Yeah I just don't understand this whole Dungeons & Double Dragon co-op emphasis.
Compromising the single player experience to accommodate a better co-op experience just seems like a bad plan. Especially since its not really necessary. The old approach to a multi-player BG game worked perfectly well, e.g. dividing control of the party by however many players you had. But that doesn't work when the whole scheme is based on controlling only one character at a time, with everyone else toggled into a follower/henchman mode.
I also think the appeal to more fidelity with the table top experience which I've heard floated around, as a way to excuse the slower play pace or wonky controls is also kind of curious, since that's not really what made the BG games successful anyway. Replaying the old games again, its hard to miss just how different the gameplay and overall play pace feel in this new one.
I don't think BG1 or BG2 feel anything like a table top campaign to be honest, at least in terms of the mechanics and overall thrust of the control scheme. It was more of an action RTS game, with a Forgotten Realms RPG presentation. The play pace was fast, and most of the combats and such resolved with melee (even from the non-warrior types) more often than not. Sure BG was kind of ridiculous with the paws of the cheetah, or the buff and haste for every encounter, but the contrast here is still pretty marked. There are other games they could have made a sequel for, that took a different approach, more in line with what they're giving us here. This game plays more like Kotor, or Neverwinter Nights or Dragon Age or even Skyrim, than it does BG1/2, despite being turn based, which is a little odd. But at least the control scheme of those games was pretty straight forward in terms of what it was trying to do, since control of the single PC in a more 3D FPS environment is well established for RPGs of that type.
BG3 right now reminds me of games like Master of Orion 3, or Zelda II: the Adventure of Link, or Dragon Age 2. Sequels where the designers opted to throw out a lot of core aspects in the gameplay that made their direct predecessors successful, in order to try some new thing. But where the new game doesn't fit the same mold, and doesn't work so well as a result. Like I'm sure sure somebody thought doing Zelda II as a side scroller to make it more like Super Mario Bros rather than the original Zelda would be a great idea, but yeah, not so much. I think Larian's situation has definitely been complicated by their Divinity titles, since clearly they wanted BG3 to appeal to the same audience as a crossover. But it just feels like the gameplay is more that, than it is a serious homage to the gameplay of the franchise they are carrying now.
I just hope they swing for the fences, and actually rework the party controls so its more in keeping with the BG feel and expectations. They have time to fix this stuff, and EA would give them an opportunity to try, but what we haven't heard anything about it from the devs. I haven't heard anyone chime here to say that they actually prefer what we have now, so you'd think changing it might be something they'd want to explore?
