Well. It's certainly different.
Foremost there is the fact that this is a big-budget AAA title, highly cinematic with fancy graphics. It's also more of a mainstream game, where the old ones were more of a niche game.
But all that aside. The feel.
Hmm. It's more akin BG2 than BG1 Yes, there is a lot of exploration, but it's also all very impressive and well over the top from the get-go. In BG1, you had this wide, open world with farms and villages and stretching woodlands... Here everything is condensed with something hyper-fantastical happening behind every corner. There is no sense of 'we're just walking through the woods', you're very actively adventuring constantly. It's very.. condensed.
There is also how the older titles tackled levels; where you start out in Candlekeep - as a level one character you can barely manage a wolf. You scale up, becoming more powerful than the other creatures that inhabit the world; as these levels meant something in regards to it.
In BG3 in the INTRO CINEMATIC, your level one character is abducted by Mind Flayers, who are attacked by Githyanki on Dragons, so they bash through the planes whilst getting Dragon fire blasted upon them, only to end up in the Middle of the Blood War being waged in the Nine Hells. Teh ship is boarded by Devils... and then it's time for the Tutorial section.
Yeah, no... There is no Candlekeep, here. Nothing is held back and your levels matter not in terms of what it should represent. Everything is epic. All of your companions, who could be playable characters too, have an added epic backstory to them; one even outright dated a God, or so he says.
But, it;s beautiful, gorgeous scenery, high production values, highly reactive - there's segments that play out entirely different as you pick a different class, whole maps that change according. It's really nice.
But it feels... very different.
