Interview with with Larian's David Walgrave, executive producer on Baldur's Gate 3,
Walgrave: So, I think that in spirit it's still the successor of Baldur's Gate 1 and 2. Because there are so many things that people who did play and like Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 will still recognise in the new one. It's still about your party. It's still about big personalities clashing with each other and relationships. It's still a party-based game, you still need to do combat, you will recognise a lot of D&D rules - even if you haven't played D&D in 20 years. You will still recognise all the spells, et cetera.
Okay... so take the obvious element of each recent good RPG (party, personnalities, party again, combat), add a little bit of D&D for the calculations, add the spells, and you have Baldur's Gate. They clearly assume they choose the easiest way...
