Well there was this quote from Sven I found awhile ago, which at the very least, suggests the BG IP was chosen just for market recognition. And the game's release hasn't really disproven that either.
Yes, he has been pretty transparent about it, as well as mentioning that he didn't expect people to care that much about 20 years old IP. He restated it in recent interview as well. [For transparency sake, I don't think it was wrong to do on Larian part - while it is no BG3 sequel I might have wished for, Larian was very transparent from the very beginning of what BG3 is, and myself (and anyone else who has done the most basic of research) known what they are getting into. So while it is fun to argue from an "academic" perspective if BG3 should have been BG3, I don't think it throws any shade at Larian or game they have made].
Originally Posted by HenryDoughnut
Larian’s “follow your heart” attitude is what worries me about the possibility of this game having no future. (...) Unfortunately, it seems like Larian’s development process is very much built on an approach of only looking to the future instead of the past, which heavily clashes with the way I view creative projects.
I find it difficult to believe that every single employee at Larian threw their hands up in the air and shouted with joy after being told they wouldn’t work on Baldur’s Gate anymore. (...) It almost feels like Larian, as a private company that doesn’t have shareholders or a board of executives or anything, is forced to follow wherever the whims of Swen lead them without there being any other input. Of course Swen, for all his great qualities as a leader because of his stance on placing quality and care over profits, seems to possess some weird mindset of throwing things in the trash once they get a bit boring and singlemindedly dedicating himself to something new and shiny.
First of all, I don't think we have any insight into inner workings of Larian - one shouldn't take public face at its... well face value. Swen indeed seems to have final word, but I also don't think we have reasons to suspect that he doesn't take advice from other creative leads, nor is in charge of everything - it is a massive company afterall. Was he the one who didn't want to do more BG3 in spite of his employess wishes? Or were his employess burned out and spent, and they felt they poured all they had into BG3, and he decided it would be better to move on? They have worked on this game for a long, long time. I wouldn't be surprised if every person on the team was ready to move on. Or maybe they couldn't come to mutual agreemant with WotC? Really who can tell. All we know is what Larian has stated - and that's Larian has always done the next cool thing, and they didn't want success to undermine who they are as a company. Respect, especially as they seem to realise and accept that the next project might as well not be as succesful as BG3 was.
We also really can't tell if trying to make BG3 better is a valid project - I have no doubt they are issues and design challenges that Larian is well aware of (probably much better than we are), but that's something they can take onboard and try to do better in the next game, rather than rebuilding this one. Sven is on a record saying that act3 is bit of content he is the most proud of - and it is understandable, as far as scope it is the biggest thing they have done so far, with some new to them technology. Could it be better? Hell yes, but they might have come to conclusion that they would rather do another game from scratch with what they have learned, rather than trying to itirate further on this one.
