Former Baldur's Gate and Dragon Age dev Mark Darrah says that Baldur's Gate 3 is a great sequel mostly because it's so different to the original games.
Speaking to FRVR, Darrah, who was a programmer on Baldur's Gate and its sequel, says that one of the biggest strengths that Larian has when it came to Baldur's Gate 3 was that the game isn't "super literal in terms of what a sequel should look like." However, there have been plenty of games in the time since Baldur's Gate 2 that have been a bit more spiritual successor in their approach. For example he explains, "Pillars of Eternity feels like an Infinity Engine game. It's not. I played it and I'm like, 'wow, this feels very much like a spiritual successor to a Baldur's Gate or an Icewind Dale or something like that.'"
He adds, "I can't fault anything it does in terms of being true to that inspiration, but the reality is that the industry has moved on so much since then that I was like, oh yeah, this is a really faithful adaptation of that and it turns out that I didn’t actually want that anymore."
Darrah notes, "Larian is, they are, Baldur’s Gate 2 and Baldur’s Gate 1 flavored, but they're also Divine Divinity flavoured." He explains that Larian has been flavored by the CRPGs it worked on and that were released in the huge amount of time between the releases of Baldur's Gate 2 and 3. Darrah adds, "So I think it's a great sequel. I think they did what is the right thing to do given that large of a gap.”
For example, he explains, "If you inject Neverwinter Nights and Dragon Age Origins and draw that line, then it leads pretty clearly to a game like Baldur’s Gate 3." With that in mind, he adds, "So the sweep of that arc obviously includes Baldur’s Gate 3, because otherwise we wouldn't be here, but it's not as obvious because the gap is so large."
