I played BG and BG2 back in the day. More than any others, these are the game that defined my tastes in rpgs. I know that they had many flaws, but the ruleset, writing (characters, story, and dialogue), voice-acting, setting, gameplay/pace, and graphic charm added up to something I just haven't seen equaled.
What I felt during the gameplay stream was excitement that slowly subsided and, after 10-15 minutes, was replaced by a slight nausea. (Edit: I want to highlight that I did not feel an immediate dislike. I think this helps convey that I was not just looking for a clone, and was open to new things if I felt they were done right.) What about this makes me dislike it? Here are a few thoughts:
1. The 'origin stories' character creation style: this is not how any of the BG games worked - it's how DoS worked. The emphasis should be on custom creation of the PC, so that you feel you are beginning your very own story. To some extent that feeling is an illusion, but it's an important one.
2. The zoomed-in cut-scene dialogue style (and to a lesser extent, the 100% VO): in the end this combination is more often than not annoying and anti-immersive, and certainly not in the BG tradition. So it represents an enormous financial outlay that's basically wasted, and thus money not going to writing, characters, story, etc. During the rest sequence, spending a couple minutes zoomed in on your character's face was especially ridiculous.
3. The claustrophobic level design: Larian's outdoor levels sometimes feel like brightly-lit dungeons, and the gameplay here was no different. They feel closed-in and heavily curated. What with the vertical dimension, the camera movement, and the general physics, you'd think it would be the opposite. Contrast this with BG's well-known sense of largeness, openness, and exploration. I'm thinking that verticality can actually contribute to this issue, since it creates a temptation to build walled-in vertical levels to enable vertical approaches to every challenge that show-off how vertical your game can be. My point is not that BG must be flat, but that the visceral sense of large open areas is a defining characteristic of the series.
4. The story-line and "millennial epic" tone: several of the issues I'm describing could be addressed and improved (though it's obviously unlikely), but this is one where it's a matter of culture and upbringing and you either understand or you don't. The story, from what we've seen, is definitely epic with a capital E, but it's epic after the style of Marvel movies, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Disney's Star Wars. It is drama as conceived by chronically overstimulated people.
5. Graphic charm: when Larian took on the BG title and logo they took on more than the geographical setting of the adventure and perhaps some story tie-ins. They took on, and in fact cultivated, the explicit expectation of making something reminiscent of those original genre-defining games, rather than something reminiscent of DoS. And yes, that includes 'look and feel.' That includes art style, colour palette, fonts, UI, and mouse and movement icons. It includes spell and action animations. And maybe the defining characteristic of BG's graphic charm is the hand-painted landscapes, which at their best created a memorable tableau rather than merely a map or a level. I don't really want to be the guy who just wants another IE-style, static camera isometric RPG, but the truth is I actually don't know if it's possible to capture the charm of those tableaux in a fully 3D engine with camera swiveling. I do know that if you're going to call your game BG3 then there needs to be commitment to capturing the look and feel of the original series.
From what I've seen, I won't be purchasing this game.
Hey you and I have had our differences elsewhere, but this is perfectly worded and spot on.
