Now I really hope that Larian will focus on creating world that feels alive / "real" for their next games (unexpected encounters, day and night cycle, map design, less gamey fast travel system, coherence between the different layers). IMO that would lead their next games to "best rpg of all time".
This is the missing ingredient from a perfect RPG.
Larian's RPG's biggest flaw is that it constantly reminds you that it's (just) a video game. The goal should be to make the player forget and just get immersed. E.g. theme park maps are very convenient, but they break the 4th wall when the game is so aware of the players convenience that it has illogical distances.
I think that is just a matter of taste and access to free time.
I would much rather spend my time in meaningful interactions than clicking empty space for 2 minutes to get from the druid teleporter all the way to the tiefling merchant. Especially since the draw distance is a factor that doesn't allow me to click my ending location and just alt-tab away until they get there.
Adding more space than there already doesn't appeal to me at all. And removing fast travel sounds insane to me.
You don't necessarily have to add more space.
Reorganizing the act 1 areas on top of eventually rework them a bit could already have been enough.
In exemple the act1 map as a whole doesn't necessarily have to be ""a square"" and the swamp could have been a "buffer zone" between the grove and the blighted village.
It could also have been a part of the forest so we would have a "real" forest rather than a forest and a swamp that are neither a forest nor a swamp because of their size.
The fast travel system does not have to be teleportation portals that doesn't really make sense in the world.
So do you think it's possible to love BG3, if you haven't loved D:OS 1+2, even if it's so similar?
Is the combat also just about the elements (fire, poison, etc.) or are we getting also spells, that were in the old BG games?
Definitely. I never have been a huge fan of DoS and I'm in love with BG3 even if some design choices of Larian are really wierd to me.
Don't be afraid of surfaces effects... it has nothing to do wirh DoS. Some spells will create a few surfaces but not so much. You will find DnD 5e spells... a lot were already in BG1/2 even if most have changed a bit.
