do good, and people will like you. In this regard, Larian has been doing well, having fun, and made fans for this positive corporate spirit.
Personally, I liked the Baldur's Gates games (and Icewind Dale and Planescape) but do not hold them up as the best rpgs which have ever come out (would place FNV and ME2 in that role). Barring some radical deviation from past trends, I'm sure Larian will deliver on a thoroughly enjoyable game worthy of the Baldur's Gate legacy
