What would be really cool is if Larian does what some other games like DA and Witcher have down, which is to include a survey for players at the start of the game asking them about some of the major choices they made in the first two BG games, so that some of that info could be factored into character, environment, and lore reactivities in BG3. For instance, if they had a question asking if your PC romanced Jaheira in BG2, then there could be some reference to that in BG3 if Jeheira is a companion who can be romanced by your BG3 PC. Something like, "Hey, you remind me of someone I was with for a brief time a century ago."
This could also go a long way to blunt criticism that BG3 is not very connected to the older games.
I like this idea. Kind of like the beginning of PoE: Deadfire, where they ask you: ''what were your choices during the first pillars of eternity? We'll adjust according to that.''
Tricky to do though, since WotC canon lore is often quite different from our BG1/2 playthrough, and they are unlikely to want to let Larian randomly revert/subvert the lore ( WotC reserve that right for themselves
).
To be fair, many of the epilogues from the old BG games were deliberately vague, allowing you to read in what you will. For example, in BG2 the Minsc epilogue stated that he was feted as a hero in Rasheman for an undisclosed number of years before going off in search of adventure and disappearing. A few epilogues, like Keldorn's, seem to explicitely state death. And some characters, like Viconia can be dead or alive, depending on your in-game actions ( she dies in her epilogue if you romanced her ).
In the end, I think WotC will provide whatever rationale is needed for returning BG1/2 characters. After all, they have destroyed and reinstated regions, worlds and whole pantheons, seemingly at a whim, in recent years, so I imagine returning a few old BG characters, that you might expect to be dead, will be a simple matter.
