Where to start? Baldur's Gate 3, is all about telling your own story. The variety of endings and game choices is such that to actually continue the story is going to go against the majority of choices gamers made, both for the main character and the PCs in general. This is not the Last of Us, where you were basically retelling the story of the game, a game that was just basically playing a movie. It is a highly tailored, very specific story to each gamer's playstyle choice that will be impossible to continue as the gamer imagined in his head. Will Shadowheart embrace or turn from Shar? Will Astarion become a vampire lord, remain a spawn, help others? Will Karlach be a mind flayer or go to Avernus or even exist at all? Will Lae'zel rebel against Vlaakith with Orpheus, stay to fight in the astral plane, or becomes a loyalist? On and on and on. Speaking off, the story of the Bhaalspawn is completely over, through and through. How will they interpret the aftermath of the Bhaalspawn trilogy? Will the main character be good, neutral, evil? Amongst those choices is he Bhaal, a mind flayer, be good, turn evil? No matter which way you go, the majority of players, your main base, are not going to be in agreement because it will statistically be different than what they chose. The actors. Are you going to choose the same actors? If not, who are you choosing? If you choose the same the voice acting remains the same, but the look and feel of the characters will change. If you choose new ones, everyone will be comparing to the iconic voice actors of the game. It's a no win situation, unless they are going animated, and that will limit the potential popularity of the show. Also, the Last of Us TV show is fine because if you didn't deviate much from the story, it was guaranteed to be good. The game was basically a movie, you just had to retell it in live action. Will the showrunner actually make a good story when the rails are removed? Who really knows? I know season 2 of The Last of Us didn't leave me thirsting for more of it. What about Larian? Yeah, WotC/Hasbro owns the rights to D&D. But Larian is the one who created BG3. Anyone else trying to undertake the monumental task is going to most likely fall short of it, and forever be compared to how Larian would have done it. And Larian chose to not keep going, they didn't even want to do DLC, their story was complete. Continuing the story is going to be just a cash grab at this point without their involvement. Honestly, I would rather just get another D&D: Honor Among Thieves movie. That was great D&D, trying to follow up on the popularity of Baldur's Gate is most likely going to backfire. Just make it a quality D&D show, decades of material to go with. If not, they would better off telling the story of BG1 and 2, which had a more railroaded story. What Larian did with player choice is actually astounding and incredible, never seen the like which such a high production value.
I've played BG3 a ton recently. I picked it up on sale after the final patch was released a few months ago and I have 2 full playthroughs plus some more. So I'm a BG3 nerd, I guess. Last of Us isn't a great comparison, as that game was basically already structured as a linear plot with a character driven story. The actual gameplay part of Last of Us was always the clunkiest, least impressive part of the game. The Fallout show would be a better comparison because it ultimately fails or succeeds as a stand-alone writen work that drpends on its own writing, and drops things from the game into the story just for color. If they just try and tell the origin character stories and linearally do the game's plot where they go through the grove and the goblin camp, through the to Moonrise Towers to lift the curse and kill Ketheric then on to Baldur's Gate to take care of Gortash and Orin before conftonting the netherbrain won't work (and it will take like 4 seasons of show before you actually get to see Baldur's Gate.) I believe to succeed it's going to have to be a story that stands on its own, where they flash in a spectator (beholder) or Omellum, or Auntie Ethel or some other game-specific reference every now-and-then as red meat references for the game fans. Not that it can't succeed, but it won't succeed just by trying to copy the game's plot one-to-one for TV. That worked swimmingly for "Last of Us" which made it a much better property for easy to-TV conversion. The Baldur's Gate show will have to succeed on its own unique writing, which is a trickier proposition. I'm not against the show. I'm interested, but I am also sceptical that it's a lock to be anything more than cringe. I'll give it a shot.
Last of us season 1 was good... the 2nd season was just bad IMO. The TV game series to compare it to as an RPG would be fallout for sure, which is pretty damn good. It really just depends on the director / writers, I don't know if the Mazan is the right choice, not sure who's fault TLOU season 2 was.
I would feel a lot more confident with the Fallout showrunner, that's for certain. I don't think it would be a great idea still, but he has shown the ability to take the tone of the franchise and deliver. If they do that, and not try to follow the companions but start a new story, then that would be more likely to succeed.
Fair enough. As a non-player none of that stuff matters to me, though. If is a good story with good direction and acting, I’m good. lol…you’re always welcome at the nerd convention, bro.
