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 occasional 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People would claim those games are "outdated" and "user-unfriendly", but their UI and mechanics were very intuitive to pick up even though I missed BG back in the day (having only played it in the early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 And if the games even can become "outdated", why then does everyone complain about how they don't make them the same anymore, and how the old stuff was better (though somehow they mostly refer to the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.
Well, first off, I object to characterizing them as "spoiled", because again a lot of those modern amenities are absolutely huge improvements. Second, I personally played BG1 when it came out and played Pillars, and while I love both the games, one of MY objections was "too much reading." Or rather, not too much reading, but the simple fact that the games will present you with walls of text that your eyes will glaze over. Pillars, imo, had somehow unlearned the lesson that BG2 had learned quite well - in BG2 there's a lot of text to read as well, but they *break it up* every few sentences, making you click a button to continue a conversation even when there's no break in the conversation or dialogue choice to make. This one little thing makes a lot of the text to read go down much smoother. Pillars also has the problem that to "get" its plot, you almost IMMEDIATELY need to have a TON of buy-in about the lore of the world, a world that nobody had encountered before. Which made closely reading what people were saying a downright necessity, to the point that they felt they had to add those little "lore links" in the text. I loved Pillars, but it definitely had its huge flaws (and I think it's a huge shame that the sequel, which addressed so many of them, didn't do very well. Pillars 2 is also just a gorgeous isometric game in the classic "painted backgrounds" style, and I worry we'll never see something like it again.)
Also, I mean....BG1 absolutely *is* unfair, lol. First off, you are not starting off as a "normal person", a 1st level adventurer in second edition dnd is not a normal person. They're not as powerful as they can become,but they absolutely stand out as being able to practice simple magic or being trained for combat or getting divine spells from their god, etc. And it's NOT fair - it's not fair to throw people into a system where they have little idea of what their power is like and then bombard them with combat which will totally destroy them, especially when nothing you've done establishes the convention that this is going to be some sort of survival, as opposed to adventure, game. BG1, just early on, by virtue of this aggressive unfairness, is simply a *different type of game* than ANY of its sequels, really - I knew fans of BG2 who couldn't get into BG1 because of it! Because by the time you start out in BG2, this element of "We need to run away from a ton of fights" is simply gone, and it is much more a straightforward adventure game.
For me, I was a kid and enthusiastic enough to overcome how unfair it was and the jank in the combat system and, frankly, how absurdly useless some character classes can feel at that early level. And once you get over this early hump, BG1 starts playing much more like a typical adventure game later on. And to me, it holds some charm. But I'm not going to say that modern gamers have been trained out of liking some of these blatant, glaring flaws. I mean, there are, these days, entire games based around the idea of survival, avoiding combat, and having little to no chance if you do get into combat. So the idea that modern gamers simply wouldn't put up with these elements seems blatantly false to me. It's simply that it's *not the genre some people want to play.* That's why I also disagree that the problem in Fallout is the "complexity." I think the problem is just that Fallout 3-onward is just an entirely different genre of game than the earlier games. That simple fact alone means there will inevitably be people who love the latter games but don't like the earlier games.
The original games ARE outmoded and user unfriendly. For example, there's no marker showing the aoe of spells - you just cast fireball and learn the AoE and eyeball it, lol. (though some people prefer this and a lot of games have the option for this mode.) I also don't get what you're saying. You simultaneously claim that people claim that the games are outdated and user unfriendly, but then that at the same time "Everyone" complains how they don't make them the same anymore. Well, I played the originals when they came out, and yeah, in a lot of ways they absolutely ARE outdated and user unfriendly. I mean, I think it would be pretty terrible if they WEREN'T outdated in many ways, because that would inevitably mean the gaming industry had stagnated over the past 25 years. And I don't think that "everyone" claims that the old ones are better. I think YOU claim that, and a lot of people disagree. I myself, personally, disagree. I have tons of nostalgia for BG1, but IMO, BG3 is way than BG1 in a lot of ways. I say this as someone who is a humongous critic of BG3, and I think BG1 is better than BG3 in some ways (storytelling in particular!) I can't say the same for BG2, I think BG2 is better than BG3. In a way, it's hard to compare because they're such different games.
This whole thing started because I was disappointed in the way that Larian handled Viconia specifically, to which you claim that this is simply because they weren't writing with fans of the original in mind. But that doesn't seem right, because in other ways they clearly were - I think Jaheira was handled fairly well, for example, and the game has tons of references to the original series. They didn't NEED to do that, if they wanted to just ride on the "Baldur's Gate" name - and hell, there are *already games* that take that approach, use the name but have little or no connection.
I'm also confused by your mention of Bioware - especially because I consider Bioware series like Dragon Age and Mass Effect to have *much better* writing than BG3. You've left me a bit confused; you seem to be drawing some connection between BG3 and Larian writing, and Bioware writing, and I'm not sure I get it. Granted, its been a while since I've played Bioware games - I played Mass Effect through 3, and Dragon Age through Inquisition - but IMO the Bioware writing was clearly different from Larian's writing, and clearly superior. Also what over-reliance on romance...? I do happen to think Larian's writing for romance was pretty weak as well, but....it's all totally optional. There's tons of plot stuff that happens totally independent from romance. In what way are they relying on it? I'm not sure I follow the point you're making here.
And for what it's worth, I also hugely disagree with 5e being "brain dead". I grew up on 2nd edition and third edition DnD, (skipped 4e), and IMO 5e is by FAR superior to those versions. I mean don't get me wrong: I love COMPUTER games where you can dive in and optimize a complex system, and 5e is not that. But IMO 5e's "simplifications" make it a far better TABLETOP game. When I'm playing a computer game, I can sit down and take my time and try to figure out how a bunch of different bonuses add up to make something totally overpowered, and there's a charm to that. But translate that time in TT, and it's *ridiculous* - the beauty of computer games is they can just passively apply all these bonuses in the background, you don't need to REMEMBER to add them to every roll and which rolls they'd apply to and blah blah blah. The beauty of 5e's "simplifications" is that the system itself gets in the way of you playing the game *much less than previous versions*. In my experience, as a tabletop game it's simply much smoother and more fun. Though perhaps, translated as a system for a computer game, it comes across as a bit lacking.
