Audiocide

Also, the Elder Scrolls is Bethesda's baby. Sure, they might get Obsidian to make an ES offshoot, but after the success of Skyrim, that seems unlikely. In all honesty, I'd rather Bethesda make the next ES game. It's what they're good at. Not the story, the writing, the voice acting, or the character animations, but making gigantic open world games where you get lost for days at a time. Fallout made sense to hand off to Obsidian. Maybe even they were aware that Fallout 3 wasn't quite there, even though a first person Fallout game was a great idea. I don't think they would do that with Skyrim.

That's just a shame, since D&D lore is already so deep and rich. Then again, a setting like Planescape was pretty obscure as it is (to my knowledge, I was never a tabletop player), and it turned out to be great game. I guess it all depends on how passionate the developers are about the game they are making. BTW, if you've actually ironmanned IWD2, then hats off to you. Seriously.

You may be right. I was never interested in consoles. Even though I own one, I very rarely use it for more than watching blu-rays. But they obviously are the bread and butter of gaming companies. So winning over the console crowd should be the first thing a big publisher cares about. Skyrim still feels like it did a lot better. I think sold as well as Modern Warfare 3 (at least that's what I gathered from the Steam Store), and that's something.

Both medieval settings AND dragons have existed in CRPGs a LONG, LONG time before Skyrim. Although I have to admit, we all owe gratitude to Skyrim for bringing fantasy CRPGs to the general's public's attention. I've never heard anyone who wasn't an RPG fan raving about Morrowind, or countless Youtube clips about it, and it was the far greater game in all aspects. I guess the timing was just right, and well, Youtube didn't exist back then.

I see. So they are asking for a truckload of money for an IP that the younger CRPG generation probably hasn't even heard of, and that's why there hasn't been any proper D&D games in 10 years.

This is too much to be coincidence. Too bad I'm not really into WH40K. Well, I still have faith that one day another good D&D game will come. Probably through Obsidian and Kickstarter, if they're still around by then.

I'd donate very good money to a Baldur's Gate III kickstarter. Thing is, why Baldur's Gate? The Child of Bhaal storyline was possibly the coolest idea in any CRPG, but that's not what made that game what it was. If Wizards of the Coast really said that, then they have a point. I can't imagine keeping a BG3 true to its origins and ALSO making it sell. So a Kickstarter game is a game for the fans, right? Why not just make ANY Forgotten Realms game? Write a new story, but make it a hardcore D&D game - maybe even isometric, like Wasteland 2 is doing. Well, unless Wizards refuse to sell the D&D license as well. In that case, it'll probably never happen. The longer they sit on that, the less will people care for FR. I think Dragon Age was a bit bland, and it was the supposed "spiritual successor." Re-writing all the lore of an entire fictional universe must be a lot of work. And the re-imagined combat systems are usually... clumsy. Still, I have faith in Obsidian. They make good games. Buggy or no, I still prefer them to any other RPG developer that's around these days.