The big difference with BG3 are the cutscenes, feels more like a Bioware game at times and appeals to people who enjoy that

I havent played DOS2 but from what I heard its a very good crpg. There is one big difference between it and Baldurs Gate 3 though- Production values. Baldurs Gate 3 simply by being a more cinematic experience will cater to a larger audience despite being a nerdy crpg. Plus DnD does have kind of a renaissance and the name Baldurs Gate still carries some weight.

When was that? Bethesda made bank there.

Now while you have a point. Keep in mind that a ton of people never finish a game and you can spend 40-50h in act one and by all accounts Act 1 is pretty polished because it was the part that you could play during early access. It is possible that the later game might not live up to the first act but the truth is a lot of people will never make it that far.

As a sidenote there is one reviewer that I know that played a lot of the early access that finished the full game in a bit over 50h a couple of days after release and he was very positive about it. (Even the later parts)

The proper way to enjoy Larian titles is to play the first act 10 times and spend 2 hours in character creation every time before dropping the game permanently.

From what I’ve heard there was (voluntary) crunch but mild by comparison, along the lines of what you’ll find at any job around a major project release or tax time.

this is from a blogpost of sven’s 10 years ago

One of my best friends told me that I really should update my blog. I explained to him that I’m literally working from six in the morning until midnight trying to get Dragon Commander out of the door and that the last thing I want to do in my current schedule is spend what little free or sleeping time I have left writing about work. He shrugged, repeated three times that I should update my blog, and then proceeded on another topic.

Net result: I’m updating my blog. He can be convincing.

So, we’re in crunch. Not because we’re in panic mode or because a publisher is threatening us with whatever legal nonsense, but because we still have a ton of small things we want to finish before the game goes live *and * because we selected a release date we swore we wouldn’t miss (August 6th 2013 for those interested)

The current situation is that there’s still some stuff on our task list and there’s a whole bunch of stuff on our bug/suggested features list, but most of it still all feels possible.

To put that last statement in perspective – of course, the lists are getting longer now that we launched the beta, and of course, we find ourselves forced to be selective, and of course we’d prefer to put everything in that still makes sense, and of course realization is dawning that we won’t manage to do it all. Still, morale remains high, because we think that what’ll be in will be sufficient to please a significiant large enough part of our audience and I hope wholeheartedly that that indeed becomes the case.

meanwhile, the complaints I (remember seeing) in linkedin reviews are along the lines of ‘larian magic entails reiterating ad nauseaum which can be very frustrating’ and ‘what really matters is convincing sven a feature is important, and the leads often brag of their ability to do so’.

without talking to a larian employee in private i kinda assume the crunch situation at larian is a) not good, but also b) possibly not the worst amongst game developers since this industry is somehow worse than holywood’s treatment of 3d artists.