Back then the man was going on and on about how much he loved Ultima VII, BG2, how their set of features and their complexity made them what they were, and how his dream was to build "the big RPG to dwarf them all". Something clearly changed over time.
I disagree. Larian D:OS design has clear inspirations taken from Ultima (or at least it’s legacy, I am more familiar with “Immersive Sim” legacy then game itself) - their games are system driven, abilities interacting with things in a predictable manner, items being physical objects with mass and weight that can be manipulated thrown around. (That’s more of Ultima underworld… as I mentioned I only know Ultima series though reputation).
It is not shocking, that Larian prefers to build on what they have, rather then toss it all aside and build anew. One can point to things in U7 and BG2 that BG3 doesn’t have, but I am sure there is stuff BG3 has that is lacking in the other two. Larian has its own template to build and develop and that’s a good thing. Whenever it’s a good template for BG IP is another matter.
