Tons of people played, and love, the Witcher 3, who never ever played the previous Witcher games, or even wanted to. Tons of people played, and love, Skyrim, who never ever played any previous Elder Scrolls games, or even wanted to. Tons of people played Fallout 4 and it was their first Fallout game (how sad for them). Tons of people played the Final Fantasy 7 Remake who never played the original FF7, or any Final Fantasys that came before it.
The broad, general gaming audience (not specific niche subsets like us) is not interested in games which are old. They are interested in games which are new, and have a lot of hype. They don't care if there were previous titles in a series, they just want to play the new, pretty, popular game that they hear a lot of other people saying is good.
I've seen a bunch of people playing BG3 who don't even play this type of RPG, it's literally their first isometric party-based RPG, their first game based on D&D. They are mostly lost, but also having fun. Because it's a fun game. Those people are never going to come onto these forums and post feedback. They're fine with how it is.
Yeah, I'm always amazed by that. 60% of the people who played Mass Effect 3 did not play or import a character from Mass Effect 2 (let alone ME 1). Kind of mind boggling but there you go!
