A better question is who took the most advantage of the path that BG and other 90s games (and this is true for a lot of genres, the 90s were a heydey) paved for other games of its kind. Spiritual successors are hard - theyre emotional and pedantic by nature. Was Torchlight 2 more Diablo 3 than Diablo 3 was?
From what I can get a read on for your initial post you are looking for something evocative of a bygone era that also combines the fit and finish of a published game made by: You guessed it; Pillars of Eternity was done by Black Isle successor, Obsidian. Obsidian has a good number of the same people who:
DevelopedFallout (1997)
Fallout 2 (1998)
Planescape: Torment (1999)
Icewind Dale (2000)
Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter (2001)
Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter - Trials of the Luremaster (2001)
Icewind Dale II (2002)
Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II (2004)
PublishedBaldur's Gate (1998)
Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast (1999)
Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn (2000)
Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance (2001)
Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II (2004)
Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal (2001)
Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader (2003)
Not a bad resume for the competition to D&D EA newcomer Larian of BG3 when it comes to D&D chops.
Not a pissing contest, this anecdotal and not a representation of what people's preferences should be etc etc. Trying to avoid the inevitable "You forgot game x, invalidated, bad list!" and "HA ONLY 100 hours I have 123,123123123123 eons!1!!"
140 Hours-Torment: Tides of Numenera
150 Hours- PoE 1
180 Hours- PoE 2
200 Hours- Planescape: Torment (thats in the last year, not the 1998 hours)
200 Hours- Each Dragon Age
230 Hours- Baldur's Gate 3
400 hours - Pathfinder: Kingmaker
800 Hours- Divinity Original Sin 2
If we look at that list, we see something. Some of my favorite titles in my many moons of gaming...I didn't play the games I remember so fondly and have memories of playing for
SO LONG....nearly as long as I thought I had.
Torment & PoE were, to use the successor thing, good successors of the genre. It had been pretty quiet before them. Numenera was a
Kickstarter by InXile Entertainment - Bards Tale and Wasteland makers. The thing is though, for how RICH and GOOD PoE and Numenera were, for how many times i've replayed them, done all the things, just squeezed everything out of them I possibly could because I was having so much fun and played until I had taken everything I could from them....least played games. Once you beat them a few times, its done, its over. There is no mystery, there arent other paths, there arent secrets to find. You beat the game - Fin.
Pathfinder:Kingmaker interesting how many hours I have in it. Its with Divinity Original Sin 2 and Baldurs Gate 3 for a reason - Lots of things to do, different choices, metric S-ton of waiting for things to load, reload, and starting the game over. I did not like these games as much as the ones I loved but I played them a lot more. Even scraping out load times and the Pathfinder "Crap, well...guess I have to start over" factors, they are more interesting for you to root around in like a truffle pig. They target the part of your brain that makes you remove every speck of black in a Diablo 2 map so you know you got all the treasure and XP. What was Diablo 2's story? I dunno a fat butcher and then you fight satan or something. Played it a lot though.
Larian makes replayable games, they make a game that you can beat 4, 5, 6 ways and still say "Oh wow, never knew you could do that...kind of want to restart and make that my main fighting style now...". Larian hits some weird rat-at-the-feeder-bar combined with an almost Bethesda-esque delight in "breaking" their games; though they probably put that in there because if you want to do that, why stop you. You'll dump time into their games, a LOT of time.
You'll also be having fun, enjoying yourself. PoE and Torment and Numenera were all SHORT games. Try stretching them out and think of how HUGE you are expecting the BG3 world to be compared so those. PoE was a little blurb of land, PoE 2 was a smattering of islands that you could go top to bottom in about 1.5 minutes.
This is trading off that intense, suck you into the world, man I wish more games were like! feeling for something that rates lower in all of the areas except complexity, replayability, graphics, multiplayer, and ability to keep producing content.
The real question is: How do you take what BG3 is already and what we are told it will be and lift the areas it struggles in relative to the Bruce Lee 2" punch emotional jolts the other games gave us as a flash in the pan.
The answer: The only thing we can do is make suggestions and feedback regarding specific elements of things that were enjoyable in the other games and how one might incorporate them into this. That with a HEALTHY dose of optimism they read, care, or have the capability of making the changes suggested.
The challenging thing about reading your post is you could have never mentioned ANY of the other games and just written the BG3 comments and about as much content could be taken out of it, suggestion-wise.
For instance
What was BG1 and 2 about NPCs :
There was a lot of interaction and dialogues. There was a lot of stories, etc etc. Wont talk ad vitam aeternam about it.
Whilst appreciating the protection from latin, you need to talk Ad Somethingnum about it before worrying about crossing the bridge to eternity and beyond. Right now my counter to that example is: BG3 has a lot of interaction and dialogue. There is something about it that is different though, no? They don't feel natural. Older games you felt like a troop of idiots BSing with each other and now its some trigger you are in charge of managing and should take care of before moving on. What do you remember from the old games that made it a more seamless portion of the game instead of a person waiting at the camp with an "!" over their head that you go "ugh, I dont want to talk to them... fine".
