Okay I hate to break it to you and I don't want to seem that I'm overly attacking your feelings, but if you were really following what Larian studios was putting out there in interviews before the game play demo. You would of understood that BG3 was going to be felt like a next generation game provided that they had lots of success with DO2 series, The tell tell signs were all over the place.
Um, but Larian's "Baldur's Gate 3" doesn't look like a next-gen game. It looks almost exactly like D:OS2, which is a last-gen game.
Regardless of which gen the game is meant to look like, it should still have RTwP because that's a key characteristic of the Baldur's Gate series and because Baldur's Gate is THE game that invented the genre. And Dragon Age: Origins' combat is already superior to D:OS2's combat. A Baldur's Gate 3 should be the game to take RTwP to the next level.
Plus, there is no evidence that TB makes a game more popular, so TB can't itself be called "modern" or "next-gen":
PoE2 didn't live up to expectations because of its writing and its forced social agendas. The criticisms of the game upon its release noted that, and not its combat system.
Why did adding TB to PoE2 not do anything to improve PoE2's sales or review scores? Why did PoE2's Steam score not increase by even a single % point in the months following the addition of TB to the game?
If TB was so popular, why did Torment: Numenera tank in sales despite having TB instead of RTwP combat? Why did people criticize the game for abandoning Planescape: Torment's RTwP combat, if everyone supposedly preferred TB combat?
If TB was so much more preferred by everyone, why did those games bomb in sales and not benefit from having TB?
If TB is so popular, how come Wasteland Remastered isn't selling and has mixed reviews?
If TB is so popular, then how come there are more owners of Pillars of Eternity on Steam than there are of Wasteland 2?
If TB is preferred by everyone, then why does Pathfinder: Kingmaker, which is RTwP, have almost as many Steam reviews as Divinity: Original Sin, despite that Pathfinder: Kingmaker released 3 years AFTER D:OS1? It seems to be out-performing D:OS1's popularity on Steam, yet it's RTwP.
If TB is preferred by everyone, then how come Dragon Age: Origins, which has RTwP combat, sold lot more copies faster than Divinity: Original Sin 2 did? It took Divinity: Original Sin 2 two-and-a-half months
to sell 1 million copies. After just over 3 months, Dragon Age: Origins
had sold 3.2 million copies. So, DA:O greatly outsold D:OS2. And that's not even counting DLC: DA:O also sold
"well past $1 million" of DLC within its first week of release.
How can you explain all of that?
The answer is simple: Because there is no trend that games with either TB or RTwP combat systems do better than the other type of game due to the combat system. Each game does well based on the sum of its parts, and either RTwP or TB can be done in a way that is good and compliments the game. D:OS2 didn't become popular specifically because it has TB combat, but because of the sum of its parts.
If Larian want to make Baldur's Gate more sophisticated, immersive, and rewarding, and less casual, then RTwP is the way to go. RTwP is a more advanced system than TB and affords a lot more possible enjoyment and rewards skill more than TB does. I prefer a good RTwP system over a TB system because, regarding RTwP:
- It's more actiony and intense without losing any strategy
- there's room for more tactics compared to TB because of the added variable of timing, while still being able to pause at any time
- setting up AI scripts and watching them play out can be a real pleasure, and AI scripts add another layer of tactics that aren't present in TB
- it allows for a broader range of encounter types than TB
- it affords more natural looking environments instead of environments that look artificially designed to be small confined boxes with artificially-placed obstacles
- it creates a more non-interrupted game experience that creates more immersion
- combat areas are not obvious zones with pre-planned starting positions for NPCs and scripted NPC moves and attack patterns
Overall, RTwP is more tactical, thrilling, immersive, and deep than TB, and RTwP offers a greater range of experiences than TB does.
