A lot of this has been mentioned before in some context or another, but I think BG3 could be possible and successful if the developers kept about a thousand concerns in mind. I'll just list a few of my own;
1) Make it directly relevant to the Bhaalspawn. If the game starts with a completely new character at level 1, then don't bother calling it a sequel to BG3. I mean, you could still call it a sequel, but it wouldn't *be* a sequel without Charname's direct involvement.
2) As has been said so many times already, the game would have to be huge, deep, and involved. I mean, really HUGE and really DEEP and really INVOLVED. I'm partial to unlocking all of the content from BG1-ToB but reorganizing it to account for what's just happened with the culmination of the effects of the Time of Troubles. Baldur's Gate recently lost a lot of its leadership and is struggling with the realization that Bhaalspawns have not only been pulling strings in and demolishing the city, but then incited (wittingly or otherwise) madness in the southern nations. Amn has a civil war to its southern border, a tenuous peace with its northern border, and who-knows-how-many Bhaalspawn-led but recently leaderless armies are tearing up the countryside and threatening the Elves and Athkatla, etc. Someone mentioned armies. Yeah! Lots of those! Senseless slaughter on a mass scale just because! Create new areas. Link some of the old faces to the new storyline. Make use of aftermath "articles" given by Charname's followers immediately after Melissan dies. Did a band of rapacious mercenaries take over the Gnoll Stronghold and add some traps to it? That's odd. *Now* who's attacking the de'Arnise Hold? Is Edwin feeling resentful about losing his most recent battle with Elminster? Having lost his own immortal essence and seeing the greatness of Charname, has Sarevok hatched a scheme to steal it back? He's still the Child of a God. Some old magic might still apply. A portion of Charname's soul, the Essence of Bhaal, was used to return Sarevok to the living. Could that bind the two Bhaalspawns in ways ToB didn't mention? Maybe a depression has hit all the Nations who have lost so many and so much to war, civil war, raiding, the iron shortage, etc. My goodness, the list could go on forever, and that's not even including new faces and new areas.
3) As per the above, the end of ToB would need address. There are three choices, but every one of those choices basically write out the rest of your life. By the time the stories are "told," if you choose to become a god, you've had followers for some decades. Please do this with a lot of thought. My personal take would be that Solar failed to notice a "disturbance" in collection and transmission of the Essence of Bhaal, a fail-safe plan of some sort concocted by Bhaal which prevents Charname from receiving the totality of it until certain mysterious persons are handled. Or maybe being a "toadling" god, you're having trouble controlling, accessing, or realizing your true power. The idea I listed makes it so that the events of BG3 don't contradict the ending of ToB so much as they fail to be mentioned by the end of ToB, which really isn't a big deal. I believe it was mentioned by Sarveok's mentor at the end of BG1, right before you leave the maze and enter the Undercity, even gods can die (someone said that, anyway). So why not Bhaalspawns who have ascended to godhood? The game can still be interesting and hard. Heck, you could even assume a storyline in which, because ascending to godhood has infuriated so many of Bhaal's former rivals and probably earned Charname a few new ones, some gods enhance the abilities of your enemies, enemies whom would otherwise be incredibly easy for a party with 6 million experience per member. That's a perfect justification for having super strong gibberlings or whatever else around (not that BG3 should have an emphasis on gibberlings). Or assume that Charname simply chooses not to become a deity and is interrupted by envious or spurned deities in attempting to return to a quiet life in Candlekeep. I'm sure Cyric is pissed about something or another by the end of ToB. Helm sounds like a pain in the rear end no matter what's going on, especially if the balance between good and evil deities has been upset by your ascension or declination to ascend. What does the Spider Queen think about you gallivanting across the Underdark, murdering several Priestesses, offering succor to the Elves and then running off to accept or decline godhood? And where the heck has Mystra been? Perhaps we could even hunt down a god or two!
4) Give the alignments some actual relevance. If you're inches and a magical disturbance away from essentially pure evil godhood, you shouldn't be as bound to moral choices as you were by the storylines of BG1-ToB. But that's a concern with or without BG3.
5) Add small elements which indicate how powerful you've become, but, more than that, how far you've drifted to either the good, the neutral, or the evil paths depending, perhaps, on your alignment or how you ended ToB. Maybe in-game cats get fear-status'd whenever your evil soon-to-be-deity comes around. Perhaps certain NPCs won't deal with the very symbol of deified goodness standing before them. That list goes on forever, too. Make it so the strength of the deified personification of goodness, neutrality, or evil affects which items Charname can use. If these suggestions aren't abused, they could make the game as immersive as ever.
6) Items and spells. Need more. Always more. Make the summonable monsters amazing. Give some extra emphasis to spells like contingency and sequencers to make them more powerful at later levels. Make spells like Sphere of Chaos a lot more chaotic. But make it balanced. If the characters become more powerful, the monsters should, too.
7) Craftier enemies. I mean, seriously tricky AI. After having played the games for a while, you can pretty much tell when an enemy Mage's contingency is about to take effect or why the enemy Thief just swallowed an invisibility potion.
8) Give us a chance to wield armies (not literally hundreds of NPCs, but you get my point; I'm talking on the scale of what we saw in ToB, but far more frequently). Don't give Charname complete control over them, but give us the ability to really impact the Realms. Make it possible to influence whether one nation declares war on another in these troubled times and lead the charge. Give us the opportunity for a depraved god to redeem himself or a righteous god unused to being immortal the possibility of being corrupted by near-absolute power. Give us a chance to contend for Ao's spot, why not? Whichever way you go, my point is to make the stakes larger.
I'd really like to see a BG3, but with so much room for error considering how ToB ended, I think it's fair to say that we should all be careful what we wish for; either we could miss out on a fantastic sequel, or we could watch a fantastic series be demolished by a bad storyline. Either way, though, I would buy BG3. The series is worth so much that even if the latest sequel is terrible, it'll be worth a gander, no doubt.
For those who responded TL;DR, I seriously don't blame you.
All we need is plot induced amnesia where everything after Melissan's death is a bit of a blur. You reconcile with old friends with triggers based on extensive checks. For instance, when you see Aerie, you can either say you don't recall her, say you remember travelling together or ask how your son is doing. If you choose option 3, you've locked into Aerie's romance... or have you?
But I think that at least some of those ideas have been thought of by the developers. Following Trent on twitter... He OBVIOUSLY hasnt said much about the plot, but I t does seem like he wants it to be some kind of continuation...
Either that or he's throwing people off track... Devs are notorious for that sort of thing sometimes...
I think there's room for an elaboration on why exactly Ao wanted the other deities to not interfere in the Bhaalspawn plot so that it could play out. Whether thats the ascension of CHARNAME or the destruction of bhaalessence is a matter of speculation. If it wanted to incorporate both ascension and destruction into its story would either need a rather ambitious set up, or some cleaver writing to put CHARNAME in the same position regardless of his/her previous decision. Seeing how the world reacts to you would be great too. With beggers and such hating you for throwing away the opportunity to change the world for the downtrodden, while clerics of different gods may think you made the smart decision, but are still wary of you. Romances established in BG2 would be rewarding because they've already been established by the previous game.
1.) Isometric strategy maintained, not excuses like Dragon Age II
8.) Give Evil a chance, joining assassin guilds, thief guilds, evil Temples would be nice. Also, maybe the hardest thing of all, give Neutral characters a reason to exist, very few games have ever done this, but it would be great for Druids and Bards.
11.) Make this game Skyrim huge, not in hours obviously because the BG series already does that, but in locations. There are millions of location in D&D, which gives this Dev a chance to bring wonder back to RPG's, I want to feel awe with some of the created areas, IWD did this well, it would be great to see BG do this also.
I dig these.
Additionally I would like to start at Level 1. And for the PC to not be the Bhaalspawn in BG1 and BG2. Umm ... lovable NPCs. All that good stuff.
Comments
1) Make it directly relevant to the Bhaalspawn. If the game starts with a completely new character at level 1, then don't bother calling it a sequel to BG3. I mean, you could still call it a sequel, but it wouldn't *be* a sequel without Charname's direct involvement.
2) As has been said so many times already, the game would have to be huge, deep, and involved. I mean, really HUGE and really DEEP and really INVOLVED. I'm partial to unlocking all of the content from BG1-ToB but reorganizing it to account for what's just happened with the culmination of the effects of the Time of Troubles. Baldur's Gate recently lost a lot of its leadership and is struggling with the realization that Bhaalspawns have not only been pulling strings in and demolishing the city, but then incited (wittingly or otherwise) madness in the southern nations. Amn has a civil war to its southern border, a tenuous peace with its northern border, and who-knows-how-many Bhaalspawn-led but recently leaderless armies are tearing up the countryside and threatening the Elves and Athkatla, etc. Someone mentioned armies. Yeah! Lots of those! Senseless slaughter on a mass scale just because! Create new areas. Link some of the old faces to the new storyline. Make use of aftermath "articles" given by Charname's followers immediately after Melissan dies. Did a band of rapacious mercenaries take over the Gnoll Stronghold and add some traps to it? That's odd. *Now* who's attacking the de'Arnise Hold? Is Edwin feeling resentful about losing his most recent battle with Elminster? Having lost his own immortal essence and seeing the greatness of Charname, has Sarevok hatched a scheme to steal it back? He's still the Child of a God. Some old magic might still apply. A portion of Charname's soul, the Essence of Bhaal, was used to return Sarevok to the living. Could that bind the two Bhaalspawns in ways ToB didn't mention? Maybe a depression has hit all the Nations who have lost so many and so much to war, civil war, raiding, the iron shortage, etc. My goodness, the list could go on forever, and that's not even including new faces and new areas.
3) As per the above, the end of ToB would need address. There are three choices, but every one of those choices basically write out the rest of your life. By the time the stories are "told," if you choose to become a god, you've had followers for some decades. Please do this with a lot of thought. My personal take would be that Solar failed to notice a "disturbance" in collection and transmission of the Essence of Bhaal, a fail-safe plan of some sort concocted by Bhaal which prevents Charname from receiving the totality of it until certain mysterious persons are handled. Or maybe being a "toadling" god, you're having trouble controlling, accessing, or realizing your true power. The idea I listed makes it so that the events of BG3 don't contradict the ending of ToB so much as they fail to be mentioned by the end of ToB, which really isn't a big deal. I believe it was mentioned by Sarveok's mentor at the end of BG1, right before you leave the maze and enter the Undercity, even gods can die (someone said that, anyway). So why not Bhaalspawns who have ascended to godhood? The game can still be interesting and hard. Heck, you could even assume a storyline in which, because ascending to godhood has infuriated so many of Bhaal's former rivals and probably earned Charname a few new ones, some gods enhance the abilities of your enemies, enemies whom would otherwise be incredibly easy for a party with 6 million experience per member. That's a perfect justification for having super strong gibberlings or whatever else around (not that BG3 should have an emphasis on gibberlings). Or assume that Charname simply chooses not to become a deity and is interrupted by envious or spurned deities in attempting to return to a quiet life in Candlekeep. I'm sure Cyric is pissed about something or another by the end of ToB. Helm sounds like a pain in the rear end no matter what's going on, especially if the balance between good and evil deities has been upset by your ascension or declination to ascend. What does the Spider Queen think about you gallivanting across the Underdark, murdering several Priestesses, offering succor to the Elves and then running off to accept or decline godhood? And where the heck has Mystra been? Perhaps we could even hunt down a god or two!
4) Give the alignments some actual relevance. If you're inches and a magical disturbance away from essentially pure evil godhood, you shouldn't be as bound to moral choices as you were by the storylines of BG1-ToB. But that's a concern with or without BG3.
5) Add small elements which indicate how powerful you've become, but, more than that, how far you've drifted to either the good, the neutral, or the evil paths depending, perhaps, on your alignment or how you ended ToB. Maybe in-game cats get fear-status'd whenever your evil soon-to-be-deity comes around. Perhaps certain NPCs won't deal with the very symbol of deified goodness standing before them. That list goes on forever, too. Make it so the strength of the deified personification of goodness, neutrality, or evil affects which items Charname can use. If these suggestions aren't abused, they could make the game as immersive as ever.
6) Items and spells. Need more. Always more. Make the summonable monsters amazing. Give some extra emphasis to spells like contingency and sequencers to make them more powerful at later levels. Make spells like Sphere of Chaos a lot more chaotic. But make it balanced. If the characters become more powerful, the monsters should, too.
7) Craftier enemies. I mean, seriously tricky AI. After having played the games for a while, you can pretty much tell when an enemy Mage's contingency is about to take effect or why the enemy Thief just swallowed an invisibility potion.
8) Give us a chance to wield armies (not literally hundreds of NPCs, but you get my point; I'm talking on the scale of what we saw in ToB, but far more frequently). Don't give Charname complete control over them, but give us the ability to really impact the Realms. Make it possible to influence whether one nation declares war on another in these troubled times and lead the charge. Give us the opportunity for a depraved god to redeem himself or a righteous god unused to being immortal the possibility of being corrupted by near-absolute power. Give us a chance to contend for Ao's spot, why not? Whichever way you go, my point is to make the stakes larger.
I'd really like to see a BG3, but with so much room for error considering how ToB ended, I think it's fair to say that we should all be careful what we wish for; either we could miss out on a fantastic sequel, or we could watch a fantastic series be demolished by a bad storyline. Either way, though, I would buy BG3. The series is worth so much that even if the latest sequel is terrible, it'll be worth a gander, no doubt.
For those who responded TL;DR, I seriously don't blame you.
All we need is plot induced amnesia where everything after Melissan's death is a bit of a blur. You reconcile with old friends with triggers based on extensive checks. For instance, when you see Aerie, you can either say you don't recall her, say you remember travelling together or ask how your son is doing. If you choose option 3, you've locked into Aerie's romance... or have you?
Something like that.
But I think that at least some of those ideas have been thought of by the developers. Following Trent on twitter... He OBVIOUSLY hasnt said much about the plot, but I t does seem like he wants it to be some kind of continuation...
Either that or he's throwing people off track... Devs are notorious for that sort of thing sometimes...
Seeing how the world reacts to you would be great too. With beggers and such hating you for throwing away the opportunity to change the world for the downtrodden, while clerics of different gods may think you made the smart decision, but are still wary of you.
Romances established in BG2 would be rewarding because they've already been established by the previous game.
Additionally I would like to start at Level 1. And for the PC to not be the Bhaalspawn in BG1 and BG2. Umm ... lovable NPCs. All that good stuff.