Once you win the Academy award for Best Picture or Best Editing, that is a pretty clear signal to just call it and stop editing. This is the hardest thing to do, or to know when to do, really with any work of art or creative endeavor. This doesn't mean you can't make a "Directors cut" or a dozen director's cuts, but that's why those sorts of things release with different subtitles to differentiate them from the theatrical releases.
In short try to be Ridley Scott rather than George Lucas when it comes to this sort of stuff. Like recut Blade Runner till the end of time if you want, as long as the theatrical version still gets to exist somewhere. Star Wars the motion picture (1977) by contrast, no longer exists in a way that can be experienced by the average viewer, because it's been altered so many times.
Larian has been more willing to go back and revise their older titles than a lot of other studios. You can see it with Divinity 2 where the game had continuous updates and further development years after launch. The version you can buy on Steam/GOG today is actually a 2012 re-release of the game and not the original 2009 version. You can also see this with DOS1 and DOS2. Where they released continuous updates years after launch.
A big reason for this is because Larian self publishes all of their games so they're not bound by licensing contracts like other studios would be. Larian is also more willing to preserve their older titles than a lot of other studios as they let you downgrade to prior versions if you really want to.
OK well as long as we're coming to conclusion, I also would like to drop one more cautionary tale. So there was a game in 1998 called Baldur's Gate, and it had a certain art direction that I really love. Time was, I could get that game on Steam and just play it the way it was. It took some figuring but basically it was about as simple as downloading a hotfix or running the thing in an older version of windows. Able to experience the thing exactly as I remembered it when I first fell in love with it. Fast forward a bit in time and now trying to do that same thing, I'm instantly confronted with a bunch of stuff I find disagreeable that was added in like a dozen years later. For one very particular example, there are portraits included in the default set by an artist who I just don't dig at all.. Like we shouldn't go into it overmuch cause it makes me hella bitter, but the point is that those images were never there in the original game BG and Tales of the Sword Coast or any of the original BG 2 ToB titles. It was added way later. Legit stresses me out to see stuff by that guy suddenly appear in my all time favorite game, like every single time I want to roll up a new character? Gotta see that? No thanks. I have to play BG1/2 on GoG now and jump through a bunch of extra hoops just to avoid that. It's such a chore to just do what used to be easy to do and fire up the OG Baldur's Gate games. Or at least the OG BG2 and then run BG1 through that engine. With the BG1 and BG2 discs I am able to recreate the experience I remember so fondly. Currently there is no convenient way to do this in 2024 through Steam. I can only play the EEs there, but those games have an entirely different art direction and substantives changes were made to the storyline that go well beyond QoL in my view.
There's a very big reason for this. The re-release of Baldur's Gate 1/2 that exists on GOG/Steam today is not Bioware's original game. It's a remaster created by another studio named Beamdog. Bioware hasn't been involved with these games since their release 20 years ago. Beamdog chose to modify the games considerably and they also chose to make divisive story adjustments nobody asked for. Such as adding in new party members nobody likes, and completely replacing the original FMV cutscenes with lame 2D animated ones.
I just think for BG3 they might keep that in mind, as a thing that can happen. Frankly I wish Larian had acquired the rights to the previous titles when they got the License for the sequel, cause I feel like their art direction would have been much stronger for a remaster focused on restoration, but that ship sailed long ago I suppose.
I somewhat doubt Larian has the staff to remaster older titles that were made by another studio altogether. It would be more logical to outright remake the first two games which is unlikely to happen due to how massive they were. According to Larian they wanted to make Baldur's Gate 3 as far back as when they finished Divinity Original Sin 1 but Wizards of the Coast refused to give them the license. It wasn't until DOS2 that they were able to get the license to make BG3.
