City design in D:OS games followed different visual conventions from BG 1 and 2.
Both BG and Athkatla streets had a somewhat festive feel and generally held a promise of peace and safety relative to dungeons and outdoors. By contrast, Arx and Cyseal were defined by stony walls and cobbled streets, invariably right angles, and, in Arx's case, toppled columns. While Cyseal was a great place, every single building there was a straight-angled rectangle. All buildings shared literally one same grey texture. This is clearly very different from very distinctive buildings, nonlinear streets, and complex areas of BG.
I feel that Defiance Bay in PoE matched the visual cues of BG well, but was devoid of life and content. Content density and quality in Cyseal, Fort Joy, and Driftwood matches and exceeds that of BG, but honestly i would not be able to tell which of those towns a given screenshot was taken in: `a generic Divinity town`.
There were both light and heavy characters in BG and DOS games, but in general, people in BG were earnest, whereas people in DOS were cheeky.
Day and night cycle was a (major?) factor in the city life in BG and Athkatla, whereas the divinity games froze a given time of the day per area.
The cityscape in BG was dominated by roofs, whereas a plurality of urban structures in Divinity games was weathered walls with roofs missing. Given the cinematic trailer for BG3, i wonder if the city of BG will have an 'intact' feel as in the original games or more of a 'crumbly' feel of The Arx?
Buildings in the original games were slightly oversized compared to character models: every room was guarded by a barn-sized door (or an open garage gate in the case of the Friendly Arm Inn). However, The Arx takes it to the next level with every sculpture being gigantic, every wall being enormous, every handrail being above a person's height, every crate a 20-ft container.
Tl;dr I would really be interested in seeing in screenshots of the city of Baldur's Gate and comparing them to the original game.
