Originally Posted by Milkfred
Of course, the outcry of 'Baldur's Gate did it this way' has come through loud and clear.

I suggest people actually replay Baldur's Gate 1 or 2. You'll very quickly realize that there are no stat checks, for example, and very few things actually 'gated' behind your mental stats. The problem with comparing BG3's system to its two predecessors is that very few people actually understand how BG1 and 2 worked. In general, they certainly weren't as stringent as making you 'play by the rules' as BG3 is.

This post is unintentionally hilarious because you're so condescending but you clearly have next to no clue what you're talking about. Have you ever played AD&D before? Do you know what an edition of D&D is, even?

Well, surely you do. And surely you know that BG1&2 are based on AD&D. And surely you know that Diplomacy didn't even get a set of rules until Dragon Magazine #169. And surely you know that the out-of-combat skill checks from the core rulebook are limited to rogue skills that are clearly included in the game, and "Non-Weapon Proficiencies" with a single DC of 21 (which can be truncated as pass-fail using a standard roll with minimal intervention on the maths), right? And surely you know that some dialogue options in BG1&2 are gated by your mental ability scores, right? And surely you remember that nobody had the expectation the IE games were going to include non-weapon proficiencies such as "Boating" or "Papermaking," just as no one had the expectation that they would use expanded rules from every issue of Dragon published to release in an engine perfected in the late 1990s, right?

I mean, surely you wouldn't post something like that without understanding the history of the genre, and surely you wouldn't equate limitations of a game engine/production budget with intentional design deviations, right?