We want BG3.
This is what we want. Not Siege of Dragonspear, not Planescape Torment: EE, What we want and need is Baldur's Gate 3. This is what you need to, let's be honest, you need to sell and this would be a huge hit. C'mon, do it already.
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and second, how would the story continue? Baldur's gate was completely focused on your main character, building up your main character's heritage and how your main character interacted with the world around it, and since ToB pretty much finished the bhaal spawn story line, it would almost make no sense for a bg3 to exist
what I would prefer, is not necessarily a bg3, but a new dnd type game, with the style of bg2 in mind per se ( as in lots of classic monsters, cool items, interesting companions to join you on your journey, things like that )
so bg3 I say nay, but new dnd game I say yay
I would be fine with BG3
But SOD is great and I really want to play PST:EE
Also I haven't played IWD:EE but I'm looking forward to it.
The only way it could be possible would be to continue the story of the protagonists who turned down the chance to ascend to godhood and kept being a mortal. This charname kept on living his life (with or without his/her lover) and I imagine had many adventures more. To me, this means a world of possible adventures and quests that could all together form BG3. But that's only the way I see it.
So, even if it may not be easy, I say YES to BG3.
Numerous plausible suggestions have been published over the years about how the story could go (and I've even contributed some ideas to that), so I'm convinced that there are several ways of devising a good story which would solidly connect to (although not necessarily directly continue) the existing story, and thereby justify the re-use of the BG brandname.
@sarevok57 is right, however - if Beamdog ever do it, then they've got to do it well, else it'd be better not to have done it at all.
I fully agree with @sarevok57 in that such an extension could only be provided by a mod. It's a free optional extension you can install and try, so you may enjoy it or not but you will not judge it like a commercial product. It represents one possible story to emerge out of your decision at ToB's end - just one, in all other cases the game ends as normal.
Return to Faerun is a large and long mod with contents probably exceeding SoD and according to the readme this is currently only the main storyline. From my experience it will be easily possible to expand it with additional quests or more alternative paths.
Since it's a mod, it does not need to satisfy customer's expectations or demands and you feel this freedom in the story throughout. This is part of the fun. Somebody wanted to tell a story and did it without compromise to *will it sell?* or *is it politically correct?*.
The mod is only existing for EET version of the games, only there you have the option to revisit all of the game areas. Maybe there could be other mods in the future that would cover the other decisions you can make with the Solar in ToB. The mod automatically starts after you told the Solar your final decision at ToB - you get either the normal end bios and screens or a transfer cutscene into the new plot.
Probably it requires some *guts* to come up with a project like this because most likely everybody has some clear expectation about what should be in it, so all you ever can do is make it wrong. Or you simply do it and don't care as there may always be one or other player you would like it. Like I do.
ToB was already a hacked solution to the problem that D&D simply doesn't have a ruleset to deal with characters that high in level. Elminster is the strongest mage who has ever lived, thousands of years old and boy-toy to the literal Goddess of Magic. By the end of ToB, Edwin is more powerful than he is, according to the source material.
Level 40 in D&D is already godhood. And when you're already as powerful as a god, who is left to fight and how are you supposed to continue progressing? Where can you go from there?
I suppose there could be some silly plot contrivance, like you got caught by a Vampire and level-drained back down to level 10 or something. But that's kind of silly, (what Vampire is going to be able to catch a god?), and that just leaves you treading the same ground you already tread in BG2. Plus it breaks the whole sense of progression that was the original selling point of the trilogy.
The alternative is to make it canon that Charname accepted the offer and have BG3 deal with the court intrigue of being a god. But at this point you're really stepping on the source material, and I doubt its owners would be all that keen.
No, if there's a BG3, it pretty much would have to be the beginning of a new story, (like how IWD2 occurs in the area of IWD1 but doesn't continue the adventures of the party from IWD1.)
Technically it seems to use the EET capability to add new chapters to the end of the game.
The protagonist does not level up anymore although the party gains XPs and the companions grow. There a no items exceeding what was in the game before. One challenge is that you deal with *lesser* companions and a very mixed party so that battles again become interesting. Your oponents have mostly mortal associates just like you do. The concept is interesting.
Like I said in the earlier post, the benefit of having this done by a mod is that you can try out things this way without needing to say *this is BG3*.
your charname is the grand child or aerie ( and since you are aerie's grand child it could be possible that your parents mixed with another race to make it so your charname can be any race)
so anyways, this could be X amount of years after the time of troubles ( since it would no doubt use 5E rules, I don't know how far that is from the BG setting, but time wise it should still work )
so you start off at level 1 and you wanted to become an "adventurer" ( or whatever else you want to call it) hearing about the exploits of your grand mother ( and for arguement's sake, lets say your grand father was a human and he chose to stay behind and be with aerie , infact make it abdel, just for the lulz, but now that its 100 or so years later he would be dead, so no need to bring him into the picture)
so you go off and do your own thing, exploring the world, visiting the areas of the sword coast around the Baldur's gate/ amn areas ( because why else would it be called Baldur's gate 3 if you don't even visit the city? )
but the thing is, no one accounted for the child that aerie had with charname in ToB, and that child still carried a spark of bhaal's essence with it, and passed it down to your charname, ( and lets say for sake of argument your charname's parents are dead for whatever reason, perhaps out of fear that they could have obtained bhaal's essense) so now your charname learns this, and outside forces hear about it, and they are coming in, to take you out ( for the potential that you could be dangerous)
while this is happening though, there is something else a scue, in suldanessellar there is a child born from the queen known as ellesime although this child is much older than your charname ( born shortly after the time of troubles) but where did this child come from? - this is the secret child of irenicus, he used this child as a contingency knowning that charname would come back for his soul, so in the off chance that irenicus would fall, he could reincarnate himself with the child of ellesime
but the child of ellesime doesn't know this, and ellesime keeps this a secret from the elves in the city, saying that this child is a product from the rillifane god or whatevs
but then, when wind catches hold that charname contains the smallest smidgen of bhaals blood, creatures of the material plane aren't the only ones listening in on the action, irenicus is still in hell, waiting to come back to the prime material, and his ticket out, is the child of ellesime, and since irenicus has a connection with the child he enters the dreams of ellesime's child tricking it into being obsessive over power, and slowly corrupting the child and telling it to capture the "bhaalspawn" child
so then ellesime child becomes more corruptive over time, and destroys all of suldanessllar and starts doing a bunch of bad things and what not, trying to attract the attention of the bhaalspawn, and then ellesime's child becomes successful in gathering the bhaalspawn child, and using the child's "power" to give to ellesime's child, but low and behold, ellesime's child doesn't know that he is being manipulated by irenicus, and when the child of ellesime succeeds in stealing the power of the bhaalspawn, irenicus reincarnates in steals ellesime's child's body and is fully restored
and now that irenicus is back and in full power with ego through the roof, he basically throws charname and friends away, without worry thinking that they will be no threat, but now charname isn't too happy about this situation and goes after irenicus to stop his madness
although the problem is, irenicus has become immortal now, with his time spent in hell, he has stolen the essence to achieve his orginal goal of becoming a good, and now he cannot be destroyed, and even irenicus becomes contaminated from his own tom foolery of power, and just goes ballistic destroying planes and the what not
so all seems lost, but yet, there is one small caveat: ellesime knew something like this was going to happen, and she knew that one day irenicus would be back to exact revenge, so ellesime implemented her own kind of contingency into the child knowing that the her child would be the one to stop irenicus, and had a ritual set in place so that when irenicus came back with all the bhaal spawn power, that her ritual could get rid of all of it at last
so somehow your charname figures this out, finds the rites to the ritual, does it, and gets rid of irenicus' immortality, but there is another problem, even though irenicus is mortal now, he is still no push over, and he is still too powerful of a spell caster to be taken down, so charname gets defeated again but this time charname retreats because irenicus has no desire to let charname live
so charname retreats and has to figure out a way to defeat irenicus but all seems lost, but then, charname has someone come into his dreams; the orginal child of ellesime, except this is not the corrupt one, its the non corrupt one, and it has seen the errors of irenicus' ways and wants to help you defeat irenicus once and for all and permenantly
so now charname and chaps have go around and do whatever it is that needs to be done to help the original child of ellesime fight irenicus and what they figure is; is make another ritual spell that will free the child of ellesime into irenicus' mind, so when you go to battle irenicus the child of ellesime will take over his mind, weaking irenicus to make the battle easier
now here is where things become even more crazy, irenicus is still no fool, and he knows that there will be those out there to get him, so makes his own ritual that makes it so if he dies, whoever kills him goes with him, and then irenicus will bring them back to hell steal their souls and use that to live again, but charname doesn't know this
so then the confrontation starts and charname and the child of ellesime overcome irenicus and irenicus falls, but he smiles as he dies knowing that charname still hasn't succeeded yet, irenicus spills the beans on whats going on, and all seems lost again
but then, another wrench in the plan, the spirit of ellesime comes back and knows of irenicus' diabolical scheme, and she uses the rest of the remaining power she has left sacrificing her essence and soul to make it so instead of going to irenicus' base in hell, they all go to a different plane of existence instead, and diety prison like plane, so neither side has the advantage
but it still goes down that charname needs to battle it out with irenicus, and if irenicus wins, the multiverse is destroyed, and if charname wins, then I suppose the universe doesn't get destroyed by irenicus at least
so yeah, something like that would be alright for bg3 I think
Edit: Except that Rillifane is Ellesime's father ... so no - yuck! - his suggested minor role is ... distasteful.
Then again, a "BG zero" which leads to the future protagonist growing up in Candlekeep would be interesting (maybe told from Gorion's perspective) - especially since it would most likely fall into the Time of Troubles.
It also allows the possibility of future installments as you are not always harking back to the current saga.
Lets see them open up Faerun as well, visit some of the places we have heard about (the ship bits of BG/BG2 work OK)
Cameos or links through descendants to the original NPC would be very welcome without being restrictive.
Edit - my earlier post are in spoiler tags as well, easy to miss among the walls of text around them.
The strength of the original trilogy lies in its ability to provide so many different kinds of experiences to so many different kinds of people. There's no way a new game is going to be able to do that again, because times have changed so much, the gaming market has changed so much, and the gaming industry has changed so much.
For any chance of success, any original new D&D game produced by Beamdog has got to be a totally new game. The Bhaalspawn saga is done.
You are alive and in the middle of a battlefield.
You see flash of magic, hear clash of steel and cry of pain, smell the odor of blood. You try to grab the weapon you always have with you, but it is not here and the only thing your hand feel is the cold rock of a grave, your opened grave.
You try to stand up, but you struggle even to lift your arm, as if your body awakened from a long, probably eternal, sleep. As life return to your corpse you try a new time to stand up, but at this moment, you hear a last cry of agony and sometimes fell next to your grave before silence take in the place, then, you hear slow, tranquil step approaching you.
A hand is laid on your grave, and a man watch you from above. He then speak, in a annoyed manner: "Well, it seem like we failed. Welcome to the living world, Charname."
Did you enjoyed my introduction ? Well, i will not continue like this because it would take too long to write all there is to know of my idea of Baldur's Gate 3.
After this introduction, you learn that the man before you is a member of : "insert the organisation name of your choice" (i will say harper because it seem to fit them).
This harper explain you that you are dead since at least one hundred years, and that the men that him and his companions were fighting resurrected you. The harper didn't want a undead demi-god of murder serving necromancers, they tried to stop them but since you are not an undead (you were trully resurrected) and that your power is mostly gone (you have returned level one), he will not kill you now but will instead take you before the Harper's council to decide if you will die or not. Unfortunately, before you can exit the crypt where you were, you are attacked by one powerful man with some level one thugs. The man teleport himself with the harper and the thugs attack the harper's companions and you. After the fight, where everyone as died except you, you leave the crypt and arrive in the center of Baldur's Gate.
Now, some explication for why you were dead, how you resurrected and why you're level one without any weapon.
Only one reason, Cyric. After Throne of Bhaal, the mad god didn't believe you had really abandoned your place as god (or because you took your place as a god) and that you would one day return to take the portfolio of murder from him. So he killed you.
To make sure you wouldn't be resurrected, he took your soul and placed it into a gem which he forgot somewhere into his forteress until the day Bhaal was resurrected. Cyric lost a part of his power that day, and he wouldn't sit still until he took revenge for it. He then remembered the "fated child" that was supposed to stop the resurrection of Bhaal, whose soul lied in his forteress. He began a plot to resurrect you and make you kill Bhaal.
Unfortunately, he had destroyed your body too much for a simple resurrection to work, he then make his follower steal a ritual from Myrkul. This ritual was a sort of work around, instead of resurrecting you in this body, he would recreate one identical but intact, the thing he predict was that this new body was like the body of a newborn, void of reflexs, of scars and a stranger's body for you.
You are now useless to him. Or are you ?
Another thing, this history would be possible if Wizard of the Coast added a little twist on the canonical story of the Bhaalspawn Abdel Adrian.
Abdel Adrian was a Bhaalspawn but not the Bhaalspawn who defeated Sarevok, Irenicus or Melissan. He was a simple man, probably ignoring his true upbringing, who became officer in the army of Baldur's Gate after some feats on his own. He then became to slowly climb the ladder of society, too slowly, as sixty year passed before he became duc and many people began to be suspicious of his young appearence at eighty years of existence.
It was then decided that he would be tested to make sure he wasn't a deguised monster or some other unholy thing. It was then that it was discovered that he was a Bhaalspawn (he probably had the dreams and all the things that happen to Bhaalspawns, but after the Throne of Bhaal destruction, the Bhaal's essence within him stopped.). An old wound reopened into the city, as the death of Skie Silvershield was brought up again. People began to ask him to be cast out of the city or simply killed.
Abdel Adrian was furious. Would all his feats, all his good deeds, all his efforts be destroyed by someone he doesn't even know ?! No ! He would destroy his deeds, he would change history and bury up to the name of the Bhaalspawn which very existence threatened him ! If people loved so much to compare the two of them, then he would become the two of them !
He began to gather all informations on the Bhaalspawn, all he could heard and began to spread his own rumors before finally telling the truth, his truth, to everyone. That he was the Bhaalspawn that killed Sarevok, Irenicus and Melissan, but history confounded him with another man, a murderous beast, that killed Skie Silvershield and he tried to let his true history be forgotten. He then wrote three books that related his history, one when he killed Sarevok and saved Baldur's Gate, another when he was captured by the archmage Irenicus and a last one when he completed his prophecy and killed Bhaal's priestess Melissan before refusing the power of gods.
Sixty years had passed, and many people too. Few were the one who know the truth, and most of them didn't want the truth to be known or didn't care enough to defend it. After ten years, the lie became the truth and those who were telling the truth were called liars.
Right now, there is pratically no one who would defend you. And one of the last died recently, while taking revenge against the usurper.
However, I realise that this doesn't solve your other objections.
Either CHARNAME refused to ascend to godhood or he became a good, this choice is left completely to the player. A new game easily would force to make canon one of the two endings, which would be a bad thing.
But of course I don't say that it is impossible to write down something that allows to continue the tales of the Bhaalspawn without forcing to choose one of the endings of TOB or retcon, if somebody discovers a way to present a believable and acceptable way to continue without screwing up all the story. But chances are that it would be freakingly hard to set up something good.
What I would like to try to see is, instead, a remake of the original Baldur's Gate with current graphic technology, full acting, deep relationship and cinematics (things that Bioware couldn't do to a full extent for technological and economical reasons until the two trilogies of Dragon Age and Mass Effect), without however changing anything in basic combat system, skills or character development.
Or some sort of "Baldur's Gate Tactics", a massive tactical party vs party multiplayer using the Infinity Engine where you battle against opponents or in co-op in arenas, dungeons, open fields, with modes like deathmatch, assassination, capture the flag, and the more you win the more xp and money you gain to equip your party (or unlock new powerful items and characters).
P.S. However I was told that lately Forgotten Realms publications in the last years say that
So a gloomy, doomy and depressing game. I'm not sure why I like this idea.
A Child of Bhaal NPC telepathic Shaman Pony with Freudian dreams of becoming a unicorn.
your potentially fights with cyric and others gods that not akcepted your godhood. You are new god with many enemies and few? allies without any worshipers or with one Viconia
On an even less relevant note anyone who loves or hates My Little Pony should read this:
http://www.tor.com/2010/11/17/ponies/