Firstly, I think the progress in EA is coming on great to build a Baldurs Gate experience.
What I feel is coming along great:
1. Atmosphere
2. Party Banter
3. Voicing of spell casting
4. Companion comradery improving
5. Combat, animations and fun
On that note I wanted to suggest the following:
1. That the developer team play a certain amount of Baldurs Gate & Baldurs Gate 2 as time allows, to keep in touch with the the feel and atmosphere of the franchise, bringing it to a modern day experience.
2. Related to that, I think that the areas that could be improved to capture more of that experience:
A) More ambient music (especially in things like in towns, when travelling etc.) although this is already coming along. I think it can be underestimated how much the music and ambient music played a role in capturing the feel of a D&D world
B) More dialog: one of the hallmarks of the original games was the interest and depth of dialog in the game, it felt like you were playing a in depth book because of the amount of care that was taken into dialog and even those cutscene narrations in-between milestones in the game. Currently I feel the dialog is too one liner and brief. I would even prefer less cinematic sequences for more dialog and depth to character conversations.
C) Bring back the idea of inns/taverns and individual buildings that one can enter vs an open plan town. I feel like its a hallmark of D&D games, from things like Critical Role / actual DM to the video games, entering an atmospheric inn (e.g. Friendly Arm Inn) and having various building one can enter within a town. I think there is too much of a DOS feel to the current cities / town where they are so open plan and not enough of a town with rooms / buildings type of design.
Otherwise, Kudos to listening to current feedback, as I took a few months break playing the EA and I can see how its building toward a BG experience. I just hope that this continues until the world is fleshed out to be a worthy successor.
