This seems a bit myopic. First, while I absolutely love the original BG games, many of the "quality of life" improvements that have become typical to games over the years are absolutely point blank humongous improvements. Early game gameplay in BG1 especially is total jank. Second, I don't actually think it's true that people can't enjoy these old-school games. I mean, there was an isometric renaissance (that probably LED to BG3) where a lot of the games played fairly similarly to the original Baldurs Gate series. So I don't actually think there's some humongous barrier preventing newer gamers from enjoying these games. I bet a lot of people bought into the series by 3 will go check out the previous titles.
Third, while the average fan of BG3 probably hasn't played the originals, we're not discussing an "average" gamer. We're discussing members of the Larian game studio, specifically those that worked on BG3. I think you should at least expect that the average person from that group should have some knowledge of the originals. I mean, you don't have to be 40+ to have played the originals. They came out around 25 years ago. I'm not 40 and I definitely played through and enjoyed them when they came out, though I am probably on the younger side of those who did, lol. But even long after they came out they remained popular and impactful.
Well, when the first Pillars came out, the then somewhat spoiled by all the "modern" amenities Bioware fans would complain about how it's ugly (which is ironic coming from somebody who thinks that Inquisition of all things is a pretty game...) and how there's too much reading. Meanwhile the original BG games are too "hard" and "unfair" (more like you are starting as a regular person who - guess what? - will probably die to a pack of wolves if not careful rather than someone who beats up devils and aberrations starting at level 1).
Same with the newer Fallout fan generation trying to get into the older games and being put off by - egads! - reading and "complexity" (as in the fact that you have to study the system a bit not to gimp your character, which is an amusing thought given how there are occassional questions asking for help building one in BG3 on the Steam forums, which, given how brain-dead 5e already is and how BG3 in particular holds your hand (albeit still not having class progression previews in-game...), is a rather sad display as to what the average player is capable of nowadays).
People would claim those games are "outdated" and "user-unfriendly", but their UI and mechanics were very intuitive to pick up even though I missed BG back in the day (having only played it in the early 10's first) - at least I did grow up with Fallout 2, and the smaller me was fine with both the mechanics and the reading somehow. And if the games even can become "outdated", why then does everyone complain about how they don't make them the same anymore, and how the old stuff was better (though somehow they mostly refer to the non-PC stuff, which I can't really get behind, since those ones really *are* wooden, ugly, and janky), and how the companies prey on the old IPs and brands to make easy buck off of brand recognition.
Larian aren't an exception to that, I am afraid, no matter how much people defend them. If this was truer to the originals, there wouldn't be the above argument. It may have been envisioned to be at some point, but they certainly stopped caring after they realised the older games' fans aren't their target demographic. Hence us getting the butchered cameo characters, the awful modern writing moments, and the over-reliance on "romance" as the selling point since the perpetually bothered Bioware-nurtured pixel-shaggers will eat it whole after, what, 6 years of abstinence? 9 even, if you skip Andromeda.
I am eternally skeptical of the argument of old games being better and modern fans being dumber/inferior in some way. I think that the latter argument is always untrue, though the former argument is usually untrue but can vary game to game. To go point by point, the prettiness or ugliness of any game is in the eye of the beholder. I've played part of BG1 and I think it's a pretty nice-looking game. I also happen to think Inquisition is a gorgeous game that still holds up to this day. And I also think that PoE1 is far prettier than BG1 and PoE2 blows all these games out of the water. As for complaints about too much reading and the game being hard, it's not some scathing indictment of modern fans being dumb, it's simply that fans are going in with a different, modern set of expectations. Back then, a lot more games had a baseline of actual unfairness that doesn't exist today. I point you to the abundance of unpredictable instant death traps that used to exist in games that have largely fallen by the wayside. Furthermore there's been an expectation shift both in video games and in the mechanical and storytelling philosophy of D&D as a whole in those times. The game isn't superior just because you're starting out as a normal person who could die to a pack of wolves. It's simply differentand opperatingoff ofa different set of expectations. People not jiving with those expectations doesn't make them dumb or lesser in any way, it simply makes them different.
Furthermore, calling 5e braindead is just wrong. It's far simpler than previous editions but that doesn't make it dumb, and it doesn't make its players dumb for wanting help making good characters in the system. You are used to something far more complex, I would argue that oftentimes that it was needlessly complex. But that doesn't mean that there's no complexity to be found in the newer, simpler versions. I say this as someone who's not a fan of 5e as a system. I find it too simple for my tastes and have chosen Pathfinder 2e as my system of choice. That's also a simpler system than 1e, which was an offshoot of D&D 3.5, but it's a demonstration of how a simpler system doesn't mean dumb. As far as UI is concerned, older games can certainly have good UI, I've not played any of those games with the original UI to judge, but just because it worked for people doesn't mean automatically that it's objectively good. There have been literal decades since those games, during which game devs have been able to build on knowledge and had a chance to see and study what works and why. I don't believe that new automatically means better, but I am willing to go out on a limb and say that overall, UI in games now is genuinely better than UI back then, if youlook at games as a whole, and as intuitive as you found the UI back then, I'm sure those same game devs, if they knew what they know now, could have created something way better.
I also find it amusing how you use as evidence the fact that people claim old stuff still looks good as an argument that things were better in the old days, then in the same metaphorical breath state that those people are wrong when they state that opinion about old stuff you disagree with. That's kind of hypocritical honestly. And really shines a light on how much of this argument is born of nostalgia and opinion. You also ignore the fact that the crpg genre has always been a niche. These games, for all you praise them, never caught on with the majority of gamers even in the old days when fans were supposedly "superior." Because it's not about the fans. Fans didn't become dumber, there's just more of them. The percentage of fans you would approve of is probably largely the same relative to back then, probably a bit larger if I had to guess. But now there are just way more fans in general, and it's easy to actually hear from them via the internet, since social media makes it so easy for people toshare thoughts and feelings, etc. I listen to a gaming podcast and one of the hosts played and loved both the original games. And he absolutely loves BG3 and thinks it's a worthy successor. I've never actually gone through both games but I still dislike BG3. But I also love games like Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny, the Pathfinder games, but also, Mass Effect Andromeda is tied with 2 as my fave in that series, and Inquisition is hands down my favorite dragon age game. You can't just broadly generalize and say "modern fans are worse than the old guard, and because of that modern games are actually worse." It's simply untrue. Stuff is complicated.
I apologize for getting rather rambly towards the end there. This is just a particular conversation I have a lot of feelings about.
