Originally Posted by Emrikol

I suspect an overwhelming number of those who find BG2 the apex of RPGs are roughly 32-38 years of age (born between 82-88), based on a premise (which certainly could be wrong) that our formative years (roughly 10-16) are the most impactful. Most (by a large margin I suspect) born after 88 probably never even played BG1&2, with there being so many more 'modern' alternatives like EverQuest. Most (by a large margin I suspect) born before 82 had plenty of previous games to fill the sacred slot of 'best game ever' (e.g. table top D&D). So, if the range of possible gamers who might play BG is (say) 10 to 70, that 7 year range of 32-38 are a small minority. I could certainly be off by these figures a bit, but I see no reason to suspect that many gamers younger than 32 or older than 38 hold BG1&2 so high. Hence, the niche.


Those are quite a lot assumptions.

I would say:
- A lot of people know about BG1+2 or have even played it, at least among those who are interested in computer RPGs at all, no matter how old they are.
When players are interested in this genre and they are not completely blind, they will find lots of people who will say that BG1+2 are the best games ever. It does not matter if this is true or if those people are a small minority, all that matters is that it is impossible not to hear them for example if you look at any forum, such as this one. Every new game is compared to them and some people will always say that BG1+2 are better than anything else. You can buy the original games or the EE editions, they are often on sale and there is lots of advertisement for them.
So if you can get the games for a few bucks and several people say its the best game ever, many people will buy them and most of those probably like them.

I have absolutely no idea how large is the group of "fanboys" among all BG players, but I guess its rather small. One reason is that only a small number of players is very active in forums anyway.

my opinion:
BG1+2 were games that defined the genre and they are very good, but they are not perfect.
It is absolutely needed that devs try something new from time to time and it is absolutely normal that a game made now will look very different than a game made 20 years ago. It uses a different rule set (there is absolutely no reason to use DnD 2E now, alone the concept thaco is hard to understand for new players for example).
The technical limitation are completely different now. In BG you could not kick an enemy off a cliff or throw random items at them, but you could definitely do it in a PnP session. It is fine that devs include stuff when they think it looks cool, at least it makes at least some sense in this context.

my prediction:
- Larian will make lots of money with this game.
- The press and players reviews will be very good in general
- Some people will say that BG1+2 were the best games ever, until the end of time.
- Some players will not like it (which is totally normal) and some of those will find the most absurd reasons why it is junk.


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