One of the creators of the original Baldur's Gate, Mark Darrah, recently participated in the FRVR podcast and shared his thoughts on the third installment, which was made by Larian Studios.
The developer reminded that 22 years passed between the releases of Baldur's Gate 2 and BG 3. Since then, much has changed in the gaming industry, and the old approach might no longer attract a new audience. As an example, he cited Pillars of Eternity.
After getting acquainted with this game, he realized that he no longer needed to reproduce old ideas:
Pillars of Eternity feels like an Infinity Engine game. But it's not, really. I played it and I was like, "Wow, this is very much like a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, or something like that. Some of the same authors worked on it." I kept playing and I was like, "Yeah, it's very true to its inspirations." But the reality is that the industry has changed so much since then that at some point I started thinking, "Oh, this is a very authentic adaptation of that era." And it turned out that I don't need that anymore.
In Larian's project, Mark Darrah explains, there is an influence of the first two Baldur's Gate games, but also a touch of Divine Divinity and other cRPGs. In his opinion, the resulting third part is an excellent sequel:
They [Larian Studios] were influenced by their own creative path, and also by what cRPGs have become over the past 20 years. So I think [Baldur's Gate 3] is an excellent sequel. Given such a large time gap between the parts — they did exactly what was needed.
Darrah noted that Baldur's Gate 3 also shows the influence of other projects — Neverwinter Nights and Dragon Age: Origins, as well as other well-known role-playing games:
If you add Neverwinter Nights and Dragon Age: Origins to this chain and draw a "development line," it will clearly lead to a game like Baldur's Gate 3. If you don't take these two games into account, it's unclear in what direction the genre could have developed.